Thanks, I've pm'd him. I can't remember if I'd called them about this, or maybe talking to Dr 914 at AA, or what but I had somehow concluded otherwise. Hopefully I was wrong as maybe they would also have, though doubtful, the piece forward of the firewall, the inner. It's got even deeper corrugations at the bottom to fit over the outer piece's corrugations. I've got nothing that is salvageable that is like that and will have to make it.

I'm actually subscribed subscribed to the whole Garage forum here, meaning I see every thread starting post at minimum.

I look forward to commencing work on my car for 4-12 hours per day once I heal, maybe 2 weeks.

I've finally got the chance (can't work on my car) to enter the 2nd car to the registry. I explained there how, despite her being cut up, I hope to one day fabricate an all steel narrow bodied 914 using its shell, with all of the outer panels being detachable.

I had staff infection in an incision where they had inserted a chest tube, nasty stuff.
The the gizmo I had for 2 weeks was a vacuum pump sealed to my body pulling a vacuum on the infected area sucking both fluid and promoting healing. I had to visit every other day to have the wick changed and reattach.. I had to do antibiotics through a central venous catheter.

Before this all got figured out ,I knew I was in trouble when Hard coughing to excite my lungs to regain breathing , I blew a big blob of goo out the wound , that was fine 12 hours earlier. Honey I think I need to go to Emergency Again, 10 days later was the above pump and stuff.


Take Care Man , I finally realized how fragile the human body can be.

it took me 5 messages back and forth to clarify what I was talking about, but I'm finally sure about this now. Nobody makes the smooth piece that goes just behind the passenger suspension console, the passenger outside inner long, rear of the fire wall, nor do they make the passenger inside inner long forward of the firewall. - The way they do it, the inside inner long behind the firewall connects directly to the outside inner long that is in front of the firewall. Hope that's clear
You can see it in this pic

Now you got me all confuzzled ...

Very impressive fab skills. Keep on keepen on!

The longs are supposed to be 2 layers of sheet metal from just forward of the seatbelt hole/ jack post all the way back to the top of the inner suspension console.

Here is quoted the message that I think made it clear. I've been told I'm wrong about this a few times so I just want to set it straight.

(adding product pic/part numbers for clarity)

Ok, now i get it. That inner part (with the ribs) was added on later cars, early cars don't have that.

Actually, no.
I've been thinking about his for awhile, and got distracted some matters with my bus over new years. Sorry to get back so late

Jeff Hail talks about his in his "Bringing out the dead" thread
http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...76791&st=61



All of the cars had the same construction in that area. My 71, 72, and the 75 or 76 in the link. Here is his shot of the inner layer of the inner long forward of the firewall. The lower seatbelt bolt threads are welded to that piece.

I'd hoped that I'd be posting the attachment of the whole inner piece with my next (this) post, but, well don't get me talking about my bus.

Instead, I've just gotten to prepping it for install, almost there.

I almost finished the inner layer. I've got to cut that front part where it's marked. I ended up using the shallower corrugations from the outer layer of the parts car in construction of the bottom of the inner forward piece there (accidentally attached to the post above) and the attachment, below.
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Also, I got the recess for the engine mount handled.
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Had to cut into the virgin long.
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After a lot of comparing, etc to the parts car,
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I fit up the inner and outer inner long after cutting a small hole in the outer ( no pic sorry), and ground away using a grinder to get it out to where the template said it should be.
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The piece made out of part of my wrinkled door skin, funny how it's creased from the halfway point of 1 side, and then angles, lining up with the arch of the engine mount - hard to explain.
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I'm currently out of of grinding/ cutting disks for my mini die grinder to smooth this all out. Yard store has a great price on an Acat pnuematic mini angle grinder. I've just ordered that to step up my grinding smoothing process, along with 2" roloc holders, sanding disks and surface conditioning wheels. It's hard to finish the welds with a straight mini die grinder and then a flap wheel on an electric 4 1/2"angle grinder as I've been doing.

