Happy Birthday to me (280z build)

[drummingpariah]

Working around the "Ascutney 1 late May" schedule, there are two autocross events I can attend at NHMS. That should be enough shakedown to be able to trust the car, but Ascutney will certainly find something it can shake loose. That gives us around 7 weekends left to get the car on its own wheels. Definitely a tall order, but I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility.

Once we got back from that banquet, we dove back into the front suspension. After lots of measuring, coping, measuring, adjusting, measuring, and confirming ... we finally have suspension pickups welded in place.




I'm super happy with how that upper control arm tube turned out. Now we need one more, then line up the subframe pickups on the bottom. Once that's done, we focus on the (s13 240sx) rear suspension, and the car should be able to roll around on its own after that.

[drummingpariah]

I spent some time on the crossmember and lower control arm pickup points, but it'll take a little bit more refinement before I call it done.

[drummingpariah]

I got this far before I had another set of hands to see where the hub ends up relative to the fenderwell.



The current wheelbase is 90" ... but I have everything set up for 94" as it turns out. Luckily, now that I've established my design, it should be quick to reproduce.

[drummingpariah]

I really must've gotten a lot of dust in my eye when I cut all that work out.

... What? No, I wasn't crying. Like I said, dust. Someone must've been sweeping before I got to the shop ... or something. Definitely not crying.



After I pulled myself back together, I got everything aligned on all the planes. Then I got to work on the first (and most important) tube: The subframe mount tube.

[drummingpariah]

I decided that trying to make the front suspension happen by myself wasn't working, so today I switched to the rear subframe pickups. I'm really glad I did, that little change of focus solved my mental block, and I was glad to be back in the shop.

[drummingpariah]

Continuing on that trend, I started welding in the pickups today.

The front pickups for the rear subframe:


The rear pickup (one of two) for the rear subframe:


Every day, it's a little closer to rolling around on its own wheels.