OT plastic kit car

[DonaldSmith]

Hole-cutting the hard way. Sometimes it's the only way.

[Ulu]

Yeah, it is, & it wasn’t my first experience with this technique or my 5th. Speaker holes, antenna holes, patch holes, access holes.  . . . 

 

Necessity is a muther but this time I just grit-whomped ‘er into submission.

 

For NOW . . . . I’m going to hold out on any more holesaw biz. This was all me stalling for prime welding conditions.

 

Tomorrow AM will be better.

Edited October 15 by Ulu

[Ulu]

I did a lot of cleaning, grinding and welding today. All the brackets and hangers are on solid now.

I started welding up the rails, until I ran out of argon. Then it was off to Fresno Oxy for a bottle of gas.

All of the welds are ok and some of them look better than I have done before.

[Ulu]

I have nearly completed seam welding the bottom of the frame. I was just going to skip-weld, but I’m having too much fun. I’ve filled in the skips.

 

Most of the welds are looking like this:

 

Not perfect, but nice enough.

 

But a few times I did this:

 

 

Welded the electrode right to the steel. This resulted in drilling and grinding and brushing, but fortunately I made about 15 feet of seam welding (in 1” to 1.5” skips) and only screwed up about 3 times.

 

That was the worst one, looking like Hunga-Tonga going off in the Pacific.

[Ulu]

Today I got the entire bottom of the frame seamed up. There are just a few more small welds to get on the bottom, and one big one along the tunnel to the crossmember.

 

Also I repaired Hung-Tonga and a few other more minor welds.

 

I am getting much better at this, and there is one secret that I never understood well before.

 

Never look at the arc once it is going. It is hard not to, But don’t!

 

Look only at the puddle.

 

The puddle tells you what to do. If you have the heat close enough, the arc will be ok if the puddle is ok. Once you are controlling the puddle, your speed will tell you if you want more or less heat (amps).

 

Why didn’t I learn this in 1972?

[Ulu]

I started cutting away the jig today, and the frame is ready to roll over.

It developed about 5/16” of positive camber from full seam welding of the bottom rails. I want a little, but I will probably loose half of that when I weld the top.

 

This frame originally had a crooked sag. More on the driver side, where all the shoddy rust repair had been.

 

[Ulu]

I did have to invert my big clamp to get things on center. It’s still wrong in this pic.

But now I finally have the frame flipped back right-side-up.

 

 

I’ve never seen it in this position before, with the frame rails and firewall crossmember attached.

 

This is indeed a project milestone.

[Ulu]

Seats will fit ok.

Gusseting in these corners will be a pain.

 

[Ulu]

I rolled the frame back and forth today, to get all the floor ledger welds. I put on 50 welds there, plus another dozen on the pan patches and frame closures.

 

 

I wedged 10 extra legs under the frame for my safety.

[Ulu]

I got all of the frame rails fully seamed, top and bottom now.

I did this with dozens of skip welds, so there are lots of stops and starts. There’s some pretty ugly ones right there, but the rails will be very solid.

I also got the rest of the floor ledgers welded to the crossmember.

Before I roll it again, I need to weld on the tunnel, and partially weld the tunnel to the crossmember.

The floor still needs work in the corners

 

There’s still lots of welding to do on the big square gussets in the photo above, On the crossmember to frame connections, and the forward frame closures.

[Plymouthy Adams]

hey, if they got rid of everything ugly, odds are we would also not have any membership here to speak of...

[Ulu]

Please don’t start any ugly contests.

 

🤪

 

Well I burned through the rest of my Argon today. I got the floor plug welded in six places where it was still needed, and I made some little gussets &  tacked them in on the frame rails.

 

I welded the top of the tunnel to the crossmember, and now I need to roll the frame twice, so I can continue welding the vertical part in a flat position.

 

I’m gonna take tomorrow off & avoid welding. Then Monday, it’s back to the welding shop for more gas.

 

 

[Ulu]

2 bottles of argon later, I have the tunnel done, all the front closures, gussets, plug welds, and such are complete.