... which is not so precise either to make the flange lips (? not sure about the terminology here) larger. The flanges are larger at the back, and I've been putting off enlarging the ones I've repurposed from the front of the parts car. The difference is small but significant. I had to go bigger to facilitate welding and will trim. I'm still at it actually.
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It will require more hammering also; welding brought the top and bottom of the inner in, and the outer is springing out I've outlined the inner layer in an adriatic glow.
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I am thinking that I will put the inner and outer layers of the long together and then put them up to the car, a bit different than how Jeff did it. I feel more comfortable being able to clamp the layers, and to back the welds. Attach the heater tube, the rear heater channel, and put it on. (!) It's a bit more complicated than that...weld thru primer...., actually, but... . The engine mount and inner suspension console will go on after.
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A bit of a fit up. I need to make the bottom of the engine mount, as that is from the drivers side of the donor. A bit of a difference in the upper part on the side, the flange height, but besides that (and the bottom which is symmetrically inverse) they are the same. I need to get some thicker gauge metal to make that. I'd like to have my suspension jig and inner console fitted, engine support bar going to the fitted-up mount, as well as firewall front and rear all in position before welding the inner assembly in. I don't want the bottom of the car to sit too far out and may need to use a tie down strap to pull it together. We'll see soon.
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Great work as usual.

Your car will be better than new when done.

At least the smooth part of the long is the easier one to make of the two, I think a lot of people end up bending something up for that area.

John

I got my outer suspension console back on, finally. Page 3 I'd left with it here


When I took it off, it looked like this


Finally got it like this. I couldn't get out all the little black spots back there, but I'm hoping it will be neutralized/ encapsulated by the etching chemicals.
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I'd welded up all the carnage from removing it
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I did the ppg dx579 and dx520. Seems a lot like por's marine clean and metal ready, which I've used before, but maybe stronger even.
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I got a bit rough with the clamp. It bothered me for a bit, but I hope it will be ok. It is a learning experience for me here.
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The jig I'd made before removing it. I constructed this to locate the inner suspension console actually. I didn't plan to take the outer off.
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I also measured many times, comparing to the other side. I saw in a recent post,
http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?act...=2&t=172145
Rick Ollah, was saying that, (these being hand-built cars), the tolerance for suspension stuff on the bodies is 3mm. I think I got it to 1/16 inch which is 1.5875mm, using a tape measure off the outside of the tops of the bolt receivers (the part that has the clear plastic plugs) It's hard to measure from the bottom where the bolts actually are going. I measured to the nook of the jackpost and receiver plate. I went back to the fender support strap which seems consistent on both sides. I also measured up to the corner of the nook of part of the muffler heat shield. Also, the flange where the top and bottom of the console is 16.5 inches exactly from the bottom of the lip up at the base of the sail, inside. I kind of forget now, but I repositioned it a few times and went from side to side measuring A LOT before I was satisfied.

I got it mostly welded in
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and this is when I got distracted by some blemishes I'd circled earlier on my jack post receiver plate. Not pleased with the results of a screw driver test there.
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It took me several days to come to grips with this nasty turn of events. My work sent me to Austin for about a week for SXSW film music interactive festival which was awesome.

I almost managed to forget about this, but I'm back and after cleaning my shop yesterday, I've gone in again, deeper. Hopefully, I will post soon the resolution of all this. Not only is it not pretty behind the receiver plate, it's not-too-nice I see now between the 2 layers at the bottom, from the front of the plate to where it slants up a foot or so back. I've got the metal to fix it, thought I might have had to before, so maybe I can make short work of this. I won't post more pics of it until the sight of what I have done does not induce vomiting.

Amazing work

Wow, it's been 3 months since I've updated. I keep thinking this next post , I will have the long back together . I'll get to some of the work I did on that in a post later. For now I'll catch up with the jack point repair.

I didn't get great pics of the first bit, where I'd cut the bottom off, and exposed all the pitting and rust.
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The piece behind the jack plate was pitted pretty good as well, on the outside. I was torn on leaving it, but worried about what might still lie beneath, took it off.
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I got it under control with spot blasting and an 80 grit 1 1/2 inch roloc disk on a pnuematic mini right angle grinder.
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The restoration design piece was, not as ready-to-go-in as I would have liked. The original has a recess stamped in it; the rd piece, just a square hole. The replacement jack post that I ordered (wasn't sure if I'd need it) was like a gauge thinner than the original. I decided to weld the original post into the replacement hole which I made bigger.
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The front, also, was about a half inch short.

oops , I didn't mean to add so soon. got some error message? Anyway...
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Had to wire wheel the whole thing to get the galvanization off, drilling the holes for where it'll need to be welded. Wasn't happy with how short the flange to weld it on ws, maybe .030" inch shorter than stock in such a critical area.
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I etched everything and weld-primered the parts that would become inaccessible.
The car part and the piece inside, too
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rocker nut welded in
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put it together, not quite done
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It all lines up though
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At that point I moved on to a bit of my own rd oversight where I;d made the bottom of the inner long about a 1'2 inch too short kind of. I'll post pics soon of that and the fix... and the fitting, not attached quite yet.

