My leave is nearly over and I have completed a lot of work in the last 5 weeks. Tube frame Rover anyone?
The floor is mostly in with the passenger side fully welded in place. The driver side has been revised and now fits a lot better. The tube across where the transmission will sit is temporary, and the ends will be cut flush and plated over. I am using it to ensure the floors are level across the car. The transmission mount is only resting in place as I need to engine and gearbox to be in the car to confirm the positioning. I will of course post pictures once it is completed and have worked out the details such as how to get it in and out easily.
I am waiting on a lot of parts, such as the new pedal box, and the new exhaust bits. This has put a slow down on the progress, bit I will keep hacking away during weekends, public holidays etc.
I have (again) revised the shift rods for the M21 4 speed, and they are much neater and smoother in operation. I tucked them in a little more and they just look better, see the earlier posts to get an idea of the change! Once the gearbox is in the car I will have to make a new gear lever as the original is lost and was about 3 feet long to start with! I have some 16mm steel rod that I will beat into shape so that it falls nicely to hand, standby for pictures once complete!.
I have to say that a good welding table to allow fabrication of parts that can be clamped in place makes getting things straight much easier and prevents things warping when welding.
I don't have one of these (yet, a man can but dream of a workshop filled with cool tools........................) but having used one at a friends shop it would be awesome. As a result I have a few "tweeks" that cause parts to be around 0.5 degrees out but it is close enough for me and I am just as likely to break it first time out anyway!
I now need to build my rotisserie which will allow me to weld on the underside, as I don't like welding upside down. This will allow me to finalise the last bits of frame, and then I can start on the task of skinning the whole floor. This will include bead rolling in strategic places to keep the drumming to a minimum as I will be using quite thin steel.
I was forced to attend my local steel merchant today as I cut a number of parts that turned out to be too short, luckily I am not using Chro-moly steel as the stuff is nearly $35 a metre for the sizes I am using! It also needs to be Tig welded and I am not that good with a Tig (to be honest I am only just scratching at competent with a Mig!). The new suspension components will all be Chro-moly and welded by a proper welder (not me) and will be done once I have some time to finalise the CAD files and have the steel cut as required. It will look a little like this (
not my work but a good indication but I will have the sway bar under the shocks, possibly in the same location as stock, but this is a long way off, I am a bit of a tease really....................). Yes, I am contemplating changing to a wishbone front end as it will stop me tucking a wheel under heavy cornering and getting strange camber reactions. Plus it looks cool and is unnecessarily complicated to make and set up, why wouldn't you want to?
Not much else but there is likely to be a bit of a gap in my waffling for a few weeks as I have to get back to work (booooooo) and my new stuff has to show up (why is it that things I order from Sydney - 4hrs up the highway - take 3 weeks to arrive but the stuff from the US arrived in 3 day?).
Take care all
Cheers
Guy