It's been three years since the last post, but there has been progress so let me try to remember and document it here. Reviewing my own last post, I had come up with a CAD model for a rear subframe that would carry the rear suspension and tie it forward to the engine and the tub.
That meant that it was time to cut metal and start welding. What you need to know now is that I've never really welded before. But in the whole spirit of this project, that didn't stop me for a second. I had taken three welding classes from various places around town and I got good enough that I could get two pieces of metal to stick together. My thinking was that I was good enough to tack weld everything together and then when I was finished, I'll find a real welder to do the final welds. With that plan, I bought myself a decent Hobart MIG welder and an Evolution Metal Cutting circular saw. They have both been great and I highly recommend them, especially the Evolution saw.
I apologize that I didn't take any pictures during the fabrication process. I guess that I was so focused on what I was doing that I just didn't think about it. In any case, it really was tedious. The cutting and welding was pretty straight forward. Most of the effort and the difficulty was making sure that everything was level or plumb or parallel or perpendicular depending on what I was doing. I was able to make it work by just taking my time and measuring everything fanatically. That and lots of levels and triangle squares and plumb bobs.
I want to mention here that there were some metal pieces that I had designed that were going to be too difficult for me to cut accurately on my own, so that's when I relied on a company called Send Cut Send. If you haven't heard about Send Cut Send, they are an online fabrication service. The way it works is that you send them your digital design file and they will CNC cut it out of whatever material you want and then send the part to you. It only takes a couple of days, it isn't much more expensive than just buying the material and if you're willing to pay a little more, then they'll do the work in the US, which I always do.
So here's where we're at as of this week. I've got about 60% of the frame done and that's enough to reattach the rear suspension. And I got the engine front mounting plate cut (by Send Cut Send) and installed in place of the test spacers that I had been using.
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| Figure 1: Rear subframe so-far. |
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| Figure 2: Engine front mounting plate. |
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| Figure 3: Everything connected to the tub. |
This is a fairly major milestone because the car is back together enough that I can reattach the bodywork. That had to happen before I could finish the frame because I didn't have an accurate 3D model of the bodywork when I was designing the frame. Because of that, I'm pretty sure that I've designed in interference in a couple of places down low.
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| Figure 4: The floor waiting for installation. |