When I'd put the bottom of the long together, I had not taken the engine mount off the donor car and kind of put it, where it wanted to be.

All seems well
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But try as I might with the bottom, it wasn't lining up right
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measured the donor car then to find I was off
As it went Up the long it became almost 1/4 inch off. so..
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got it welded together, and smoothed even, there, I got copper flashing backing it.
no pic currently of the fit from below, I will have to update later.

moving on to the engine mount...

I'd been worried about the engine mount.
The good bottom bit on the left id from the driver's side of the donor car.The original driver side engine mount on the right, and below that the new piece I formed of 16 gauge cold rolled sheet in progress.
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The bottom formed bit is the same side-to-side, but the top is symmetrically inverse
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just got to ad the flange on the bottom of the one side, took it off the other
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and fit up in the nook and jacked snug at the bottom
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Working on putting the firewall back together this weekend,
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I need to bolt the firewall, tube, and long together and see if I can get it in so I can assemble it (weld) and then put it in, easier than building it on the car as you can't reach inside that way. soon fairly soon...

Very impressive work man...keep it rolling!

This is some pretty amazing work. I have been struggling with what to do with my engine mount. This is inspirational!

John

Thanks, man. It's really good to hear the encouragement. I've been recapping all that is left to do and I'm thinking, I need to get better at this.

Was checking out your thread. Very ambitious, what you have done, and looking good. ... makes me think I've got it easy. You're making me look bad.

A shot of it further along, still need to smooth it out with flap disk or now using roton pads on my die grinder, and to tap that bit in there.
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I'm pretty happy with it so far, got to put the filter holder on it still, and take it off the other, actually
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I've been smoothing/ prepping my long, both pieces, the inner removed the galvanneal mostly, to put them together.

I've been distracted by some other projects, someone hit my bus in the parking ramp at work and I spent a week straightening and painting that. This weekend I am putting egt probes in the heat exchangers.

I managed to move the car onto the dolly, though, and I'm loving being able to clean beneath it, ...and walk through the shop.

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I was actually comparing the frequency of the rd jackplate piece there with an original that I found, using a guitar tuner. Very productive, I know, but they are somehow different, like in there temper or something because they weigh about the same, but they are just different..

Thanks for the comments, again. I hope to post meaningful updates soon.

Looking good. You should make your custom title "The Surgeon"
Are still using the same spot weld drill bit? Was just wondering how long they last.

Thanks. I started out just using a regular drill bit, but it does make extra work. There are few options for spot weld drills, even just at Eastwood, but I went with the expensive ones. I got replacement guide bits and cutting tips, but I'm still using the same one after a ridiculous amount of welds drilled. I use cutting oil fanatically. The drawback to spot weld drills is they are all huge, the hole they make.

http://www.eastwood.com/ew-skip-proof-spotweld-cutter.html#




I'm currently full on building the rotisserie. I've ordered the electric cable hoists, like we talked about. I want to be able to use it on the bus someday so it's going to be pretty insane; I got the 750/1500lbs ones. -Weird that they have gone up in price since last week? They were $182 and now they are $220. I will post the drawing when I get home; it's kind of a work in progress.

I've been turning over ideas of how to do this for months now. The challenge is to be able to lift it high enough to fully flip it, from the position it would be in sitting on its tires.

I want to be able to lift my bus on this also, just the body of course, but I've made it beefy to handle that.

Another part of the challenge is that you need to lift both sides at once, because if you don't, the car becomes like the the hypotenuse of a triangle, sort of, wanting to stretch.

The problem is that variation in the axis from end to end would also put stress on the car, in a rigid setup. And on top of this, the hoists move 3.5 inches a second direct, half that reduced with the pulley setup, but it seems inevitable that something should get off, one side higher. I can imagine tearing the car up with some stuck cable scenario, and so I've designed it to flex in the final version.

