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JohnC, katman... new structural/stitch weld question...


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Man, that thing is beautiful. Notice how clean he got the metal before he started to weld. Hard to get such pretty welds when paint, oil or rust gets in the weld pool.

 

Everytime I see a cage like that it makes me wonder if it would pass the katman test. He is always so critical of cross bars placed up high. Those guys looked like they really know what they are doing though.

 

One big thing though. How is he going to get the kids in the back seat?

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That is some beautiful work. I kept searching for a picture of the seats installed relative to the main diagonal. There's one picture near the end with the doors on and it looks like the driver is a good foot+ in front of the main hoop, which makes the side bars way longer and less stiff than they need be. They sure are worried about the back half of the car, and it doesn't seem like they're too worried about a side impact at the door. Nice work, but not the way I'd do it. But I might not have all the appropriate info to pass judgement.

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  • 9 months later...

More stitching progress. I have some other stitching stuff mostly with regards to the cowl area in another thread here: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=106849. I think I'm finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I just need to cut the TC buckets off of the frame rail and stitch the frame rail and the seams inside the engine compartment, clean up a few areas I F'ed up in the back trying to weld from underneath, and that's pretty much it. This is a serious PITA, and for anyone considering it I'd suggest you do subframe connectors and a roll bar for a street car, or a full cage for a race car and forget about this crap. Too much work!!!

 

Here's the new progress:

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This is a serious PITA, and for anyone considering it I'd suggest you do subframe connectors and a roll bar for a street car, or a full cage for a race car and forget about this crap. Too much work!!!

 

I'll be doing seam welding and a roll cage for my vintage racing 240Z. I just need a month of free time in the shop, which isn't looking like any time soon.

 

And, yes, it is a pain, but you've fixed all the structurual problems with the chassis and strengthened it. This is a car you can race for 10 years and not worry about the chassis. Plus, you can bump up the spring rates beyond what you ran before.

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Your welding is coming along. A couple of things you can do on the burn throughs you were talking about before. 1 if you can get to the back side of it place a piece of copper (flatened copper pipe) behing the hole. It will give some backing to weld against and the weld won't stick to the copper. 2 you can use a piece of steel ( nail or bolt) as filler and weld it up that way.

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Thanks guys! I'm pretty happy with the way it's turning out, just a little disappointed that it took so long and required that much effort. Definitely got a lot out of the welding. I feel a whole lot more confident taking on other projects with the mig now. I LOVE my Millermatic 135. LOVE IT!!!

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Nice work! Geograpically & climatewise I'm like 180 degrees :) from you- it finally got cool enough here for me to begin working on my 280 in "my" garage (we have his & hers & I get a lot of grief because mine is bigger than the house ;) ). This is a good thread for welding info.

 

When I move in a few months, I'm going to invest in a rotisserie for my older cars when I do the metal work on them.

 

... my wife keeps spending all my money...

Nice thing about Direct Deposit is I get first crack because I know when it is coming in!

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