BUILD THREAD “The Juggernaut”
- Thread starter Rktpwrd
- Start date
Dude, just build it. Get lost in the process. Enjoy yourself. And update us as time allows.
Oh I have been. Probably more than I’d like to admit. It’s all good though, I really do enjoy the work and figuring out the challenges that present themselves. Now I’m just chomping at the bit to get to a point of having some semblance of a finished product.
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What are the odds of a massive burnout occurring with an unfinished car? 🤔
Probably pretty good actually. The Toyo Proxes T1R’s that are on the car are like 98-99% tread, but they’ll be so old and rock hard by the time I’m done that they’ll need replacing anyways.
So might as well sacrifice them to the burnout Gods.
I’m a long ways away from that yet anyways, have way too much to do. Get structure back in the car with the floor sheetmetal, finish the chassis and suspension/steering mods, put the body on a rotisserie and finish the underside, complete the fuel system, complete the air ride system, buy and plumb the hydraulic clutch throw out bearing, clutch pedal, E-brake system, electrical system, custom dash, body mods and the list goes on and on.
Going to continue on with the second half of this update, still lots to get y’all current on.
With the successful bolt-in installation of the floor crossmember, I knew I was getting close to being able to start building some floor pans finally. I ponied up and spent a bit of money, bought a new 12” slip roller and a full 4’x8’ sheet of 20 gauge sheetmetal.
Since we’re in full custom territory here, this is the only way to create what I’m going to need. The new rear floors will have to go together as a patchwork quilt of sorts, there’s just going to be way too many odd shapes and contours to create any other way.
It didn’t take long before I started cutting up that virgin piece of sheetmetal, the first thing that had to be done was to make new side panels for the rear firewall. These side pieces will eventually get fully welded in, but up until now I’ve just had them Cleco’d in place. (thankfully)
I had to make new ones because the old ones had already had the bead rolling done to them, and the raised bead roll was going to interfere with the height of the proposed new floor.
So out they came, and new ones were created using the old ones as templates:
Note this tapered flange that sits along the wheelwells, I created this with the new tipping die I picked up for the bead roller a couple months back.
The first time I did this, I didn’t have the bead roller yet, so I had to create them by making a cardboard template of the flanges, then weld them to the sides of the inserts. Doing it with the bead roller not only saved me about 6 hours of labor, but they’ll be much stronger this way as well because it’s still all one piece.
I had every intention of trying to keep the floor crossmember removable for as long as possible, so in these next few pictures it’s still held in with Clecos. Note the ruler looking thing sitting on top of it here, this is a flexible magnetic ruler and has been absolutely indispensable in getting accurate measurements on bent and contoured pieces:
After many many hours of bending, cutting and trimming, I finally had the start of the first section of new rear floor pan!
You can see the level on it, shortly after taking those pictures I used the level to determine where the back of the piece had to meet on the firewall side panel and Cleco’d it in place:
The floor piece is Cleco’d to the outer face of the firewall panel for now, this is just temporary as I’m going through the mock-up stages. Once the floor piece is ready to get welded in, the flange will be on the backside and invisible. This flange is part of what the side panels will get welded to.
Ok, time to weld it in right? Not even close. There’s currently no structure or strength between the front and rear floors where I cut the old crossmember out from, so one of the first things to do is to create another new floor piece over the driveshaft tunnel to bridge the two sections together again.
Whipped this up on the new slip roller real quick one night, it’ll do the trick nicely:
The other thing to do now is to weld the floor crossmember in permanent, no way around that now. So next I Cleco’d it in place for the very last time, and ran the body mount bolts into it from the bottom and snugged it down onto the frame. I got exactly one rosette weld done before I ran out of wire for the night, you can imagine the color of the air when that happened.
But the next day I picked up some new wire and was ready to rock again:
That’s it, the floor crossmember is now a permanent part of the car, it’s never coming out again! We’re pretty much caught up now, I took tonight off, but last night I got the driveshaft tunnel bridge piece clamped and spot welded to the floor crossmember. And a lot tighter with no gaps than the factory ever did.
Going to leave you with one last picture, check out how well and tight these three panels all fit together in this corner. Won’t take much to finesse them together and get them welded out.
