picked up one of those 12" metal shears, like the big chop-down kind with the help of a PA gift card i've had leftover from the birthday...

sure enough, it does wonders for smaller pieces!

EDIT:

Somebody near and dear to my heart suprised me with a used chinese plasma cutter today



with the help of this magnificent new machine, i've nearly finished the final boxing in of the drivers side mount and about 80% of the way on the passenger side mount. will finish those off tomorrow, hopefully get either my hoist or my jack back, and then get the suspension bolted up, figure out what i'm doing for the rear mounts (something similar in idea to the 240 body mount for the control arm is what is needed) and start on the engine mounts.

Pics of the plasma in action please...I've got one on the shopping list.

will do ASAP! gonna put a different plug on it since this one is kinda bunk, should have pics on wednesday!

EDIT:

hmmph, seem to have murdered the cheapo chinese regulator on the machine, gonna have to fix that now!

still waiting on a revised quote for the rails/tunnels :@

but got my rockers from VIP today... had an attempt at shrinking out the waviness on the tops of them and stuff, used a 3" piece of maple and a rubber mallot, got quite a bit smoothed out, but it's almost as if the mallot does not have enough power to get down the last little bit of the tucks and stuff. I am tempted to try one of the polished auto-body hammers and see where that gets me...

so now i'm contemplating starting on the body, i'm not sure of the condition of the inner supports on the rocker panel, so i'm thinking i might use some of this 3" square tubing i have to reinforce the body for the time being and chop out the rocker panel and see what repairs i need to do to the inside of it.

poly bushings are still in the mail, so no motor yet... need some 1/8" plate to do the rear mounts (Turns out they've gotta be stiff as the control arm can put a lot of flex on that part of the subframe), but again, no biggie.

the 960 needs a fair bit of attention (heater problems, ball joint, fuel pump issues), so that'll probably bump this out for a week or two.

also got some new consumables on order for the plasma cutter, turns out the ones i had are for a newer style of torch and hence why I was having no troubles except for starting and cut quality with the old stuff, while i couldn't seem to get air flowing through the tips out of the new stuff.



Welding in the "cold" seems to really help improve the productivity while working on sheet metal

also, there's a "Entire Drivetrain for 540i" posted on kijiji, so fingers crossed i may have a lead on my rear suspension. Then the scary stuff starts.

I've got a chinese plasma/arc/tig welder and its awesome, works really well.

540i rear end panned out, though i did get offered a mkVIII lincoln jobby for $750, but that's out of the budget at the moment (and I reckon i could get it cheaper at the p'n'p)

MKVIII lincoln is about an inch and a half wider, so not 100% sure on how that will affect handling, so i'll be looking into that before making any decisions.

1489 front track w/ a 1524 rear track

Since my job at the sheet metal shop seems to have come to a halt, it looks like i'm going to look elsewhere to get the parts made up i guess.

In the meantime, it's time to rebuild the inner rockers.

I'm working on using a bunch of 4" square tubing to reinforce the unibody right now (across A pillars, B pillars and between and and B pillars and then to the floor/seat mounts)

No consumables for the plasma cutter, nor bushings in the mail, nor floor pans nor maintenance parts for the 960 yet so little progress overall.

I am considering welding about 100" square of 3mm plate to the bulkhead on each side and about the same on the frame rails to have the mounts for the suspension, since looking at the FIA rules it is illegal to tie the cage in past the front struts in most cases, and more than likely surely illegal to use them as the suspension mounts. So therefore they must have done that for good reason, and despite the fact this car is already so far out of touch for virtually any reasonable class of racing, i'm still going to follow their building codes.

But, as far as the inner/outer rockers go:

1.25" x 1/8" cold rolled angle, similar to stock which is about .75" of the same thing. will make up the main support piece. After that i've got to figure out if any of the inner rocker existing is salvagable, otherwise use some 18ga sheet bent at a 90 to rebuild it. The floor pan also attaches to the angle steel.

After that, there is some structural repair to the insides of the A pillars as well as the bulkhead bottoms.

I'm going to have to figure out my pedal setup rather soon to figure out how things need to be fitted as well. Any suggestions here are welcome. Especially since i haven't figured out my sizes for the brakes in the end, but more or less whether i want a forward/reverse swing and firewall or floor mounts.

Pics to come when i actually get somewhere.

I did however have a buddy drop by with his skyrine and the exhaust hanging on the ground sparking. Patched it up and welded some hangars on it so he could make it back to saskatoon. Will have to build him something better when he gets some supplies.

I was thinking the other day that the 240 peddle cluster could be adapted to work without the hump (you have one of them in the engine bay like my 122 right?) - this would save some underhood space and make adding in a small boosted MC setup with a bell crank possible.

The PV is a bit of an odd duck when it comes to the way the pedals are set up, the clutch and MC are actually bottom mounted underneath the car basically while the throttle goes on a very strange linkage behind the heater box, through a brace in the firewall and out the passenger side. I'll take some pictures to show what i mean when i get a chance. I have already chopped off the stock bracket for the brakes in order to fit the suspension.

started boxing up the frame today, using 3x3" 3/16" wall square tube from a bunk bed we used to have.

