Splinter: The 600 bhp supercar built of wood

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splinter-wood-supercar-11 Splinter: The 600 bhp supercar built of wood

You are never going to believe this but…it is true you know! A group of graduate students North Carolina State University are working on a project called Splinter. You may wonder what this Splinter is…well it is a mid-engine 600 bhp supercar built of wood.

The students are trying to build something the world had never seen before… Composites like carbon fiber and fiberglass have been seen on cars for decades, but a car using wood composites to the extent that the Splinter does has never been built. Although molding composites is probably the single biggest part of what we do, building a car from the ground up involves a huge range of processes.

The most important material that will be used on the car other than wood of course will be glue… Glues have come a long way in the last few years, even the space shuttle uses glue to secure their exterior body panels. Thanks to the sponsors the students have access to some of the industry’s best. The most used glueswill be PVAs, UF, urethanes, and epoxies.

As we said, the car will be powered by a twin-supercharged V8 engine delivering 600 bhp. Along with this power comes a lot of heat. Wood isn’t particularly fond of excessive heat, so to keep the engine heat off the wood as much as possible, the students decided to run the exhaust out of the top of the engine by reversing the flow of the cylinder heads. From there, they realized that they could also put the muffler and its heat outside by letting it serve double duty as the wing. The only inconvenient will the the fact that you will not be able to lean on the wing after turning in hot laps; your arm might stick to it, and that just isn’t cool.

Osage Orange Leaf Spring - When they started to build the car, using wood for the suspension was usually talked about with much sarcasm. The more they talked about it the more they began to think it was doable. They decided a leaf spring was nothing more than a bigger, stiffer version of a longbow, so they researched bow making and came upon a wood called osage orange. The strongest wood found in North America, it has properties that make it excellent for use in longbows. Typically considered a nuisance tree, osage orange is not especially easy to get a hold of. They had to drive to Kentucky to get theirs, but it was well worth it. They had several logs rotary cut into veneer because the tree’s twisty, knotty nature made it difficult to get good strength through an entire board. Their laminations of this wood have left little doubt in our mind that our experiment will prove successful.

Wooden Wheel - Using wood structurally in the wheels began as an experiment. This car ain’t no wagon, so they anticipated a lot of development time would be needed to make these hold up to the forces seen in a supercar. They decided to try them when they figured that even if they couldn’t make the wood hold up to vicious burnouts and emergency stops from 190mph, they would still have a killer wheel to use in shows. They soon realized that their main problem would not likely be breaking the spokes of the wheel, but rather twisting out the center where the wheel mounts to the spindle. Their calculations told them that they should be well within the limitations of the wheel, but they suspected there will be some crossed fingers the first time the clutch gets dumped at 5000 rpm.

Seating Position - They wanted the engine to be as centralized as possible in this car for dynamic purposes. They found that by using a transaxle from a C5 Corvette, they could have the engine about 16 inches farther forward when compared to a transaxle like the ones found in Porsche 911s. Having the engine in the center of the vehicle doesn’t leave copious amounts of room for people. To solve this dilemma, they designed the front suspension in such a manner that the occupants would be able to sit with their legs between the upper and lower A-arms. This layout results in a favorable driving vantage point near the front of the car and leaves enough room to shoehorn the firebreathing, twin-supercharged V8 mill into position.