Driver's Side Outer Panel Cutting

Today just worked with the dremmel and cutting disks. Actually also used a small electric saw for a bit, but shouldn't have...

So, first drew a line on the driver's side panel to mark where to cut. Idea is to separate the rear 2/3's from the front third. The rear gets riveted in place, the front will be held with rivnuts to allow easier access to oil filter, brake cylinders, etc.
Doing the whole straight line with the dremmel was going to take forever. So, after cutting the tips, used the electric saw. Problem is that I can't actually cut a straight line with that and it notices a bit. I filed the parts a bit to hide the small waves but it's not as good as it would have been with only the dremmel. I wonder how much it will be noticeable on the car. Anyway, in retrospect, I shouldn't have used the saw.

Offered the front part to the car to check where I had to cut the upper lip due to the engine cradle anchor points. After trimming those two spots down (just with the dremmel), moved on to the exhaust hole. Transferred the template I did last week and started cutting. This time using just the dremmel. But I did not have enough time to finish the cut. More next week...

Templating for Exhaust and New Rivets Plier

During the week went to the shop where I left my broken big rivet plier waiting to see if I had any warranty on it. Since the importer has closed, they did not manage to contact anyone for that and I came back home with the broken thing. Anyway, it was replaced with the lazytongs one. On the shop ended up buying a new small one to do the rivets under the car.

Looking at the picture, it doesn't seem too different from my old one. On the top is the cheappo garbage, below the new one. When not compressed, the new one opens a lot more. And it actually pulls a 4.8 rivet in just 3 pumps! The price difference was negligible and this is another example that going only for cheap tools seldom pays off. Putting the 11 rivets on the passenger's side was a breeze.

Then I checked where to cut the driver's side panel to split the part to rivet and the part to hold with rivnuts. Last task was making a template to know where to cut the hole for the exhaust to pass through the panel. Picture shows the template loosely held, since I had already removed it when I thought about taking a picture for the blog.

Next session(s) will be with the dremmel and cutting disks working on the panel.
Scheduling will now become even more infrequent, the baby was born a week and a half ago.

The Underside Of The Exterior Panel

Last time I left the car with the passenger's exterior panel riveted only on the top part (missing two rivets under where the scuttle currently sits). Today I wanted to do the underside of the panel, so that I could consider it done.

First, had to raise the side of the car and put two axle stands to get it tilted so that my drilled could fit under the car. I was not feeling comfortable, afraid the car could fall and hurt me, but took extra care to never get under the car or too near the wheels.

After tilting the car, used some clamps to bend the front third to the bottom chassis rail. After that, drilled the first hole (on the front end). Putting the rivet was harder; my "lazy tongs" riveting pliers did not fit under the car. Went for my feeble basic rivet pliers and tried that. After squeezing it some 60 times, the rivet was installed. I can't withstand doing all rivets with that, but just the basic ones to get the panel in place are OK...

On the rear end of the panel, I had nowhere to attach the clamps to. So I used a big stretch of tape to glue the panel to the chassis. It lasted enough for me to drill the hole and insert a second rivet. Also inserted a third where the frontal third of the panel ends. All other holes were drilled but I'll put the rivets after buying a new pliers that fits under there.

Put the car down and packed to go back home. Next week, I'll start on the passenger's side.

Little note to the fact that I'm feeling exhausted, for the second week in a row. This drilling has been physically demanding and I'm actually in a worst state than I thought. Oh, and the baby is late; wife on 40 weeks yesterday, no signs of the girl wanting to come out.

Riveting the Passenger's Outer Panel

Spent the morning riveting the passenger's side outer panel. Used 4.8 rivets spaced 100mm centres. On the "cockpit", and since the panel has a "U" shaped lip, riveted on the inside of the car. On the engine area riveted on the top of the chassis rail.

Only riveted the upper part of the panel. It was incredible that it took me around 2 hours to drill for and apply 17 rivets. The ones on the side of the chassis, I could not apply the weight of my body on top of the driller. It was all forced with my arms. Got tired and spent around 1h30m to do 11 rivets. The other 6 were on the upper side, could put my weight behind the driller, got all done in just a bit over 15m. No point in taking pictures, not that different from when I fit the panel.

Two rivets still need to be applied but I had to take the bulkhead out to put them and my time was almost up, so I had to leave that for the next session. I'll also still have to work on the lower side, probably will tilt the car with two axle stands to rivet underneath. Lets see how that goes.

Engine Bay "Spring Cleaning"

Some car time today, started "unclogging" my can of PU adhesive. It has not dried to a rock, so after half-hour on it, it's ready to use. I have to get that on the panels before riveting.

