Claude,
-I can't show you the whole car as it is in secret development (code for not yet designed). Major parts are designed by some 4th year students as their honours project. And in Australia those reports are not submitted till about October/November? However we are planing to have the car running by June/July.
-7/16" and 5/16" spherical bearings are chosen for a very good reason, it's what the old car had.
But I have found drawings of a Formula Ford that generally uses the same bearings, but they use reducers to accept a smaller bolt. eg: 7/16" sphericals with reducers and a 5/16" bolt. And on other places 5/16" bearings with reducers and 1/4" bolts. With the celvis bolted to the chassis using a mixture of M8 and M6 bolts. I'm talking about Swift Cooper SC95 chassis. I'm drawing some influence from well designed Formula cars rather than student designed.
-The bucket for the bearing will be machined first. It will be setup for welding, it will be quickly TIG welded by an expert student (myself). Remove scale and the bearing should go in perfect. (See test sample above). We use a shoulder and 1 circlip.
- as for weakest point in chassis... It may not matter, because if we build to min amount of metal as per the rules, that may be strong enough regardless of poor triangulation. Did you ever see a legal FSAE car that could not compete due to chassis flex through the middle?