22 August 2013

Chassis Work July August 2013

Hi Followers! Has been a hugely long time since updating the blog last there havent been a massive number of opportunities to update or do work until July started.
The first of the major updates is that from early February when it was snowing we moved the chassis from its then home to Wiltshire where more work can commence with power nearby etc. the latest news is I have now acquired a large Garage fortunately right next to my dads one so that we can work in away from the grip of the elements.
Great also to use an existing Marcos V6 as a pattern for measurement etc.

The main focus of the last few months has been to repair the damaged front chassis rails, as you will see from the previous blog a botched repair ages ago has caused the rails to eventually drop and pull the upper rails into a slant meaning that the front end of the chassis was dipped down by 5/6 mm see the piccy of new chassis rail in place.
The problem seems to have arisen from two sections of chassis rail that have been welded back together with a wrap around piece of metal and of course over time especially with the weight of that cast iron lump has bowed the chassis members.

We have cut out carefully the top and bottom rails from the drivers side, ensuring that all the wishbone mounts and horizontal sections were kept as tidy and as uncut as possible.

The base chassis rail was cleanly removed and this was taken straight to Rory at Marcos Heritage to fabricate to the jigs a brand new base rail it's not cheap @ £102.00, but it means that its been properly jigged to the cars specification and what I wanted was a 'proper factory job' the drivers side will have effectively have been totally rebuilt with the right dimensioned stell box sections, I had bought box section from a place in Chippenham but it was marginally too big so I acquired more from Rory as he has exactly the right stuff.

Please see some images below of the latest work.....

Flood lit view from my car parked up to the front prior to work 
Measuring up and positioning using copius numbers of G-clamps and slider clamps.

Tack Welds of the base rail to all the horizontal members.
More tack welding of the engine bays rear most spar.
We are probably going to tack weld into position first then work on the right side next as we have had a few problems with the welder not feeding the wire continuously so will probably outsource this shortly with friends. 
Chassis viewed from the rear.
Also in the last few months has been the opportunity to acquire some new parts and Im pleased to say I acquired not only the Weber 38 DGAS i had been after but it was also immaculate and procured for practically nothing considering a 'good' one fetches nearly £300+ I also got a pair of 40 DCNF's as a restoration project but that can wait for a while until i decide I want to use loads more fuel!

Photos below show the DGAS fitted currently to a brand new pinto manifold......


38 DGAS with Pinto manifold and Pipercross air filter.
Since I acquired all this stuff for the car, I have brought all the running gear, track rod ends, brake back plates vertical links, wishbones etc back to Banbury with me to be able to take to recommended specialists, redditch shotblasting and powder coating are the ones who have been throughly recommended for this work as im told their powder coating will stand up to everything thats thrown at it theyve even said its soo good you dont even need to galvanise a chassis! (I may still do this for piece of mind).

I have today 22-08-2013 taken all the running gear to This company to be treated so it's now all out of my bedroom! You cannot get more manly than that! sharing a room with car parts! :D

So that's all from me for the moment, I plan on working with dad over the next few weeks to remove the passenger side base rail in order to get that refabricated with Rory and welded in before a few extra bits and the final chassis treatments are done.

Thanks for reading. G.

2 comments:

  1. Big plus for Redditch Powdercoating !


    Martyn

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  2. Fantastic Work I can't recommend them enough! :)

    ReplyDelete