Got the rose joint for the other end of the steering column today.  No other progress on the steering yet.

Its a lot bigger than I was hoping for, but a bit of cutting, grinding and sanding will have it much lighter in no time 🙂  I’ve also got the two locking nuts for it, and they have already been in the lathe tonight and are now 1/2 the thickness that they used to be (and more importantly half the weight!)

Got an hour in the shed tonight, made some good progress on the seat mounts.

Made up the little spigots, and a connecting bar.  As usual with these things, on little piece of tube on both sides was an hours fabrication.  So both of these are welded and are mounted onto the seat, and I’ve put the seat back into the car.  Where these mount onto the car frame has been decided, and with some luck I’ll be able to get at least one side made if I can get another hour tomorrow night.

I thought that I had better do some more tonight, to explain what I’ve been babbling on about for the last few days 🙂

The large bolts hanging out the top won’t be staying, but they were the only ones I had.  Once I find the right ones, they will be down inside the vertical tubes.

So the supports for the bearing carrier are now done, just need to finish weld them with the Tig, as soon as I get some more gas for it (ohh, and get the right length bolts :)).

Anyway, enough for tonight.

Today I got the bearing carrier for the steering shaft done.  It took much much longer than I had hoped!  To be fair, a lot of the time was making an adapter to mount the 4 jaw chuck into the lathe, as I’m unable to get the 3 jaw chuck off!  This took a while as it had to be exactly centered, or else the chuck would have wobbled around all over the place and nothing that was made inside it would have come out flat.

So, after that, and some cleaning up, 5hrs had gone by!  So didn’t make any where near as much progress as I wanted 😦

The steering shaft now has its bearing and the carrier all assembled and mounted, and its clamped back in the car ready to have the bars made that will link the roll cage to the new bearing carrier.

This pic probably better shows where all this is located.

Considering how long it took to machine the bearing carrier, I think I’m just going to buy a rose joint for the other end of the shaft.  On reflection, I think this will be a good thing anyway, as it will allow adjustment of the upper part of the steering column, without me having to make the lower bearing carrier adjustable (the rose joint allows some angular misalignment).  I had originally thought about using rose joints on both ends, but I never liked how they have to be mounted – the look ugly, and I want to have something that can break off in a large accident.  If I hit the wheel, I’d rather it break and move out of the way (think collapsible steering columns).  I want this car to be stupid fast – but I still want it as safe as it can be for the day that I do crash it.

That bearing carrier started off looking like this – A 30mm thick lump of alloy scrap.

I’m been a bit down on my lack of progress of late, going to try do a couple of nights this week.

Thurs night I started machining the mounts for the steering column.

I used the lathe as a “horizontal mill” to do the edges.  I make a clamp that goes into the lathe tool post, and put the milling bit into the lathe chuck.  It worked well to a degree, the finish was nice etc, but it as there is no vertical adjustment, I had to remove the part, put spacers under it, then go again in order to be able to mill the full thickness – making it very hard to keep each pass parallel.  Can’t wait until I have enough $$$ for a proper mill.

The pics below are after one pass.  You can see the bit sticking out the bottom, that’s the bit that I need machine on a separate pass after spacing the part a bit lower.

Once the rough outline was milled, I started machining out the middle to hold the bearing.  This pic is only part way through the roughing out, so it looks a bit messy in this pic.  Once I finish it tomorrow I’ll post another pic.

Spent a bit of time on the car on Sunday late arvo/night, but don’t have much progress to show for it.  Although I did cut out one circle and welded it to a piece of tube (The steering column as shown below)

Spent time getting the seat, pedals and steering wheel setup in the car, and clamping them all down so I can make the mounts.  I got the bolts for the engine mounts and the bearings for the steering column today, so will be able to get going on the steering column now.

I had to tweak the gearbox mount, after JC and I learnt more about diff pinion angles 🙂  I didn’t have pics of the finished mounts previously, so here they are.