Damn my welds are starting to look better and better. Practise makes perfect i guess. i've now gone through a roll of .024 and .030 in the machine, starting to really get the hang of how things should sound and found that i needed to use a bit more push angle than i was when first trying, that really seems to get the penetration i've been lacking.

EDIT:

It sure seems like i'm leaning towards the MKVIII lincoln IRS right now. They're plentiful, you can swap in the posi 8.8 bits, and i can make my car the same bolt pattern all around with some 99-01 cobra hubs. It's about 32mm wider than what i would want, but that's not a huge deal and can be dealt with in wheel selections.

The other thing that gives it an advantage is the springs are mounted fairly far inboard and it is not a coilover setup. Custom lower A arms would be fairly simple to fabricate and place the spring/shock wherever i can fit it and keep within good geometry. That, and it has some pretty nice stock geometry, when lowered an inch with stock 16x8 wheels the roll centre is just a hair under an inch off the ground and it has nice camber gain throughout the range. Big brakes are also a fairly cheap option (with the 99' cobra spindles) should i ever need them. The mounting is slightly more complicated, and the unit is slightly larger overall. It has 4 hardmounts, two that connect to a trailing-arm type mount and then two that connect to a frame rail. It will make the rear unibody on the PV rather easy to do and take care of some issues i have with rust around the wheel tubs at the same time. It will also leave plenty of room to nice a fuel cell good and low and keep the C.G low.

got the new consumables for the plasma today, tried to freehand parts for the motor mounts (some 1/4"? plate?) looks like i'll have to draw up a template. I've still gotta learn how to use the damn thing, since i know i can cut better with an oxy torch. this stuff munches sheet metal though like drawing with a sharpie on it. Anyways, if i get the hoist back from my buddy who's using it to dangle a janky ass 302 in his 80' fox, the motor will go in VERY shortly. Bracing is nearly done, just exam time/essays have been killing me.


EDIT, snowing, so i'm crunching some numbers
so each mount should be able to support around 3830 lbs of force along the axis of the weld, so that times two mounts ( not including the tranny or top mount)

should be able to support around 4400lbs of vertical load after working out the angles. then the torque they would theoretically break at (assuming i'm a good welder, which i'm not yet) is well in excess of 3300 ftlbs at the crank. take in a F.S of 6 puts me around 550 ftlbs.... should be adequate given there's still the top mount (which will support a LOT of the torque load) and the tranny mount which will support a lot of the static loading.

Tad overkill eh? These are pretty rough calculations, but are all on the conservative side of things by a longshot. In this position will have my oil pan hanging about 1" below the xmember height and about 1" above the frame rails on the bottom of the body. the tranny will end near where the stock e-brake hole is and the entire engine will hang behind the front xmember giving me about 12" to cram in whatever rad/ic/efan i can.

still no hoist, can't leave the crescent due to the snow blocking even the 4x4's in, but i did manage to weld the port-starboard braces actually to the body welded together the one motor mount too... gonna have to remember how to deal with the distortion next time by welding the inside first with the bolt in there bracing it, and then doing the outside to pull it back into shape.

if i could keep my masks/goggles from fogging up i'd be more productive too. lol.

might plasma-cut the other mount today. and maybe cut in the bow-stern brace and get that welded in.

jacked up the body in the middle a touch, popped the brace in, welded it up, and voila, the doors open/close a touch better and the body lines line up good now. So i'd say it's safe to pop off the doors and start working on the rockers/inner rockers/a pillars/floor/everything.

Yes, speed is the best thing about a plasma. I've used them lots and you get better over time. It still takes a lot of practice to get it looking great, but a wood template makes us all look like machines. Looking good - there's one good thing about snow, it's that we all get stuff done.

hopefully i'll get the rockers rebuilt
the A pillars/front inner fenders on the "cab" repaired
the firewall finished being trimmed out
motor mounted and bulkhead under the corners repaired
All before fort mac.

I'm feeling rather ambitious.

So the first guys who were going to build my frame rails/tranny/driveshaft tunnel are out, damn.

Now, i'm hoping to get the rockers/outer body structures repaired asap (with generous reinforcement)
Thinking about tacking some conduit along inside the rockers to run wires all hidden and such too, especially since the rockers will get the high density polyurethane foam treatment once the floors are in.

I'm also hoping to find my lincoln rear end/subframe before I get the rails made up because some minor revision on the design/placement could save me a fair bit of fabrication and help improve strength (placing rails along dimensions of mounting points at rear and running them to the frame spars w/ some reinforcement.

I just caught your comment about shrinking the rockers. Go get a polyurethane hammer (yellow) - that and wood are what you need. The rest sounds fine - I never thought about the angle of the torch when you were having welding problems - you don't think about things that you do instinctively.