Started the day planting some more plants, go some freebies from the parents and another lot from the next door neighbors.

So I didn’t get out to the shed until about 3pm, but that was the start of a long day.

First job was to get the left side suspension fitted.  I had to machine down a bunch of the spaces to fit the new mounting points.

I then compressed the front suspension and strapped it up at the point that the wheels will be when the car is sitting normally on the ground.  I’ve done this so that I can align the steering rack up to get it all spaced correctly for when the car is sitting normally on the ground.

I then started work on the passenger side mounts for the steering rack.  I made up the two hoops to clamp around the rack, then it was onto connecting these to the chassis of the car.

I wasn’t happy with the stiffness of the brackets on the car frame, so I came up with a new idea.  The old idea was designed so that I had some adjustment.  As it turns out there is quite limited space down there in front of the motor, so this time we are going a fixed mount.  So, the new idea…

I’ve decided to put some inserts into the main cross tubes, and then make more of a lattice type structure to hold the rack in place.

So, after a bunch of work with the hole saw, we had 5 new holes.  I then made up 3 different sizes of inserts to weld into these holes.

 

A bolt will pass through these inserts and into a threaded stud (shown in some of the pics already bolted on).  This threaded stud will have the other tubes that connect to the steering rack.

Some more random pics of progress.

These will probably make more sense over the next few days as I progress.

I also made some progress on the last component for the steering system, adding the short link and a universal joint.  The last bit that I need before the steering is complete is a short section of spline to fit the universal joint.

Time for bed!