Taking shape

The past week was spent tack welding the tubes in place and adding more tubes. I was a little worried about front trapezoid as it requires compound angles to cut, but it turned out well. The top tube is three inches behind the bottom tube.

 

 The build table is 42" wide by 96" long. A nose cone will fit over the front trapezoid and the high angles rear portion is the back of the seating compartment. The back of the chassis will be extended for the rear differential and suspension.

 

 A shot from the front to illustrate how parallel the cross tubes are. If you make a mistake on the basic chassis it will haunt you for the rest of the build by effecting all the measurements afterward and the quality of the finished product.

The car is beginning to take shape although my oldest son thinks it looks like a boat right now. Haha!

After a lengthy break progress resumes...

Since March of last year I have been terribly occupied with repairs and upgrades to my house, repairing daily driven vehicles, and working my tail off at my new job; I install communications cabling at Lambeau Field and there's a lot of work in progress! Work is good. It covers the costs of my hobbies including building a locost. In addition to work selling the Cherokee and Miata (for nice profits) also has helped.

I've now taken the plunge and purchased much of the steel I will need for the basic frame. I've also covered most if not all of the tooling which is required to do something like this. I did have some time and money last summer to construct the build table out of carefully selected 2x6s and a sheet of 5/8" MDF. I used metal bracketing to add some strength and casters for mobility. Luckily I've found a place in the garage which is very level so shimming is unnecessary.

I've begun cutting the frames for the bottom portion of the chassis. I am building this to the "book chassis" dimensions.

A cheap miter saw with a 10" abrasive blade allows me to cut angles with a high degree of accuracy. The bench grinder and a bastard file allows me to dress the tubing ends quickly before laying them on the table. The miter saw was purchased on sale for roughly $70 and the abrasive blade costs roughly $5.  I laid a 2x2 along the edge of the build table to hold the steel even while cutting. As an extra benefit: the 2x2 keeps the tube I'm cutting from moving the pieces around on the build table. The saw/grinder stand is on casters so it can be quickly repositioned as needed.

This is what I mean by "a high degree of accuracy". So far all the joints look like this.

I wanted to test the settings on the welder and pieced some scraps together... the resulting gun-shaped creation delayed getting any work done until I finished (hardly) amusing my wife and kids with James bond impersonations.

After spending years trying to get all the tools and skills together to begin the actual construction I am greatly pleased seeing it underway! More to come soon!