The long arm ram jacks have 19 inches of travel, and you need at least 25 so this one wasn't working.
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I went through more ideas in between, toying with 'samba rotisseries' which are like a pair of octagons, partial versions of that as well. But I ended up with this, trying to keep it simple

There is to be a sleeve of plate (by my ankle there, should be in the side view but was left below), similar to that which goes up and down along the vertical support, but on the crossbeam so it can elongate - got to figure out how to limit it. There are hinges which are integrated to the mounts, and then a hinge between the pivot and the support arm. The whole car is like part of a joint. and can pivot either way at both ends, if not for the other.

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Nice to know that the spot weld cutters last so long. Really $35 is not that bad for such a thing. If I decide to remove my pedal box I will be getting one for sure.

Glad to see you moving forward on the rotisserie. The nice thing about going with hoists is that you can also use them in an A-frame to make a small shop crane. Multifunctionality is always a good thing when buying tools.

Making the car able to flex/hinge with four joints might not be the greatest idea. The thing is that having the hinges the way you show in the drawing, as soon as you put weight on it you will effectively pull the two end towers towards each other as the load moves downwards a bit. Just visualize a rope connecting the two towers, now pull down hard on the middle of the rope. This will get worse the higher up the tower the load moves due to leverage. Also I foresee that when you rotate the car 90° to vertical that it will want to oscillate side to side a bit when you go to work on it, again due to the towers bending inwards a bit. Now if you only had two hinge joints you would still allow for unequal hoist speeds, but you wouldn't have the drooping or swaying issues. So I'd keep the hinges that are on the mounts and get rid of the ones on the vertical towers.

Also what are you planning to do for safety stops, like if the cable breaks on the way up?

As to the crossbeam elongation limiter, you could just drill a series of holes and then cut/grind the excess out to make a slot on the inner tube. Then you could just screw a bolt through the outer tube into that slot to have a limited range of sliding allowed. I imagine a slot a few inches long would be fine.

About multi-functionality, I'm thinking of it with the 2 ends bolted together, fitting a sort of platform in between to make a super heavy duty stand/ lift , to like get an engine off a jack and onto an engine stand for example.

About the stress relieving hinges, there are 4 at the mounts that would pivot if one end of the car only was to be raised while the car was in its upright position. But say you want to raise or lower 1 end when it's flipped on its side, 90 degrees. For this there are the 2 pivots at the middle where these meet the verticals - these pivot in a different axis than the other. The drawing shows the top (raised up) "yoke" in both positions at once so it looks kind of like they pivit in the same axis, but no. You do start to imagine regardless, the stress, say on the bumper mounts, the tops wanting to go inward, the bottoms out, but it's necessary imo to relieve the stress of it cocking. If the car were flipped like 70 degrees, you might see some combination of the slop in both joints combined. It does stress the horizontal, and the joints between, but the verticals and the horizontals, as well as the diagonals are all 1/4 inch wall, 2x3 for the horizontals and diagonals, 4x4 for the verticals. The cross pieces to which the casters are connected, I realized after I bought them, 3/16 wall, but the stress on those should be pretty controlled.

Safety measures while lifting it? Just go up one 'hole' at a time so if it does break, the cable, it won't fall too far. Going with the bigger hoists I consider something of a preventative measure, the 200/400 has 1/8" cable, the 500/1000 has 5/32. The ones I got, 750/1500 must have a typo on the site to say 9/50 inch?

I'm thinking the slot will probably be the way for the middle section, like you've said.

Ah yeah, I see what you are saying about the hinges. Should be fine.

If you scale up from the numbers you gave for the other cables, the 750 should have around a 0.191" to 0.242" cable. So maybe they meant 9/32" which would be around 0.281". Not sure, you will have to measure when you get them.

Any progress on the rotisserie after getting the hoists?

Wow! I wish someone would put this much effort into building a carbon fiber body!

I didn't see this until today. I've been so busy with work, I haven't been able to keep up with email. Funny, I see you are looking at this thread right now. I will post an update soon.

I've been working on the rotisserie for about 3-4 weeks now. I went to Guelph, Ontario for about a week with Kirsten to see the family's old farmhouse which is amazing.