I’m off tomorrow for Good Friday, we have family coming for dinner but I should be able to make some pretty good progress during the day before that. The first order of business will be to grind down the rosette welds on the driveshaft tunnel bridge, and then weld it to the front and back parts of the tunnels.
I’ll post up again sometime before the end of the weekend, hopefully I’ll have something substantial to report on again.
Slowly but surely it’s coming together!
Till then gents,
D.
With the successful bolt-in installation of the floor crossmember, I knew I was getting close to being able to start building some floor pans finally. I ponied up and spent a bit of money, bought a new 12” slip roller and a full 4’x8’ sheet of 20 gauge sheetmetal.
Since we’re in full custom territory here, this is the only way to create what I’m going to need. The new rear floors will have to go together as a patchwork quilt of sorts, there’s just going to be way too many odd shapes and contours to create any other way.
It didn’t take long before I started cutting up that virgin piece of sheetmetal, the first thing that had to be done was to make new side panels for the rear firewall. These side pieces will eventually get fully welded in, but up until now I’ve just had them Cleco’d in place. (thankfully)
I had to make new ones because the old ones had already had the bead rolling done to them, and the raised bead roll was going to interfere with the height of the proposed new floor.
So out they came, and new ones were created using the old ones as templates:
Note this tapered flange that sits along the wheelwells, I created this with the new tipping die I picked up for the bead roller a couple months back.
The first time I did this, I didn’t have the bead roller yet, so I had to create them by making a cardboard template of the flanges, then weld them to the sides of the inserts. Doing it with the bead roller not only saved me about 6 hours of labor, but they’ll be much stronger this way as well because it’s still all one piece.
I had every intention of trying to keep the floor crossmember removable for as long as possible, so in these next few pictures it’s still held in with Clecos. Note the ruler looking thing sitting on top of it here, this is a flexible magnetic ruler and has been absolutely indispensable in getting accurate measurements on bent and contoured pieces:
After many many hours of bending, cutting and trimming, I finally had the start of the first section of new rear floor pan!
You can see the level on it, shortly after taking those pictures I used the level to determine where the back of the piece had to meet on the firewall side panel and Cleco’d it in place:
The floor piece is Cleco’d to the outer face of the firewall panel for now, this is just temporary as I’m going through the mock-up stages. Once the floor piece is ready to get welded in, the flange will be on the backside and invisible. This flange is part of what the side panels will get welded to.
Ok, time to weld it in right? Not even close. There’s currently no structure or strength between the front and rear floors where I cut the old crossmember out from, so one of the first things to do is to create another new floor piece over the driveshaft tunnel to bridge the two sections together again.
Whipped this up on the new slip roller real quick one night, it’ll do the trick nicely:
The other thing to do now is to weld the floor crossmember in permanent, no way around that now. So next I Cleco’d it in place for the very last time, and ran the body mount bolts into it from the bottom and snugged it down onto the frame. I got exactly one rosette weld done before I ran out of wire for the night, you can imagine the color of the air when that happened.
But the next day I picked up some new wire and was ready to rock again:
That’s it, the floor crossmember is now a permanent part of the car, it’s never coming out again! We’re pretty much caught up now, I took tonight off, but last night I got the driveshaft tunnel bridge piece clamped and spot welded to the floor crossmember. And a lot tighter with no gaps than the factory ever did.
Going to leave you with one last picture, check out how well and tight these three panels all fit together in this corner. Won’t take much to finesse them together and get them welded out.
I’m off tomorrow for Good Friday, we have family coming for dinner but I should be able to make some pretty good progress during the day before that. The first order of business will be to grind down the rosette welds on the driveshaft tunnel bridge, and then weld it to the front and back parts of the tunnels.
I’ll post up again sometime before the end of the weekend, hopefully I’ll have something substantial to report on again.
Slowly but surely it’s coming together!
Till then gents,
D.
The flexible magnetic ruler... now we know the secret of your skills 😉
Excellent job as always brother 👏
Excellent job as always brother 👏
Looks great it's come far and fast don't get in a rush though D the build quality is to high for that
Your skills are on point. The fitment of your panels are so so good, way better than the factory. Can't wait to see more. #Amazing
