BUILD THREAD “The Juggernaut”
- Thread starter Rktpwrd
- Start date
Quick late night update.
I lasted a grand total of 2 days “resting” around the house before I got tired of the boredom and sick or not, got back out in The Skunkworks.
Decided to make yet another revision to this body mount pedestal, this one purely aesthetic. For those keeping track, now V2.2. Decided I didn’t like how this area came to a point now, and extended off the end of the cage nut box:
Looked ill thought out and like it didn’t fit the rest of the box properly, so I marked it out flush with the end…
…then cut, dressed the edges, fit the new piece and welded it in. Also note the hole for the body mount bolt now in place.
Next I positioned the cage nut box on top (underneath) the pedestal and traced around the edges. Looking at the underside, you can see just how little is actually overhanging and unused. This is far better than I was expecting and had ever hoped for.
Marked out and drilled the corresponding body mount hole in this as well.
A couple pictures of how the revised trimmed corner now matches the box nicely.
The cage nut box, the body mount pedestal, and the new floor crossmember are all ready to be welded together on the passenger side now. But before I tackle that tomorrow, I made a new and very precise template for the driver’s side off of this one.
It’s ready to be transferred to metal and cut out and bent up tomorrow as well.
Tomorrow should be a good day, Mike is over for his turn to help out here, and I should be able to knock a lot of this out. Love it when everything comes together at the end!
D.
I lasted a grand total of 2 days “resting” around the house before I got tired of the boredom and sick or not, got back out in The Skunkworks.
Decided to make yet another revision to this body mount pedestal, this one purely aesthetic. For those keeping track, now V2.2. Decided I didn’t like how this area came to a point now, and extended off the end of the cage nut box:
Looked ill thought out and like it didn’t fit the rest of the box properly, so I marked it out flush with the end…
…then cut, dressed the edges, fit the new piece and welded it in. Also note the hole for the body mount bolt now in place.
Next I positioned the cage nut box on top (underneath) the pedestal and traced around the edges. Looking at the underside, you can see just how little is actually overhanging and unused. This is far better than I was expecting and had ever hoped for.
Marked out and drilled the corresponding body mount hole in this as well.
A couple pictures of how the revised trimmed corner now matches the box nicely.
The cage nut box, the body mount pedestal, and the new floor crossmember are all ready to be welded together on the passenger side now. But before I tackle that tomorrow, I made a new and very precise template for the driver’s side off of this one.
It’s ready to be transferred to metal and cut out and bent up tomorrow as well.
Tomorrow should be a good day, Mike is over for his turn to help out here, and I should be able to knock a lot of this out. Love it when everything comes together at the end!
D.
Took a few days to catch up....fantastic work Donovan!
Too late and too tired to post an actual proper update, so I’m just gonna leave these here for now.
Somebody’s been busy…
Actual real update coming soon. Eventually.
Somebody’s been busy…
Actual real update coming soon. Eventually.
Those pictures answer a lot of clearance questions I had! This hole time I thought you had a 4 or 6 point cage idk why. I'm guessing no rear seat?
Some how I got five pages behind on this? Absolutely amazing dude! I really want to get into this kind of work. I enjoy it and fascinated by metal shaping. I don't know if I have enough patience for it though? I have been skeeming future projects to get into it in my head. I blame guys like you for these bad, good thoughts.
So it looks like my hand has been forced, y’all are getting an update tonight because I just ran out of MiG wire.
😡😡😡
No offence to you guys, but I’ve been more interested in working on the car than in posting the progress lately. The downside to this however, is that I’m now several weeks behind in bringing y’all back up to speed.
Disclaimer - this might be a multiple post update, lots has transpired since the last, and of course as always, I have tons of pictures to post.
So let’s dive in shall we?
The last Saturday that Mike was over here, I had anticipated making big strides in getting the body mount pedestals welded onto the floor crossmember etc. But as things usually go, that didn’t quite go according to plan. We did accomplish quite a bit that day, but most of it is/was under the car, so no pictures.
Quick recap of what we got done that day, got the transmission crossmember cleaned of all the welding spatter from doing the front floor pieces, and the new upper driveshaft safety loop attached to it. (It fit perfectly, is taller than the old upper loop, and clears the underside of the driveshaft tunnel like it was made for it). Big win there.
We had pulled the trans crossmember to give us better access to be able to hammer and dolly a couple areas in the transmission and driveshaft tunnels, so we spent some time doing that before the crossmember went back in. Another check off the list.
Why did the transmission crossmember have to go back in you ask? Well, long story short, to get the proper driveline angle back. Since we’re messing with exhaust pipes at the rear of the car, any small deviation in the driveline angle up front will have an amplified effect the further back you go.
Once we had the trans crossmember reinstalled and the trans mount snugged down, we reinstalled the rest of the exhaust system again. All this was to confirm and address a wee oversight I had suspected.
Let me explain:
It’s been several years now since when I first fabricated the passenger side exhaust pass-through, and I had obviously forgotten what I had done. The pass-through’s can’t be perfectly straight, the tail pipe portions of the exhaust system have to start curving before they clear the pass-through’s. This means that the front corners of the pass-through’s need to be flared slightly. If they’re not, the 1/2” clearance goes to nil and shjt is gonna hit and rattle.
Again with a long story short, I had done this mod to the passenger side those years back, but had completely forgotten about it before welding in the driver’s side.
Better fix it now.