I haven't gotten to assembling the hoist cages yet - I'm concentrating on what I am calling the "yokes" - the parts that attach to the car (like the yoke of an engine stand only bigger). The drawing posted above is pretty small, but here are close ups to show the pivots that have taken a lot of my time the past few weeks. I call the individual pieces of the pivots, "leaves" as they are interleaved for strength, 1/4" plate x 4", they are.

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It would likely have been easier to grind the shapes from rectangles cut from a strip, but I made them from 4" squares and circles that I cut in half on the band saw and welded to each other. The ones on the far right are for the pivot at the car to yoke; there are 8 for now but I need to do still eight more.

The bigger ones to the left are for the spanning beams to the pivot plate. -I've got names for all the parts, I suppose. I changed the design to make the outers longer halfway through making them so those pieces have 2 beads on them. There are 4 outers - 2 for the 2 yokes, and a total of 20. So 4 and 20 black birds baked in a pie. You can see one of my 12" filter fans with re-useable aluminum mesh filter - I have 3 going as it is hot here, even still.

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Some of my favorite clamps. The aluminum is way too thin a backer for what I am about to do here, and ends up seriously warped.

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2-3 passes each, cooling between, they still warp a little with the heat. I maybe should have preheated them. I beat them flat with a hammer though. The circles ended up being a marginal bit thicker than the squares. It would be nice to have a mill, but I have a grinder. Derek, you should remember that verysame bell grinder wheel that we used on the lathe table. It has slowly got shorter.

The big plates are to be mounts for the casters. An odd size, I had to make them from cut 8" squares of 1/4 inch plate.

The smaller pieces with the 3/4" holes marked on the left are to be backing plates for where the car is attached, 3/16 plate. I made 4 But realize I have to use just washers in back as the trunk floor divides the top and bottom bumper mount holes. This would prove to be just the first complication presented by the cars rear end.

DOM tube for the main pivots, ready to be faced at right.

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That is some gnarly stuff there, the edges on the circles I mean, My grinder will fix them.

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Drilled the holes first this time. These will be the mounts to the car. The saw gets its own fan.

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The drawing doesn't have them, but I added spacers to the design of the pivots, so the leaves don't bend under side load. The assembly just behind the flap wheel is 2 leaves joined by the spacer. To the left of that is similar with a base, and the process there in the vice.

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3/4" shoulder bolts. 4" long for the beam pivots and a 2.5" at each end. Got these from McMaster car, all grade eight or equivalent, I got everything in socket head cap screw, black oxide finish for the hardware.

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The "forearms" of the yoke are longer than in the drawing to allow greater access.
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The other setback at the rear, the mounts point out by10 degrees of straight. I got this all jigged up and even tacked together before realizing the error in my thinking here. That is a box of 3 of the 15" version of the filter fans there. They do like twice the cfm's as the 12", so 750 and 1500 cfms for the 12 and 15 inch respectively, 3 of each, plus the crazy contraption seen on the bench above, I hope will be adequate for the paint booth.

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ABout the rear bumper, the plan is to do both to fit to the front which is straight on, and to make adaptor plates to fit the back, which is also closer together by a bit iirc. The outer pivots will have another set of leaves at the outers at all 4 corners - those other 8 leaves I've yet to make. I plan to triangulate, a 4" x 1/4" triangle plate at the inner of the elbows also, a web elbow for strength. I've got both ends welded, a bit more than in this pic now, and soon to mount the leaves right to the middles there.

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My little bandsaw has been busy. I was able to straighten out the tabs to get it to cut straight again. For a bit I was having to grind them straight, ever piece. I had to weld the vertical there and 1 of the horizontals, too as it is all remnants. With the car on the dolly, the adriatic jack stands have procreated. ... proud papa there in back.

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It is coming along, working on it this weekend, I will start attaching the span pivot leaves with spacers which I'll need to cut and then attach those to yokes directly.

I'm hoping that once the yokes, with the labor-intensive pivots are done, that the rest of the thing will go far more quickly .

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Updating where I'm at to give a better idea of the real thing
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Nice fat update, looking good. Personally I think I would have just paid someone to plasma cut all the leaves for the hinge points. More arc time for you though so it's all good. Bummer that the circles where a slightly different thickness than the flat stock.

