Well, I was gonna do a big long post detailing on the fabrication and welding in of the driver’s side crossmember notch, but it occurred to me that most likely nobody will probably really give a sh*t. Much beyond “is it done yet?” and “how did it turn out?” at least.
So to that end, I’m gonna try and stick to the Cliff notes version instead.
I had originally thought that this side would be easier and go a lot quicker, but as I came to find, it was actually quite a bit more difficult. Specifically when it came to trying to tie into the existing floor pan grooves. The front was easier than the back, I simply traced the contour onto the boxed section, and transferred the peaks to the edge (shown in red marker here):
I then ran it into the bead roller as far as I could, and I had what I needed.
I had this one little contour that ended right at the edge of the boxed section that wasn’t gonna fly with the roll I had built into it:
So I cut it out and simply shortened it up a bit and placed it further back.
Some additional work needed to be done to make it flow properly, but overall I had the front fitting fairly well.
From there, it was time to turn my attention to the back. Starting with cutting out and welding in a patch to repair a spot weld that Mike had torn cutting the outer seat mount out.
I wanted a tighter radius to the back edge than the front, so I found a scrap piece of stainless tubing that had a diameter I liked. I tack welded it along the horizon line, and bent the metal around it. This worked pretty damn well.
What didn’t work particularly well, was trying to replicate the grooves in the floor on the backside of the boxed section. After experimenting with the bead roller, I quickly found out that even my deepest dies wouldn’t give me enough depth to match the grooves.
So, it went old school and ugly:
I had to do a temporary “tack in place” of the whole thing to get all the tabs to align with the floor, and once they were, I “bridge” tacked them to each other to keep them locked in.
A lot of welding and grinding later, I finally had something reasonably acceptable to work with. BTW and FYI, grinding and shaping welds on inside curves with a carbide burr on a die grinder sucks donkey balls.
After still more work that’s not worth mentioning, I had it fitting pretty good now:
Time to burn it in all permanent-like. No pictures of it in progress as that’s boring AF, but here’s the end result.
Mini milestone moment for sure. Then it was on to the outer front seat mount. I added a matching flange around the perimeter where we had cut it to fit, then punched some spot weld holes in the flange and a couple other places:
Carefully placed and aligned it with our reference marks, then made it one with the car again.
Finished product:
Almost done this side, just have to address the last mount, the front inner. It’s going to have to lose a lot of elevation now.
So yeah, I know it was still a long post, but it really was the Cliff notes version. The actual work and details that went into making this a reality were far more in depth.
That’s it for now gents, the transmission tunnel phase will be happening shortly. I’ll post again when I get to that point. Keep the shiny side up.
D.
So to that end, I’m gonna try and stick to the Cliff notes version instead.
I had originally thought that this side would be easier and go a lot quicker, but as I came to find, it was actually quite a bit more difficult. Specifically when it came to trying to tie into the existing floor pan grooves. The front was easier than the back, I simply traced the contour onto the boxed section, and transferred the peaks to the edge (shown in red marker here):
I then ran it into the bead roller as far as I could, and I had what I needed.
I had this one little contour that ended right at the edge of the boxed section that wasn’t gonna fly with the roll I had built into it:
So I cut it out and simply shortened it up a bit and placed it further back.
Some additional work needed to be done to make it flow properly, but overall I had the front fitting fairly well.
From there, it was time to turn my attention to the back. Starting with cutting out and welding in a patch to repair a spot weld that Mike had torn cutting the outer seat mount out.
I wanted a tighter radius to the back edge than the front, so I found a scrap piece of stainless tubing that had a diameter I liked. I tack welded it along the horizon line, and bent the metal around it. This worked pretty damn well.
What didn’t work particularly well, was trying to replicate the grooves in the floor on the backside of the boxed section. After experimenting with the bead roller, I quickly found out that even my deepest dies wouldn’t give me enough depth to match the grooves.
So, it went old school and ugly:
I had to do a temporary “tack in place” of the whole thing to get all the tabs to align with the floor, and once they were, I “bridge” tacked them to each other to keep them locked in.
A lot of welding and grinding later, I finally had something reasonably acceptable to work with. BTW and FYI, grinding and shaping welds on inside curves with a carbide burr on a die grinder sucks donkey balls.
After still more work that’s not worth mentioning, I had it fitting pretty good now:
Time to burn it in all permanent-like. No pictures of it in progress as that’s boring AF, but here’s the end result.
Mini milestone moment for sure. Then it was on to the outer front seat mount. I added a matching flange around the perimeter where we had cut it to fit, then punched some spot weld holes in the flange and a couple other places:
Carefully placed and aligned it with our reference marks, then made it one with the car again.
Finished product:
Almost done this side, just have to address the last mount, the front inner. It’s going to have to lose a lot of elevation now.
So yeah, I know it was still a long post, but it really was the Cliff notes version. The actual work and details that went into making this a reality were far more in depth.
That’s it for now gents, the transmission tunnel phase will be happening shortly. I’ll post again when I get to that point. Keep the shiny side up.
D.
