Monday August 20, 2007.

Lots of welding has been done since the last post with not really much to show for it.
The floor panel is now fully welded, the orange paint was put on the bottom of each joint as each one was done to keep me from going back to it and to temporarily protect it from rust.

In the picture below you can also see the main roll loop after its first rough fitting, it’s going to be ~5mm lower than this finally, the measure leaning on it is a 1m rule to give some idea of scale.

At the front of the car the structure made from MDF is a jig to hold the front top panel in place whilst the supporting tubes are tacked in, I did this without drawing it up properly and it’s completely wrong dimensionally so there’s a lesson in there for me. From a visual point of view though its close enough to give a good idea where the frame will end up.

Another thing I’ve changed is the way the frame is being held to the table, tack welding it down wasn’t working for me on a number of fronts firstly to separate the part I had to grind off the weld, which at night wasn’t making me any friends in the neighborhood, also the checker plate was hard to weld to for some reason and as a result the tack welds were weak leading some of them to break as the rest of the structure was welded. So what I’m doing now instead is bolting the thing down with the assembly shown below, this is a 3″ section of 3/4″ SHS and 2 1/4″ coach bolts through the table, currently I’ve made a dozen which is about the right number for the job.

On another front now the gearbox is here I’ve been able to begin planning for the joining of the engine and trans. The first fling at the flywheel required looks like the image below, there’s much work to do on this yet. The pressure plate and friction plate will be sourced from an Audi S4 which also uses this gearbox and has the same stock torque as the motor I’m using. In front of the flywheel will go the stock Toyota flex plate to fulfill the starting duties.