Seeing is believing
Today marks a landmark in the creation of the EJ14.
We can actually see it.
For months now the wind tunnel has been testing thousands of variations of shapes for the new car.
The data has been collected and studied and the best combination translated into a computer model. Now we can all see its final shape.
It’s now down to Bruce Eddington to split this up into ‘the patterns’. Now that’s a job.
It’s his task to map out all the different carbon fibre panels that make up the car. Even the simplest of panels needs at least one piece of pattern work from which the production moulds are made.
The basic parts being: nosebox and wing, the chassis, engine cover, side pods, floor panel, chassis panel (that fills the space between the detachable bodywork and chassis, rear wings and rear wing endplates).
We don’t have a huge production facility here at our factory. A lot of our patterns are made in Kent in fact many of the car’s components are built elsewhere. However, we see that as a strength.
Of course, it would be more convenient to ‘pop downstairs’ into a larger composites dept or machine shop yet we are drawing on a long history of British engineering talent and expertise in the UK.
A British tradition
In fact, the whole of motorsport works to our model it’s only the manufacturer teams in F1 that build cars in their entirety.
Elsewhere, the different disciplines, be it rallying or sports cars, deal in the main with small niche companies.
We get our chassis made to our specification by a group called DPS in Surrey.
They will soon be joining the two halves of the first of our ‘tubs’ together.
There will be five EJ14s. It doesn’t sound many, but they’re virtually indestructible.
The engines come from Ford’s Cosworth plant in Northamptonshire and the gearboxes are machined by Adelphi Precision Engineering in Derbyshire.
They get the castings from a foundry called Zeus in the midlands, while the gearbox internals come from a company called Xtrac in Berkshire .
It does mean we hit the road a lot, but there’s a lot to be said for this structure.
It means we spend proportionally more time concentrating on R&D, design and the aerodynamics of our cars in the wind tunnel than our competitors.
And, as Eddie says, if someone else is able to do a great job let’s buy it from them.
It means there are a whole lot more than the 200 hundred people or so who actually work for Jordan going into putting our cars on track.
And we’re rightly proud that we can provide some drive to some of the small engineering firms out there.
