NEHA

dsldubn wrote:cool, the bikes are a good distraction while waiting on the car. I've always found bike builds to be more relaxing too...and cheaper

They certainly are, but I'm still waiting for a bunch of parts to come in before I can finish assembly, it turns out. I just planned out a much more productive distraction. I'm going to try to get all these parts on this chassis in time for Ascutney.


I'm going to be pressed for time, so I'll probably just post updates on Driven Daily on Facebook for this.

Yeah but Be careful man, your entering a project vortex. Next thing you'll know it's 15 years later, nothing around you runs, it's all covered in dust and in your house.

Wait a minute, that's me!

Super1303 wrote:Yeah but Be careful man, your entering a project vortex. Next thing you'll know it's 15 years later, nothing around you runs, it's all covered in dust and in your house.

Been to my house, I see.

I thrashed all week on the CRX (video here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... Z7pSy75Vm0 ) and got extremely close to having it ready for Ascutney. It wasn't really worth thrashing and being late to the event just to shake it down on the most unforgiving hill we run. Mike's BMW turned out to be a ton of fun though, and Ian's Miata was considerably better sorted than I was hoping for.

All in all, any event that I get to go to the top of a hill at speed is a great one.

I've spent most of the season prepping and tooling up for 2017 prep, and over the past month it's finally starting to come together. Today I bent the second A pillar, reinforced the body (so it doesn't collapse), and cut out the existing roll cage.

The plan:


Tooling:


Progress so far:


As soon as I get the body off the existing cage, the whole shebang goes on my chassis table to make it easier to align the body, cockpit area, and suspension:


The weekend is going to be pretty busy with birthday stuff (it's already been 3 years since I bought this).

Happy Birthday to me.

Cutting out such nice fabrication work hurts, but the project demands it.


A little help from a few people, and I was left with most of a roll cage. If this were a single-seater, it'd be ideally set up.


With a little reinforcement, the body is safely on the chassis table.


I'll jig the body so it's roughly-ride-height up from the table surface, then finalize my suspension jigs to tie it all together.

Good to see some updates. Why do you need a new cage? Looking forward to seeing more

dsldubn wrote:Good to see some updates. Why do you need a new cage? Looking forward to seeing more

Oh, right. The seat I bought off Larson has 'wings' that protrude too far forward to be able to get in/out of the car with a helmet on. With the main hoop reclined 10 or 15 degrees, I should have plenty of room, even with FIA bars.

I spent most of the day welding together a body jig. I started with a simple horizontal alignment jig:


... then triangulated that toward the rear, and started to weld in the rear mounts, when I ran out of square tube. I have more in my garage, so I can still finish that tomorrow. Once that's finished, I'll be able to start test fitting the tube frame cockpit section, and align the suspension jigs I already started building. After that, I just weld it all together and discover what I did wrong.

I'm really pleased with the little MIG welder we have at the Makerspace. After selling my Hobart to Mike, I had forgotten how fast work goes with these, and how much easier certain jobs are.



Finally, I went to ESS today (an electrical supply store) to help one of the Makerspace members pick up a sturdy welding bench, and they had some really burly casters that seem to be PERFECT for the chassis table. I won't be able to weld them in until the Datsun body is secured to the table, but I'm eager to get that done. I'll be able to wheel the whole thing over to the welding station and they're leveling feet all in one. For $75, I'm ecstatic with that deal.

Today was a bit slower than usual. I got a bunch of stuff done on the Subaru (winter wheels on, new belts all around, fresh plugs, etc) and picked up a few new tools. Then I headed back to the Makerspace for some fender forming. There's plenty more to do, but this is some basic blocking.