Last time I went to ALCO they some nice fat aluminum plate drops. They had a 24" x 36" x 3/4" plate that would make a nice little welding table top. You need to upgrade from that shim stock you be using as a backer. I'll see if I can score you something from my work.

I can't believe that grinder wheel is still doing it's thing! That mofo is 3 years old now. I love that giganto C-clamp in that pic too. Looks super useful.

Good thing you caught that that 10° mount thing before you fully welded everything up. Would have been a lot more work than just breaking some tacks apart if you had.

All those hinges look pretty sweet in that last pic. The culmination of hours of work cutting, grinding and welding must feel good to see put together for the first time.

A heat gun and a big blunt screw driver gets it, but yeah it is a bear. Here is the other
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It is easier when it is cut out!

I've been eager to post a meaningful update, but .....

My welder has been out of commission since the last post which has been awhile. It is 2 1/2 years old, still under warrantee, brought it to the service place and they charge me $200 for points because they are consumables, not covered. I bring it back home, and it still won't work, like it would start but no amperage. I bring it back again and the guy looks at it right when I'm there, 2 seconds and he's like, "It's the capacitor". So another week or so to get the part from Miller, and I think it is working now. I haven't got to try it very long because I went on vacation to Guelph, Ontario for a week, then ran out of gas right before New Year's and no one was open. I finally have a tank and am ready to get started again.

I should post pics of the lights I am building for the paint booth. A little OT but, they are the best strip lights ever!

Bummer about the welder still having problems. I remember when my machine was down for a month straight because no one had a gas hose locally.. My shop came to a standstill.

I'm looking forward to seeing the light fixtures. 100% stainless construction is not something you see everyday. How's the new welding table coming along?

I've just been using the welding table on top of my work bench, raised on sections of 2x6. The treadle stand was not up to the task, and I'm going to have to look for another option for a base.
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Derek at work on the table...
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I've been working on the paint booth setup to get this handled. Lights are part of that set up. The complete picture involves a lot of fans, another palette rack and floor section, the rotisserie completed, and plywood enclosure for the booth.

Lights are coming along. I've got 2, almost 3 done. I was going to make 2 4 footers, but it turns out that I was misguided and they don't make single pin instant start 4' t8 bulbs. -for some reason I thought I had found the ballasts, but they aren't what I thought. I will figure something out.

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I sewed the nylon supports from pieces cut off a nylon tie down strap. I need to weld that one where I goofed with the mill to do the 4th still.
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Mounting the ballasts inside with aluminum rivnuts.
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Aluminum cord strain relief, use npt thread. Stainless torx drive 10-24. Pics were blurry of the stainless square nuts I welded to the inside - quite a challenge to make the end caps.
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While the welder was down, I moved the loft to the other side, to turn it into part of a paint booth. It will have to be twice as big, though to fit the rotisserie. It's great to be able to see the 914 again though. A few weeks it sat in the dark.
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Just cleaning parts and fondling my wiring harness during that time, rubbing its brittle ends with glycerin, brass wire brushing the connector ends which are quite oxidized, I've been putting dielectric grease on them. The hot ones, I've redone the cracked off heat shrink at the ends. It turns out half the front of the harness the wires were all melted together. The driver side front side marker, parking light, and turn signal had no insulation at all, burned up. Missing the rear license plate light wires... I was able to replace it all using parts of the impressively screwed up harness from the black car. It is coming along, got to give it more going through.

I been working on the driver side fresh air duct since the lights have been up. Hopefully I will post pics of that soon. I made an impressive hole in the car there today.

3 months and no updates?

Man, I did not even see this. I wasn't subscribed anymore.

Well, I decided to take on a 'little thing' in the meantime, the driver fresh air inlet.

I got the seam sealer out.
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I had wondered how bad it was really.
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The new piece to go in
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I had damaged it cutting it out, but easy to fix. Cleaned.
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It is hard to get the ready-to-go-in shot because the shiny metal reflects and autofocus won't work.

