"Rookie-Touring" '69 Dart
Not much in the lines of fun pics to show for progress but here's where I'm at this morning.
Yesterday got my tube bender put together. Bought it from tubetek.net; they have a great price and their product is really good. I built a bench top base for it which worked out great yesterday.
Used it first to bend up some rear tubes that will pick up the rear lower control arms. I'm using tube clamps on the rear pickups in order to drop the entire rear-end, if needed, but I need to get two additional that should be here Friday. My original design only required using two tube clamps, but I changed it in order to make building the rear frame rails easier, which also simplified these tubes but now I need two additional clamps. The tubes are tacked in place until I can get the suspension mocked up against it and I know the fit is perfect.
Welded in the rest of the center section on the chassis, with exception of the support pieces that the floor will rest on. I'm waiting to put those in until I can test fit the chassis; I want to make sure the width is adequate for the trans and exhaust routing. This isn't a great picture to see it since the chassis is upside down but I'll try to get it flipped today.
My new inner rocker panels will be here tomorrow so I finished getting the drivers side ready for those, still need to lay down some weld thru primer but I'll get that today. Sure isn't much left of the original rocker, but this should work out perfect.
Had some problems with gas flow on the welder over the last few days so we spent a bunch of time getting that worked out. I noticed the problem while welding on my fishplates, they came out looking terrible so I had to grind everything down; hoping to get at cleaning those up a bit soon. Took a while to get it worked out but we fixed the issue (kink on the line inside the machine) and all is good now.
Today we are assembling my front lower A arms; we're tigging these together. My buddy Dave will be doing the tig work on these so I'm headed to his place shortly. After that, I'll come back and finish getting things ready new inner rockers and installing the chassis for the first time. Hopefully will be another productive day. I still have a lot to do in order to make this thing a roller before I leave but I believe I can do it, time will tell. More to come...
Not much in the lines of fun pics to show for progress but here's where I'm at this morning.
Yesterday got my tube bender put together. Bought it from tubetek.net; they have a great price and their product is really good. I built a bench top base for it which worked out great yesterday.
Used it first to bend up some rear tubes that will pick up the rear lower control arms. I'm using tube clamps on the rear pickups in order to drop the entire rear-end, if needed, but I need to get two additional that should be here Friday. My original design only required using two tube clamps, but I changed it in order to make building the rear frame rails easier, which also simplified these tubes but now I need two additional clamps. The tubes are tacked in place until I can get the suspension mocked up against it and I know the fit is perfect.
Welded in the rest of the center section on the chassis, with exception of the support pieces that the floor will rest on. I'm waiting to put those in until I can test fit the chassis; I want to make sure the width is adequate for the trans and exhaust routing. This isn't a great picture to see it since the chassis is upside down but I'll try to get it flipped today.
My new inner rocker panels will be here tomorrow so I finished getting the drivers side ready for those, still need to lay down some weld thru primer but I'll get that today. Sure isn't much left of the original rocker, but this should work out perfect.
Had some problems with gas flow on the welder over the last few days so we spent a bunch of time getting that worked out. I noticed the problem while welding on my fishplates, they came out looking terrible so I had to grind everything down; hoping to get at cleaning those up a bit soon. Took a while to get it worked out but we fixed the issue (kink on the line inside the machine) and all is good now.
Today we are assembling my front lower A arms; we're tigging these together. My buddy Dave will be doing the tig work on these so I'm headed to his place shortly. After that, I'll come back and finish getting things ready new inner rockers and installing the chassis for the first time. Hopefully will be another productive day. I still have a lot to do in order to make this thing a roller before I leave but I believe I can do it, time will tell. More to come...
