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Apr 18, 2016 14:43:51 GMT
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Rotisseries are GREAT! Scrubbed the bottom with 3M pads and Simple Ggreen alternating with Varsol de-greaser. You can pretty much eat off the bottom of the car now. Remains to be seen what the lawn thinks of that lot... ![]() ![]()  Next is to seam seal all the exposed welds, mask the interior off and shoot a finish coat of rocker-guard. At that point I can start to assemble the rolling shell. |
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eurogranada
Europe
To tinker or not to tinker, that is the question...
Posts: 2,556
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Apr 18, 2016 15:09:04 GMT
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Aren't you afraid of introducing water to tight gaps like between (spot welded) panels and freshly welded areas? Especially as you say next step is seam sealing...
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Apr 18, 2016 15:24:18 GMT
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Aren't you afraid of introducing water to tight gaps like between (spot welded) panels and freshly welded areas? Especially as you say next step is seam sealing... Yes I am but not too much. You do the best you can and keep moving on. Since it will only be a fair weather car, experience tells me it's going to outlast me, so why worry? I went over the car with the leaf blower to chase out the puddles and what not. Most of the welds had been painted over already to minimize corrosion. |
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Apr 24, 2016 22:48:42 GMT
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The goal was to have the underside painted in rocker-guard by this time. Well, so much for that plan. Taped off the seams and got a good start on seam sealing before I ran out of seam sealer. Also found a few spots that needed a touch with the welder before they could be seam sealed. Also have to do a bunch of masking so I don't get rocker guard all over the place. I then got distracted by the frame re-enforcement and the need to modify so that I could get the Miata hydraulics to go where they needed to go. No way was I willing to give up the tidy side-by side factory look of the Miata lines. Somehow, this ate up all the available time this week end and I still need to actually weld the frame stiffeners to the Miata frame-rail. That should be fun since the Miata framerails are 24 gauge and the stiffener is 1/8" steel. Going to take some fancy welding to merge those two. Will shoot for next wee-end to spraythe underside in rocker-guard. Pics in no real order.     |
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Apr 25, 2016 14:36:45 GMT
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nice stuff...love the side by side lines!
JP
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I know its spelled Norman Luxury Yacht, but its pronounced Throat Wobbler Mangrove!
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Another week slipped by and I did not get the bottom coated. As I go over everything I keep finding details that need to be addressed; a weld here and a grind there.... So, while the goal was to have the underside coated in rockguard by last week-end, another week-end has slipped by and I only got this far. It is hard to force myself to slow down and tend to the details when what I want to do is spray paint so I can get started with permanent re-assembly! Still....small steps count.  |
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May 15, 2016 12:31:23 GMT
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Since man can not live on fabrication alone, I decided to make more room on my parts shelves by amalgamating all the engine parts into a single part that will reside on the engine stand. Hopefully, by the end of today, this will be an assembled long-block. In other news, the AOD transmission has come back from the rebuilders and is ready to go.  The ARP hardware is totally unnecessary for this low power build, but I do like the quality feel of their hardware! Learned a neat engine building tip from the guy who is mentoring me on the 302 build. This would apply to just about any can-in-block build: When installing the cam, rather than feeding it in horizontally and struggling to avoid damaging the cam and bearings, simply lay your engine stand down on its back so the engine is vertical. This way you can just drop the cam down the hole. On a ford 302, if you put the cam in before the crank, its even easier since you can guide the cam as it drops into place |
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Last Edit: May 15, 2016 12:55:47 GMT by bjornagn
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Made it this far:  Issues with the heads were wrong rocker studs and a slight interference with the head when the lifters were being installed that required a firm hand to "snap" into place. |
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OK, moving back to my comfort zone. This post is for those you you who are facing a bit of panel replacement work for the first time and might be a bit worried about how to proceed. Don't overthink this stuff its pretty simple. No need for fancy spot-weld cutters. Just a couple of drill bits, a hammer and a chisel and you are good. The Molvo outer sills were not bad, but I did not trust them to not pop some rust blisters in a year or so after paint, so they had to go. With a 1/8" bit, do a shallow pilot hole that just goes into the lower layer of tin.  Then using a 5/16" bit that has been re-ground to a shallow angle, chase the 1/8" pilot hole. The flat bit will stop cutting when it hits the bottom of the 18" hole.   Now take a wood chisel and your favorite hammer and finish the job; there are always a few spot-weld cling-ons that require persuasion.  An hour later we have the old sill off. Bit of POR and the new one is ready to go on.  There is one little remnant that I need to sort out along with the only minor bit of corrosion that needs repair on the inner sill.  Also decided I did not like the crossmember design that I made to hang the engine. Just not confidence inspiring. Before:  After:  |
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"Now take a wood chisel and your favorite hammer and finish the job"I think this is why is love this site. We've got @johnnybravo making machines to make machines that will make the bit he needs, we've got Darkspeed just knocking up a flow cabinet, along with loads of other hi-tech examples and then, we have one of my favourite threads advocating the use of a hammer and chisel, just like I'd use.  RR? It's top! Thanks bjornagn for posting something I can understand, first time! 