New piece in
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I have the car back on jack stands (off the dolly). But, besides the 2 flat-tops, they are all leveling jack stands. I've got the car leveled using a machinists level, supported by 4 pairs. - thats 2 at the firewall, 2 by the front firewall, 2 at the front and 2 at the rear trunk area. There are also some random additional stands positioning the firewall and floor for fitting purposes. I have the driver side braces removed from the door to make sure gap is right and for fitting the air inlet piece.
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So far it is just fit up, not welded in....still wondering about this pitting.... I may get the spot blaster going on it and see what is under the white stuff.
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I have spent a lot of time on the rotisserie. This is my current drawing;
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I have added adjustment for the center of gravity of the body. According to McMark, it is about an inch below the 'lip' in the front and rear. This is about 3 inches up from the line that goes through the center of the bumper mount holes. So the pivot is offset 3 inches from the beam and there is adjustability of 2 inches up and down for fine tuning. I am going up to visit Derek in Oakland, to make use of the mill at his work to form the slots.

C-notched -root pass here
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Through pipes welded in. I turned these on the lathe, .770+/-.005 inch ID
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I am trying to finish the support beams smooth, with grinding wheel flush and flap disk smooth. Currently out of disks.
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Caps fusion welded, and caster plates welded with just the root pass so far.
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Working on the cable hoist mounts, my "cages".

Mocked up and part tacked
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The cut material. Welding the through tubes there. Bevel-ground and mill scale sanded.
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The stands tacked
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Enlarged the 7/16 nut-serts in the mounting plates
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to 5/8 square weld nuts
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and now out of argon

I need to do the sliders to do the verticals (holes, tubes, diagonals, flanges). coming along, I guess.

I had the tires unmounted from the wheels. They were all shot and mismatched, etc. I had 4 from the parts car. I kept the parts car's spare mounted, an unused 165 series Continental that is so vintage looking, I want to hang it on my wall.
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I sort of expected them all to be the same...
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Lip to lip, they measure; the white one is 5 inches , the black is 5 1/2, and the silver is 6 3/4 inches lip to lip. I have a rust-colored that matches the white as well. I'm not sure what the spare is. It's hard to tell with the tire on. It has a sizable dent in the lip even if it wasn't serving as such great art.

So I know I had posted pics of the mahles before, and I always wanted a 914 with 'baby gasburners' (even though I used to think they were just gasburners- didn't know about 5 lug) but......I am really wanting to have silver steelies.... with 165's on them.

I know that I will never have car of the month with 165's and no one will want to be my friend here.

Unfortunately I traded the wheels that were on the blue car to Dave to keep the parts car he had rolling, so I don't have the original wheels.... I will try to get in touch with him, beach914.

The book says standard wheels are 4 1/2" and the optional steelie is 5 1/2. Where are they measuring that from? I am trying to figure out what I have here. Thinking I want the thinnest ones. Would an appearance group car automatically have had the 5 1/2's? I had thought those were pretty uncommon... but shows what I know with my 6 3/4's.

It's been awhile since I've updated. My camera had got broken, but I have been at it.

Where the inner long meets the front wheel well is mig welded and it's easier to cut out than grind the welds in place.
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Inside
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I filled and ground the holes left from drilling the spot welds, the original piece removed from the long.
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I have a thumb wheel for my tig torch. It is tricky to lie on your back.
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Grinding and sanding. I may fix the bottom better....
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Inside again.
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I will lead in to a post on work on the floor...

So, I had actually bolted everything together and done a test fit. I decided to cut the firewall at a diagonal and cut out the front half of the passenger floor so the whole assembly can slide in.
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:clampsandbolts:
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Oh yeah, the floor.... ...

An old pic here...
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I got a spot welder so I need to fill in all the holes. I had thought about plug welding it using the holes, but the tig doesn't like the weld through very much. I think it will have a smaller burn area as the weld thru primer goes, between the panels.

The floor, firewall, etc, in pieces...
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I was quite a butcher at the beginning.
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weld grind weld grind sand. I am using a mini pnuematic strait die grinder with a 1/4" arbor with a 1 1/2 inch x .040" grinding wheel to take it down just proud, and then a right angle mini die grinder with a 1/4 inch arbor also, and roloc pad. I use a conditioning pad before welding, and then after the grinding, an 80 grit sand paper pad to smooth it. THere are 100's of welds to fill in between the long, floor, firewall pieces, etc.
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and... still some more to do...

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Nathan how did you build/create the corrugations?

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This is the easy way: http://www.restoration-design.com/mm5/merc...oduct_Code=P351