Then went to the car. Some time ago went with the wife to IKEA to get some stuff and saw some convoluted tube pretty cheap. Bought some and today used it to give the engine bay a face-lift. I was very happy with the result so far, better than I expected. Not completely done because I still lack clamps to join the wires to the battery. So, I didn't work on those wires. Nor on the front lights ones, since the lights aren't fitted yet. A before and after pictures are worth a thousand words...

Next session will be PU on the passenger's side exterior panel and rivets.

Little That Looks Much

Finally had a bit to work on the car, now that the new baby room is almost ready. First task was to fit the rear wheels again, so that I could put the car on the floor. Took longer than expected, but it was good to see it on 4 wheels again.

Then I grabbed the passenger side panel and fitted it. The car looks great and it made a lot of difference just to add that block of ally!

Did not get around to rivet it. That will be the next session. But looked into where I'll be cutting the panel on the driver's side so that I can remove the front part and have easier access to brakes master cylinders, oil filter...

Before going away, checked if the toe on the front was good (by counting the number of exposed threads on the steering arms, compared with measurements sent to me by Iain). Nothing to do there, which was great (and unexpected).

Rear Suspension Aligned

After spending some more time measuring the rear of the car and knowing what trigonometry I needed to use, I got to the conclusion the road I was travelling was a dead end. Why a dead end?

(WARNING: Long confusing wall of text that causes headaches! Skip paragraph if you don't have pills or alcohool near by).
Based on this site (http://www.hillmanimages.com/912/adj_toein.html) and the wikipedia page on trigonometry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangent_function#tangent) I (kind of) understood what I had to do. So, consider a parallel line to the centre of the car going from the rear side of the lower wishbone to the front side. Then, considering the pivot rod that passes under the hub, measure the distance from the front centre of it to the line and from the rear centre to the line. Measure the rod. Subtract the distance from the front to the parallel line to the distance from the rear to the parallel line and you have a triangle where 1) the hypotenuse is the length of the rod, 2) the adjacent is the distance from the centre of the rear of the rod to the parallel subtracted of the distance from the front centre to the parallel line and 3) the opposite is the distance on the parallel line between the front and rear intersection points. Confused? I was for a long time!
With all those measures and a scientific calculator app installed on my phone, I could calculate the tangent and cotangent. This is the bit that still didn't make much sense to me, it should be the tangent I was looking for but in the end the cotangent was the right thing.
Anyway, the calculator and the formulae gave me values in minutes, just had to convert to degrees and all was great. Not. Got to the conclusion that, on such short values, a millimetre made a lot of difference. And I was measuring in a way that measurements were not that precise at the millimetre level. I had to give up.

(IT IS SAFE AGAIN)
So, I would either buy poles and fishing string and try to do it all in a bigger scale or resort to another approach: Since this is a chassis made on a jig, it is similar to all others done on the same jig. So, proper adjustments made on one should be the same mine required, within acceptable tolerances. I reached to fellow builder Iain, that has his car on the road now and went to a proper alignment shop. He has several times been very helpful (thank you!) and this time again he came to my rescue. I asked him how many threads were visible on the bolts from the adjustments and he provided me that information.

So, today I went to the car with renewed confidence. Since I was going to separate the hubs from the lower wishbones to adjust the toe, I might as well also properly adjust castor. When I first assembled it, Steve told me to cut a bit of an extra iron tub (from suspension crush tubes) to pack the space between the hub and the front of the wishbone. I cut corners and packed with washers. And since it was being hard to make it all fit, I packed washers part on the front, part on the rear... Only later I realized this was 1) bad to the castor settings and 2) on one of the wheels made the rod be so near the inside of the wheel that it ripped off the calibration weights I had there.

So, the rest is history. Released the left hub, adjusted the toe rose joint to expose 4 threads. Then spent some time with grease, an iron bar and the rubber mallet fighting the rod and washers to get the thing assembled with all the washers to the front. The top bolt that adjusts camber had 5 threads exposed, just like he told me it should have, so I did not touch there. Fit the wheel and, happily, no rubbing of the rod on the calibration weights!

Then it was doing all again on the right wheel, considering 2 threads on the lower rose-joint. Iain said 3 threads at the top, I had 4 exposed from when I measured it all with the level app on the phone. Opted not to touch that, but I have a mental note to recheck it after rolling the car a bit.

Last thing I did was to unpack the ally side panels and offer one to the car. I think I'll have a bit of a trouble fitting the rivets on the lower side of the car, probably will have to tilt it a bit. But with the side panel on, it looked a lot more... Finished!

I still have to make my mind if I want to cut the driver's side panel in half and hang the front part with rivnuts to allow "easy" access to peddles, brake fluid reservoirs and engine oil filter or if I rivet it all and hope for the best.