 

The mid-crossmember is welded in. It has 3 little gussets. Needs a fourth.

 

26 of 34 welds on the small angle iron crossmembers are done.

A few welds remain to do on the rear closures.

 

Then the main frame elements will all be welded.

[Merle Coggins]

You sure have done a lot of structural repairs/modifications to this frame/pan for it having been a running and driving car when you acquired it. It's scary to think what's out there on our roads when I see things like this. 

[Plymouthy Adams]

well, I have seen my share of rat rods....and I have some very fine engineered rat rod themed cars built.....with a quick glance you can see the ones that folks cared about safety and engineering over just 'make it work'  just think Ulu, you can now go into mass production of this set up.......Ok, I can hear you snickering now...

[Ulu]

I can mass produce something nobody wants?

 

I don’t need money that bad.

[Plymouthy Adams]

I told you I could hear you snickering.....

[Ulu]

That was just the argon solenoid clicking on and off.

 

Right now I am still catching up the misc floor welding.

[Ulu]

 We had our first fall rain and now it is starting to dry up. Time to grind.

 

I still had to skip weld the bottoms of the floor ledgers, as they were still only tacked on 3 sides.

 

 

It took about 50 really easy 3/4” to 1” long welds. Because they were on clean, new metal, flat position, Bench height, they all came out nice.

 

Now I do need to clean up some corner welds, where I blew it trying to weld vertical. I will grind them out, roll the frame down, and re-weld a few short welds.

 

I still need to make gussets.

[Ulu]

Whenever I keep something that other people would throw, out my wife always askes me the same question. “What are you going to do with that?”

Then she reminds me for the next seven years when garbage pick up day is, so I can toss it out.

OK maybe not seven years but this has been kicking around since our washing machine died a few years ago.

Not having any kind of a box brake, I used the old time method of clamping it to a table with a piece of square tubing and smacking it with a mallet

After lots of fussing and fitting I put a flange on all four sides, made corner notches, and made joggles to clear the big gussets on my frame.

Now it almost fits. But it’s not ready to weld in yet.

 

This floor will need reinforcements, and some get attached to the frame first.

[Ulu]

These floor braces must also support the batteries. The gas tank gets its own brackets.

 

They put lots of weld draw in the frame. Too much. These will get cut.

[Ulu]

I sure don’t like the flat floor. I’m telling myself to make another one, from a side that is embossed, rather than the flat front.

 

I don’t even know how this metal will weld. It seems pretty soft. And it is thin enough.

[Los_Control]

I'm the same way, will try to save something and feel good about recycling.

 

I did the same thing saving some bed rails to use on my truck bed.

Turns out bed rails are hardened steel and very difficult to drill holes through ..... All I did is create a future headache for myself.

 

I would play with a few patch pieces to see how the metal welds and if you can drill through it if needed.

Seems like old washers had some sort of ceramic coating on them for paint .... I wonder what that does for welding?

 

Cheap and free is not always best.

[Ulu]

That paint flakes right off. It is brittle and thin. It appears to be polyester.

 

I will attempt a test weld today.

 

 

Edited November 7 by Ulu

[Ulu]

Well I got sidetracked, and suddenly one thing leads to another.

I needed to cut those rails, but I didn’t want to get the tunnel full of crap. So, I decided to put the tunnel covers on.

At that time I realized that I should put the clutch cable in first. Then I realized I hadn’t test-fit the pedal assembly, after welding in the new tunnel side where it fits.

It did fit, with a little grinding and hammering, and some smacks from a slide hammer.

But then I put the throttle cable on and it rubs the tunnel.

So I bent the tunnel a bit and took the pedal assembly apart to bend the throttle lever a bit, so now it all clears.

Of course, taking the pedal assembly apart meant I had to stop and clean it up. It had lumpy paint over grime, and corrosion, so another sidetrack.

Finally, I did get the tunnel covers on, but it was too late to continue, so the battery box rails never did get cut.