Spent a few hours on the house too – some more cleaning up of junk around the place and some work on the new wall.  The wood paneling (its actually smooth decking) has been wet by the rain in these pics, hence the mottled finish.  Around three hours down, many many hours to go before its done.

In last weekend’s post, I didn’t have any pics of the completed gearbox mounts.  Did a little bit of cleaning up and some more work in the shed last night, so took some pics.

This pic is taken from under the car.

The left picture is from the passenger side, the one on the right is taken from underneath.

After doing a lot of shed cleaning, and outside cleaning, I put the seat and pedals into the car and started lining them all up ready to make the mounts for them.  I think its all planned out now, but its never until you get onto the track that you really know if you got the seating location right.

I’ve decided on the final design for the seat mounts, just need to get a small bit of moly tube in the right size to able to do it.  So i’ll grab that tomorrow, ready for the weekend.

Hopefully I can get the seat mount done, and then get at least some of the pedal box mount done, and super optimistically hopeful that I can even a mock-up the steering shaft and steering wheel, to make sure I’ve make it comfortable before I weld it all up :).  Time, as always, will tell….

Got the engine mounts about 80% complete, and the engine is now hanging in the new frame for the first time.  I just need to mount the pedal box before I can finish the drivers side mount, as its going to be close to the pedals.  I want to have them mounted in order to make sure they don’t hit.  Those couple of tubes and the brackets on the chassis – almost 8hrs of work.  Slow going as it’s fiddly work.

This is the drivers side mount, viewed from the engine bay.

Passenger Side mount, viewed from underneath.

The final piece of the permanent front frame is done!  I’ve got a couple more bits to go, but they are are all bolt on/removable.

On Fri night, I managed to get the last bits of the pedal box done, the throttle linkages and rocker.

Began the mock-up of the engine and the pedals.  Need to get the engine and gearbox mounts done next and then mount the pedal box (so that I can finalize the seat and get its mounts done).

Got to design the engine mounts and g/box mounts in my head during tomorrow, and hopefully I can start making them up tomorrow night – we’ll see how things pan out,  as at this stage its after midnight, and Cody is awake (wide awake!) on the couch with me

In the last post, I mentioned that the next step was to complete the bars that run up from the rail, to the under dash bar.  They are both now done, and 98% welded (one small bit thats hard to reach that needs to be done with a mirror).

So, next is to complete the lower bars, but first a trip to Pemberton for Targa South West.

Got some car time this weekend.  Got the pedals finished – just need to hook up the throttle and the throttle stop – need to get it in the car and hook it up to the motor to work out the travel range etc.

I’ve also finished building and have final welded the two new front chassis rails. (Shown sitting inside the old rails in this picture.  The old rails will be removed once the space frame is done.)

I’ve also 70% built the drivers side upper front bar too.  This will run from the base of the windscreen (on the under dash bar on the roll cage), down to the joint just before the C-Clamp in the picture above.  This will triangulate that section, increasing its strength to well above what the standard rails were – but lighter 🙂

Once those bars are done, I need to put another 4 little brace pieces from the main cage to these new front chassis rails to support them from moving laterally.  Then its going to be onto engine mounts and front suspension mounts.  Once they are done I can start putting the floor and the firewall back in!  It will feel good to start putting bits like that in, rather that alway seeming to be cutting things out 🙂

After a week of sick kids, then sick parents, the car is still floor-less…

After this afternoon’s work, we have progress on the new pedal box, this new one is floor mounted.  I needed to get some of this done so that I can finish the floor layout and make sure that the seat is going into the correct location with respect to the pedals.  Note: The accelerator pedal below is hanging upside down in the pics – the paint is drying.

And this is the new mounting box, that will hold the master cylinders and pedals.  These pics are the correct way up 🙂

Tomorrow I want the get the seat mounted in its final location and start on the front chassis rail modifications.