The floor has now been tacked together and then fully welded on 3 sides of the tube joints, the vertical welds being done first to try and reduce distortion.
The floor panel has now been flipped and the welds will be completed, there’s ~12 gussets to go into the floor panel too primarily where the joint angles were too shallow to get the TIG torch in and do a decent weld.
Progress may be slowed for a bit as I’ve run out of gas and need to get the RHS for the gussets.
The frame build has now moved onto the floor, the picture below shows the results of time grabbed over the weekend to start tacking the floor tubes together. The outer tubes weren’t bent precisely as I’d requested from the tube benders but a bit of effort in the vise saw that corrected. The whole assembly you see here is tacked down to the build plate in half a dozen places to keep things flat and in place.
The build plate BTW is not as flat as I’d hoped that it would be, from it’s previous life there is obviously a bow in the surface, the outer beams are straight though. The non-flatness is not a huge deal, it just needs to be taken into account when setting things up. To make sure that this stage is properly flat I’ll be setting up a laser level that projects a flat plane and measure the assembly at a good number of points.
If you’re reading this before you start your construction I wouldn’t recommend the type of build table I have here, if I did it again I would go for an open frame of 50mm X 100mm RHS tubes.
On another subject. The C5 Corvette suspension uprights I’m using don’t allow for camber adjustment at the outer end of the top wishbone, this is as they have a captive ball joint in them as part of the upright. The typical way to solve this issue would be to use 2 male rod ends at the inboard end of the wishbone, however that has disadvantages in terms of component life and road noise transmission. So after mulling over various solutions I found (was told) about these (see picture below). These come from here they are 3/4″ UNF on the threaded end with a 14mm hole through the crush tube. Obviously this is oversize for whats really required the items way 280g each which is roughly twice the weight of a 1/2″ male rod end, but on the other hand tube inserts will not be required (they’ll be threaded directly into the tube). And there’s no possibility of the things ever breaking. I have read some peoples opinion that they like the fact rod ends would break in the event of a severe crash thus adsorbing energy and shedding parts like an F1 car personally I think this is complete cobblers.
So I finally got the gearbox home today, it’s taken 8 months since it was bought on eBay in the USA to make its way down to Australia along the way it’s doubled in cost, but this still worked out at way way cheaper than a locally sourced unit.
The first small drama in the chassis fabrication process has shown up too, in that the tubes I had bent for the floor have ended up being roughly 1/2″ out at one end and some judicious tweaking will have to occur to get them back to the plan.
Having been away on another work trip for a couple of weeks, progress has again slowed. Since my return I’ve been able to get on with a bit more welding and have finished another frame subassembly, next on the list is floor subassembly.
I’ve also bought some parts from (suspension bushes and steering rack clamps) Rally Design in the UK which turned up remarkably quickly.
The gearbox should also clear customs this week having arrived from the USA in roughly 6 weeks which I think was fairly speedy also.