Cut out/back the offending area, and cut a patch piece out of another section of 4” exhaust tubing:
From a little further back so you can see where this is:
Tacked it in, then reinstalled the tailpipe with my cut down masking tape spacers:
Now the 1/2” of required clearance is back again. Perfect.
Pulled the tailpipe and spacers out again, and burned it in solid.
A little time spent grinding and metal finishing, and it’s like nothing was even done.
To be honest, I was dreading this task, I thought it was going to be a lot harder and more ignorant than it actually was. I got most of it knocked out in an evening, and finished up the details in the next.
Ok, with that corrected, it was finally back to the floor crossmember the following week. I cut out the remaining bit of the original crossmember, and pirated the cage and nut assembly out of it to go in the driver’s side box:
Not going to cover what that entailed, it was literally the exact same as the passenger’s side. Once that was done, it was finally time to unite the new cage boxes with the pedestals.
And after metal finishing them out:
Go time on welding the assemblies to the crossmember! So exciting at this point.
Aaaaand done.
Thinking ahead and starting to get ready to weld the crossmember in permanently, I decided that the ends didn’t have enough surface area to securely spread the load across the car sides. So I whipped up these plates for the ends and welded them to the crossmember:
Yet another test fit, and rewarded with success:
So how is the previous picture any different than all the other ones I’ve posted about the crossmember being in place? This was the first time since cutting the old crossmember out, that I was finally able to fully and properly mount it to the body mounts, bolts and all.
Win!
I thought I was going to be able to get through everything that needed updating in this post, but it’s already way long with a ton of pictures. Think I’m going to call it for now and post another maybe tomorrow night, because there’s still lots to update on. So stay tuned and check back for that!
Thanks for following along if you made it this far guys.
D.
😡😡😡
No offence to you guys, but I’ve been more interested in working on the car than in posting the progress lately. The downside to this however, is that I’m now several weeks behind in bringing y’all back up to speed.
Disclaimer - this might be a multiple post update, lots has transpired since the last, and of course as always, I have tons of pictures to post.
So let’s dive in shall we?
The last Saturday that Mike was over here, I had anticipated making big strides in getting the body mount pedestals welded onto the floor crossmember etc. But as things usually go, that didn’t quite go according to plan. We did accomplish quite a bit that day, but most of it is/was under the car, so no pictures.
Quick recap of what we got done that day, got the transmission crossmember cleaned of all the welding spatter from doing the front floor pieces, and the new upper driveshaft safety loop attached to it. (It fit perfectly, is taller than the old upper loop, and clears the underside of the driveshaft tunnel like it was made for it). Big win there.
We had pulled the trans crossmember to give us better access to be able to hammer and dolly a couple areas in the transmission and driveshaft tunnels, so we spent some time doing that before the crossmember went back in. Another check off the list.
Why did the transmission crossmember have to go back in you ask? Well, long story short, to get the proper driveline angle back. Since we’re messing with exhaust pipes at the rear of the car, any small deviation in the driveline angle up front will have an amplified effect the further back you go.
Once we had the trans crossmember reinstalled and the trans mount snugged down, we reinstalled the rest of the exhaust system again. All this was to confirm and address a wee oversight I had suspected.
Let me explain:
It’s been several years now since when I first fabricated the passenger side exhaust pass-through, and I had obviously forgotten what I had done. The pass-through’s can’t be perfectly straight, the tail pipe portions of the exhaust system have to start curving before they clear the pass-through’s. This means that the front corners of the pass-through’s need to be flared slightly. If they’re not, the 1/2” clearance goes to nil and shjt is gonna hit and rattle.
Again with a long story short, I had done this mod to the passenger side those years back, but had completely forgotten about it before welding in the driver’s side.
Better fix it now.
Cut out/back the offending area, and cut a patch piece out of another section of 4” exhaust tubing:
From a little further back so you can see where this is:
Tacked it in, then reinstalled the tailpipe with my cut down masking tape spacers:
Now the 1/2” of required clearance is back again. Perfect.
Pulled the tailpipe and spacers out again, and burned it in solid.
A little time spent grinding and metal finishing, and it’s like nothing was even done.
To be honest, I was dreading this task, I thought it was going to be a lot harder and more ignorant than it actually was. I got most of it knocked out in an evening, and finished up the details in the next.
Ok, with that corrected, it was finally back to the floor crossmember the following week. I cut out the remaining bit of the original crossmember, and pirated the cage and nut assembly out of it to go in the driver’s side box:
Not going to cover what that entailed, it was literally the exact same as the passenger’s side. Once that was done, it was finally time to unite the new cage boxes with the pedestals.
And after metal finishing them out:
Go time on welding the assemblies to the crossmember! So exciting at this point.
Aaaaand done.
Thinking ahead and starting to get ready to weld the crossmember in permanently, I decided that the ends didn’t have enough surface area to securely spread the load across the car sides. So I whipped up these plates for the ends and welded them to the crossmember:
Yet another test fit, and rewarded with success:
So how is the previous picture any different than all the other ones I’ve posted about the crossmember being in place? This was the first time since cutting the old crossmember out, that I was finally able to fully and properly mount it to the body mounts, bolts and all.
Win!
I thought I was going to be able to get through everything that needed updating in this post, but it’s already way long with a ton of pictures. Think I’m going to call it for now and post another maybe tomorrow night, because there’s still lots to update on. So stay tuned and check back for that!
Thanks for following along if you made it this far guys.
D.
