Stuff my dog says; on second thought I'll just build a race car

Very nice to see it all moving forward...:hump: ... and so much work too! Once the frame comes together progress will really skip ahead.

Also, the green truck and its interior are definitely A-Star.

We were talking yesterday, and between the three of us working on it after hours occasionally and on Saturdays things could progress REALLY quickly. The difficult time consuming bits are going to be the rear cone of the bodywork, the grill and surround in the front of the body work, and the supercharger drive and mounting. Even welding the chassis we should have all three of us able to weld in turns. Boss is gone all this week so maybe we'll get to go over most evenings and make some progress.

Also, appreciate the kindness on the Gladiator. We worked our asses off to get that done and everyone that worked on it ended up feeling some extra ownership of it.
 
The powder for the wheels came in today. I hadn't driven my Catalina in while and the boss is in Florida for the week so I can actually park in the parking lot without complaint so I loaded up the wheels and tires and took them in to work. It was slightly disappointing that I could only fit the four wheels and three tires in the trunk of the Pontiac and had to stick the fourth tire behind the seat. They just don't give you trunk space in cars anymore.
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Cleaning the oil and scuffing the wheels, an hour and a half of it. Not the most intellectually stimulating of exercises.
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Test panel for the wheel color. I liked the color, but like a moron despite having the fabric sample for the seats in my hand while loading the wheels I didn't actually bring it to work with me.
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Wheels all scuffed and cleaned. Hopefully they'll get coated tomorrow, should be easy enough to accomplish.
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Our spray cabinet and oven set up for powder coating. Only big enough for one wheel at a time but it works.

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Brought the test panel home to compare it to the fabric sample and I am well pleased. Trying to match the one to the other when it's using different websites pictures on completely different materials. So get the wheels coated tomorrow and then mount and balance the tires tomorrow night.
 
Got the wheels powder coated yesterday and really happy with the color. Had to open the valve stem hole up in order to get the bolt in valve stems in. That was the easy bit it turns out.

The way the tires were wrapped for shipping they were crushed in so badly I couldn't get anything to actual seat on the wheels last night and had to give up as my folks came to town and wanted to go out to eat.

Yeah......that's supposed to go on a 6 inch wide wheel. Enter the boards.

Let them sit over the night to try and stretch the sidewalls back open. Getting that done I went in to work early this morning to give it another try.
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That was the first one I actually got mounted. Even after that one went on I couldn't get the others on just yet but by that point the sun was out in force and I just set the tires out in the sun to soften up and finally was able to get them all mounted and balanced.

All four mounted and balanced, I do still miss the idea of the 19 inch wire Model A wheels but I dig this look too. I received the seat material today too but sitting here haven't actually opened it up to even make sure it's correct yet. Don't have any plans for Baby Moon hubcaps at the moment, coworkers have brought them up already too. My response being "But race cars don't have hub caps."
 
For future reference when the sidewall's smashed in on any tire.... Wrap a cargo strap around the tread. As you suck the tread in it forces the sidewalls out. As soon as the tire starts holding air, loosen the strap or you'll wind up having to cut it off. Works every time.
 
For future reference when the sidewall's smashed in on any tire.... Wrap a cargo strap around the tread. As you suck the tread in it forces the sidewalls out. As soon as the tire starts holding air, loosen the strap or you'll wind up having to cut it off. Works every time.
It's much more funner to use ether. :laugh::rolleyes:
 
The tire machine here has a bead seat feature that blasts air from a two or three gallon tank up between the bottom bead and the rim and it usually works real well. I've tried and used the ratchet strap trick before but the way the wheels are made the bead seat on the wheel didn't have much extra space on the barrel. The beads of the tire had to spread out past the actual tread width of the tire before it would even begin to hold air and the sidewalls were so stiff they wouldn't force out that far. It took two guys to get the boards in there to force the beads apart.

There was a delirious moment where I thought about starting fluid but it passed quickly.
 
Good idea Jim, I must try the cargo strap trick next time I have a front tire that won't seat well. I'll also try ether once I have the tire all mounted...
 
The planets have aligned and my goat sacrifices to the ancient god Krikhanak finally paid off, we built today. Showed up early this morning to start bending the main frame tubes and almost immediately realized I had made a pretty basic mathematical error. Thankfully I noticed it before we started bending anything and we were able to rework the bend and length calculations before messing up any metal. That fixed we set about making a jig of sorts on the table to ensure the parallel sections of tube on each side were in fact parallel and that the front bits are in the correct locations.

There was concern that the angles we needed couldn't be reliably produced with the equipment we have, but the issue with the frame is that the inclined sections aren't overly important to the construction of the frame. The important bits are all tied to the parallel front and back sections with the floor coming off the back and the front suspension and steering points being at the front. It was only really necessary to make sure the stuff is repeatable and mirrored side to side. Problems arose with Corey mixed up one of the tubes and we bent one of the long sections wrong. Wasn't really the end of the world, should be enough small sections to keep using more of it.

