A few things happening lately have prodded me to do a quick update on the project.

After making some mods to my tube notcher I got the last of the fish-mouths cut, the most extreme angle to cut was 26.1 degrees, so then it was time to see all these notched tubes would fit together…

The next job was then to manufacture the jig for welding the A arms on, this was made using some 50 x 50 X 5 EA with 5/8″ locating  drilled in it, stick welded (horribly) to a 50 x 50 x 5 SHS, the last hole in that being drilled after the two parts were welded together so as to make sure it was in the right place.

The picutres below show some of the process of putting the first 2 A arms together and the final results…

That’s a bit of luck, it fits!

This end was cut using the tube notcher and offsetting the part to the tool.

First tube tacked on and now for the second…

The finished results.

I’ve also got onto assembling the engine mounts from the laser cut parts.  These more or less work but they’ll need adjusting as the engine mounts on the engine I think have turned out to be further apart than I had initially measured, but it should not be too much of an issue to fix the brackets.

OK time for a long overdue update…

Firstly I’ve got most of the tubes for the ‘A’ arms fish-mouthed there’s just 8 ends left to do which require more extreme angles than my tube notcher will currently do, I say currently as I’m going to mod it so it will.

Here’s the parts done to date in a box:

You can see in the picture some of the ends on the right would not be possible with the normal use of the tube notcher, these were achieved by spacing out the cutting tool to achieve the correct offset to match onto the large diameter parts you can also see in the box.

Next.

I got back the adaptor kit from B and C Products which has been done to an excellent standard.  This has enabled me to get the engine and transmission joined together as you can see below…

Here’s the plate in more detail…

At this stage I’ve not fitted the flywheel etc, the purpose at the moment is to check the fit into the frame for the car…

Which it does, but only just, the tube running across the rear of the engine may need to be made removable, other wise fitting an removing the engine is going to be a total pain in the but.  I need to work out a neat way to make this happen or I’ll leave it as it is.

Here’s more detail on the join, which explains why all the engine side bolts need to be pocketed into the plate…

next there was the job of getting the engine lined up properly in the frame, this was achieved by using a laser level that produces a reference plane…

Some  pulling and tugging later it was done…

I then realized that I had yet another trip away from home coming up and a large pile of parts that I needed to get made, including engine mounts, trans mounts, seat mount brackets, damper brackets etc for the ‘A’ arms…

That’s 60 odd parts there to be assembled.  The laser cutting was done by Action Laser Cutting for A$159 for all you see here which I think is a good price, espesially compare to the length of time it would take to produce all this by handlet alone accurately by hand.