winter changes/upgrades

[Carolina Kid]

Congrats Todd

[wikd69]

x3 !!! Congrats on getting it back on rubber. That thing is absolutely beautiful.

[DOTracer]

I worked today and got most of the tubular core support fabricated. I still need to mock up the fenders, hood & header panel to verify everything still fits as it should.

I also need to fabricate a bracket to hold the Star vacuum pump intake/exhaust tank. I'll also need to decide if I need to make a bracket for the coolant overflow canister as well.

Original core support, swiss cheesed down to 23 lbs.



New chromoly tubular core support, 6 lbs.

[John_Heard]

Dang that looks simple compared to the one I made for the Nova. I assume headlights, grill, all the rest of that stuff is tied to the fenders and not the support. That helps a lot.

[DOTracer]

Mocked up the front end this evening. Fit seems good, little more flex than I'd like so I'll be watching that as I bolt the fenders down tight and if needed, I'll need to come up with some sort of bracing. I also plan to make come stand off's to provide bolt locations for some of the header panel bolt locations so I'm not relying on the end bolts under the turn lenses.

[evil16v]

I assume headlights, grill, all the rest of that stuff is tied to the fenders and not the support.

I was looking at that too.I forgot the G bodys had the molded nose piece.that worked out really clean.

[DOTracer]

I'm gonna fabricated some stand-offs that will weld to the core support and give bolt locations to fasten the header panel like factory. Not all the locations, but some to give it more support being it's fiberglass.

Top bar of the core support does have some flex which I thought it might. Will watch that as I finish bolting the fenders down and if it's still more than I'd like to see, I will then have to look into adding some sort of bracing. Problem is the headlight buckets run under the top tube blocking access for a diagonal from the outside corner.

[DOTracer]

Last evening I got the core support flex corrected with some diagonal gusset tubes as well as a bracket to hold the vacuum pump canister.

Next up is some stand-offs to help hold the stock fiberglass header panel. Once that's done, off to chrome I suppose.

[wikd69]

Man, that is *so* sweet.

[DOTracer]

Quite a frustrating day in the garage. I got the collectors/mufflers/turn downs mocked up and was ready to weld them together. Man, what a PITA. I've done alot of Tig welding the last couple years and these had me ready to throw them across the shop. Anyways, their done and I'll leave it at that. It's a good thing they will get recoated.



Next on the To-Do list was to make some mounts to secure the header panel to the core support. Went a little better, but still a meticulous time consuming process.

[John_Heard]

That'll stiffen up the front a lot.

[71 chevy]

the level of fabrication and awesomeness in this build is amazing.

[rich]

todd i might have missed it but where and how are you mounting the seatbelts.

[sc racing]

Todd do you think you had a hard time welding the collectors because they were coated? I know you ground it off but its seems sometimes coated metals are just a big PITA.They still look good as does the rest of the car

[DOTracer]

Todd do you think you had a hard time welding the collectors because they were coated? I know you ground it off but its seems sometimes coated metals are just a big PITA.They still look good as does the rest of the car

I do feel that was one contributing factor. The muffler is .030" thick stainless, which moves and warps alot from heat input. I tried clamping, but the gap kept opening up. Had to have a certain heat to melt into the collector, but then the he's caused the muffler material to open it's gap. Tried .045 & .060 filler wire, nothing really helped.