Ended up getting the four main tubes bent and tacked together then started working on other things. It got a little scattered at that point. We were working on the tube that will form the back of the cockpit and the frame rise to get over the rear axle. Then when it looked like we were going to bend that it somehow got decided that we needed the front cross member in first. What we should have done at that point was cut several strips out of the sheet of 14 gauge so that while one of us was working on drawing the cross member up in CAD the other two of us could be welding those sheet pieces to the frame sections. What actually happened was the three of us BS'd and the cross member with discussed, drawn and cut on the plasma table. There was probably beer involved. Once the stuff was cut out I started cleaning the pieces while there was more BSing happening. There was definitely beer involved.

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There was talk about how to do a roll hoop and whether of not to do it. I don't like it visually but acknowledge the need of it. Feel like it's workable and probably consistent with what places will demand to actually drive the car aggressively somewhere. There was also more talk about trying to make the car street legal and I'm still not sold on the idea. Admittedly I haven't check what would be needed here to road register it, but I have a feeling that it's hoops I'm not interested in jumping through. The other people who have seen the project in person and talked about it keep saying I'll want to be able to drive it on the street when it's done, but I've but the motorcycles for when I want to go out alone and the weather is permitting things. It's not like this thing will be more weather friendly than a motorcycle so it would just compete with the bikes for attention on the nice days.

All in all we made progress today, real actual progress and it feels good. Would've been great to have gotten more done with the nearly 11 hours today, but the foundation is there now and everything is solid and straight and that's the important thing.
 
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Welded up the pieces of the cross member tonight. Was able to keep it real square, with it flipped upside down all four "legs" still touch the table and sticking an angle finder on it shows it to be 0.2 degrees off true which is good enough for me. Got a set of weld nuts in today to serve as threading for the control arm bolts, but I'm curious how I ended up with 8 of them. I had ordered four from one place and four from another, and I'm still supposed to get another set Friday, but got 8 today so I'm not sure what's all coming in.

I need to get back on the lathe and mess with some of the Heim sleeves but there is a super heavy table in the way along with a couple cars that need to be moved. So I haven't done that.
 
Another day yesterday, probably spent 8 hours working on the chassis and then another 4 BSing at the end of the day. My older son asked when I got home what all I had gotten done and it was just a day working to build the cross member. It felt like there should have been way more accomplished than just working on a cross member that was started last weekend, but thinking about it there are 22 separate pieces of metal that need welded together to make the cross member and it doesn't feel like as much of a wasted day.

Started off just sitting what I had welded up last week under the nose of the frame and making sure it still fit.
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That done it was time to put the control arm mounting points in. Funny thing on weld nuts the four I got in Friday that we had based our cross member measurements off of showed up incorrect and need sent back. In the end it worked out well that I accidentally ordered 8 from the one place because that's where we ended up going with the mounting, and really I'm happier this way. Welded the threaded inserts into a piece of tube and then welded the tube into the cross member.
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With the threaded inserts welded in the skin pieces of the cross member started getting cut and welded in. So that ended up being the better part of the day just cutting pieces on the plasma table, cleaning the cut pieces, and then adding them to the rest of the cross member.
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Giving the people what they want, more Corey (Catshittaco on Instagram if you just can't get enough).
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Didn't even get the cross member completely together. Have to trim a piece then weld it on, and then curve the last two pieces and weld them up. My boss texted and asked how things were going when we were standing around drinking at the end of the night though so we slid the cross member under the frame and took one more picture.
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Amongst the things discussed was how I had designed this and truck projects Jeff and Corey have coming and what we could do with them suspension wise. Jeff was critiquing my welding and giving me pointers. We talked about the upper rails for the race car chassis too to kind of plan on where that's going. I'm not convinced the front part of the frame will be stiff enough without reinforcement, Jeff and Corey think reinforcement will just be adding weight. I think we came up with a reasonable compromise though. There will be more on that later.
 
Back at it this morning, first thing was to fit the other bottom corner piece of the cross member and weld it in so both bottom corners were done
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Then I cut and bent a piece for the inside corners and welded first one
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Then the other
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That had the entire cross member assembled.
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Things got a little weird here. Measuring where to put the cross member in the frame showed the cross member in a completely different place than I had it placed last weekend when I thought I had measured things out then. I double, triple, then quadruple checked it today. Then I had Jeff look at things because it just felt weird. We had it in the same place though so I got it welded in flipping the whole deal upside down to weld around the bottom of the tubes.
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My wife was going to see Garth Brooks with some coworkers tonight so I couldn't stay as long as last weekend. Finished the afternoon up getting the outside of the frame tubes cleaned of carbon so I can cut and weld on the plating next.
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