Monday, October 22, 2012

New fuel tank mount

After the quick mockups with the new seat belt locations I needed to raise the fuel tank to give the extra clearance. I need to raise it about 25mm, I decided to make a completely separate subframe to mount the tank to, then mount the subframe to the chassis.



First job was to cut out the old mount tabs .... out with the trusty angle grinder.



Subframe mocked up, and sitting in the chassis. That is all I had time to complete. The plan is to get the subframe mounts completed and get it mounted in the chassis, still considering adding rubber mounts. Once that is complete mount the fuel tanl to the subframe.
 

Mock up

Just starting to do a quick mockups of all the guards on to decide if I need to change them ... Actually after all the work on the rears Im not as happy with them as I was.

 
 


The rear guards, despite my efforts will still need some triangulation to give them extra strength. I think that I will either add the extra mount down to the bottom roll bar mount or add a completely new point... still deciding.


 

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Front guards Part 3

The next part for the guards is to weld on the mounting strip that the fiberglass guards will be mounted to. I wanted to try and have them match with the style of the rear guards with the srtip down the middle. I thought that this will also give the front guards a lot of extra strength.

 

 
The first tack welds on holding the steel strip in place.

 
A quick test fit of the fiberglass guard to make sure everything was still correct.

 
Repeat the process for the right hand side guard

 
The steel strips fully welded to the uprights and the uprights full welded to the mounts.

 
The next step was to mount the fiberglass guards in place to work through the final position and make sure that on full lock they cleared the radius arms. Below is all the mounting nuts and bolts.

 
First guard bolted on. even with only then three bolts it felt strong and sturdy.

 

 
Both guards now temporarily bolted. The red line is where the fronts will be trimmed off at.

 


 
The temp guards ready for tidy up, grinding and the trimming of the fiberglass guards.

 

A breezy Saturday morning and time to start the grinding and tidy up of the guards. The mounting rods were trimmed and the bases re-welded to the mounts for extra strength. The steel band was also trimmed to the red line market out earlier. All other welds were cleaned up.
 
 


 
After all grinding and tidy up was done I needed to finish the mounting of the fiberglass guards. Fiberglass is known to crack and break if there is to many pressure points. So to try and avoid this I used cutoffs from the steel guards to create large flat backing plates the the fiberglass guards would be sandwiched between.

 
After a little mucking around and lost of drilling here is the completed back plates of one guard.

 

A happy weird welder that I found in the garage ..... no relation to Wallace

 

After a full mock up of the guards were done I welded the bolts to the back mount plates. This is make it easier to mount and tight if required, and if any nuts did come loose the bolt wont rattle or drop out.

 

Final mock up of the guard mounted.

 




Both guards now complete.


I discovered an issue after it was all complete that guards visually look a little wide and over hang to the out side of the tire, its not centered as it had looked during mock ups. But I was thinking of getting a wide combo anyway so with extra width it will allow for that future plan, and hopefully they wont be on for long as its just for certification until I get my fender exemption. But it still bugs me a little, I can use spacers on the mounts to make them more center. Hopefully once fully painted it will be less pronounced.


Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Front guard : Part two

Before I could continue with the guards I had to tap out the existing holes with a larger metric diameter. So after tracking down and purchasing a 8mm tap the two existing holes were re-tapped. Once this was done the downward mount could be bolted on to test fit and find were it needed to be welded to the main mount.

Down mount bolted on and the tack welded while in place.


Mounts taken off and fully welded. I did both at the same time.


Finished base mount welded up and bolted on.


Spacers taped on to the tire to get the guard to sit at the correct ride height so I can start to figure out the rest of the mounting system.


So here is the master plan, 12mm rods coming out of the newly created main mount, that the steel strip and fiberglass guard will be mounted to. Below shows the first one.


The debate I'm having is do I need more than three. I don't think I do.



The next big issue I have to sort is how to best mount the guards to the 12mm rods, stay tuned.....

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Front guards : Part one

While waiting on the transmission tunnel to cure I started on the very last major fabrication piece, I hope ! the front guards. In New Zealand unless you have a fender exemption your hotrod needs to have guards. I dont have my fender exemption yet, so I need to run with guards. I have completed the rears and now needed to start on the front.

I got some fiber glass ones molded from the steel guards thatI have made, the rears are all steel. I wanted the fronts to be as light as possiable due to the vibrations that they would experience and light weight would help with not having to have a huge mounting system. Well that was the theory.

The shot below shows what the old guards were like and the new unmounted fiber glass guard.



So after sitting and pondering what I wanted to do, I came up with a plan. Of course I had to use what I had in the way of materials, so the trusty 25mm box section was used. I was going able to reuse the mounts that the old guards used. So I just had to come up with the mounting design. 

Same as the rear I wanted the guards to go on and come off easily, had to be a little differnet to what others had done.

So on with the show, I first cut 12 sections with angled ends, when pieced together they start to form a circle. The circle radius is close to the internal rim radius of the front tires.
 


Here's one welded up and the first mount also welded on. The mount was cut out of the old guard mounts. I have to reuse what I have.
 


Test fitting. 
 


Once happy with how this was heading as a design, I welded up both mounts.

Over the weekend I was able to get out and cut one of the front steel guards up. I wanted the steel strips so that they would match the rear in design elements.  It took for ever to cut the strips and went through 6 cutting blades.


The cut steel strip over the fiberglass guard.


I also took the chance to clean up the mounts. That was it for the weekend.
 

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Fiber-glassing : Trans tunnel part two

After completing the top side of the transmission tunnel and letting it cure for a couple of days it was time to tackle the bottom. First I had to remove the foam board. This was done with a chisel, then some time outside with a power sander to firstly get rid of the foam board and smooth the edges out.


 


Already for the bottom layer of glass. This additional layer should increase the glass layers to 6-7 and should make it super strong as well as helping with the structural strength of the cabin.


First layers of glassing done.


Once cured taken outside and trimmed and sanded, covered holes re-drilled and all the underside tidied up. Now I'm not sure if you are supposed to do this but once the clean up was done I did a covering of epoxy resin to smooth and seal everything up.



Final shot of the under side. Pretty darn happy with the result since this is my first time fiber-glassing on this scale.  Now I'm thinking of all the other "things" that need glassing.