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.
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.
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.
Giving the people what they want, more Corey (Catshittaco on Instagram if you just can't get enough).
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.
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.