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Hammer and chisel totally overlooked. No good for carving crankshafts/eccentric shafts from billet though....Old Zulu man who cut the front off the donor car in SA was a master. Not even a sharp edge.
When I separated the sills I also used a hammer and chisel. What I found worked really wall was an old carving knife that had the sharp edge taken off a bit that it wasn't very sharp. Hit with a hammer on the back of the blade, not the handle. Worked extremely well
Great work as usual, another thread I lurk on!
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We last left off with this piece of outer sill that could not be easily removed because it was layered in with the quarter panel and B post pressings. So, after much deliberation, off came a chunk of the B post and sill as an assembly. Easy enough to get at the last spotwelds holding the outer sill remains.  Ad off it came.  The bit we cut off will weld right back where it came from. Will do a nice butt-weld, clean up the seam and nobody will be the wiser. I love working with factory pressings; note how well the swage line fits the rear quarter panel demarcation.  Bit of welding to be done and this side will be done! Going to inject a lot of POR in the cavity to preserve the sill from the inside. |
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Hammer and chisel totally overlooked. No good for carving crankshafts/eccentric shafts from billet though....Old Zulu man who cut the front off the donor car in SA was a master. Not even a sharp edge. When I separated the sills I also used a hammer and chisel. What I found worked really wall was an old carving knife that had the sharp edge taken off a bit that it wasn't very sharp. Hit with a hammer on the back of the blade, not the handle. Worked extremely well Great work as usual, another thread I lurk on! Check out some of the you tube videos of experienced metalworkers scraping metal with a hand tool which looks remarkably like a wood chisel and you will see they can even be used for precision machining! (though I must admit I am more of a 4lb lump hammer user) |
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I've done a lot of my "machining" with a drill, hacksaw and some files... It just takes ages & is exhausting. |
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May 27, 2016 12:22:28 GMT
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I envy people who have large blocks of time to work on their projects. While I strive to get 10 hours a week into the Molvo, it mostly has to happen as baby steps that get something accomplished or on the way to being accomplished.
Last night all I had time to do was measure and fabricate a patch panel for the middle sill and punch the holes for the spot-welds. Hey, its progress right, sorry, not very exciting progress, but that is kind of the reality of getting a project done.
With the week-end upon us, I will try to finish up this sill and dogleg repair. Then repeat on the other side which will be problematic because Iused the last factory P1800 sill on the planet doing this side and I cant find a RH side one.
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May 27, 2016 22:47:58 GMT
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loving your fabrication work, it's inspiring & can't wait to see it on it's wheels!
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May 27, 2016 23:02:48 GMT
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loving your fabrication work, it's inspiring & can't wait to see it on it's wheels! Thanks. I appreciate the kind words. This project covers a LOT of ground and I hope that some of what I post can help others. |
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May 27, 2016 23:30:09 GMT
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Thanks. I appreciate the kind words. This project covers a LOT of ground and I hope that some of what I post can help others. And it covers it very, very well, If I may say. |
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May 28, 2016 23:13:41 GMT
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Moving right along. Fixing a couple of spots on the middle sill and POR coating the inner cavity. Besides the long piece I cut out along the length of the door opening, there were these two spots that needed sorting due to the tin worm.  Cut, patched and ground. For the life of me, I canf figure why I care that the welds are invisible in a panel that is going to be hidden forever. But it seems I do.  Since I want to protect the panels as much as possible, I am going to coat everything in POR rust paint. However, I still need bare metal in order to do the spotwelds.So, rather than leave large areas unpainted, or go back and grind paint later, I used a punch set and a roll of tape to make a bunch of dots. The required spotwelds were marked and the dots went over the area to protect from POR coverage.  Bit later  Inside of sill cavity also coated. That was messy. POR does NOT come off skin. That is going to be a problem....  So that leaves this one long patch panel to weld in. (The one being held by the vice grips) |
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May 29, 2016 11:23:16 GMT
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Motivated myself to get out there and weld in the long patch along the top of the sill. Came out pretty nice if I do say so myself. Still need to burn in the outer sill and fit/weld the dogleg.  For those that are new to this welding thing, or that might be intimidated to try, I have a process that I teach that takes about an hour of practice. With a bit ofpractice, anyone can make beads that look like this with the backside looking almost identical. This was the butt-welded seam before I ground it down flat. Note that the weld is not too proud of the surface, so it will minimize grinder time. The backside of this weld should look very similar to the topside.  The trick is to weld much hotter than you would ever think to go with thin sheet-metal. Most people think that they should be welding thin metal on the A or B setting. This is a 220 volt welder good for 1/4" material and I weld on the second highest setting with a low wire speed. (0.035" wire. speed would go up a bit for thinner wire) The trick is to not try and run a bead just do a series of dots. If you look close you can see the individual dots on the bead that I show above. I aim for a zero gap if possible, but don't really worry too much as this method will fill gaps just as well.     This method of welding hot also works well on spot welds in order to minimize the height of the finished weld. Use a small hole 5/16" if using a drill or just whatever the punch/flange tool creates. Hold the tip aimed straight down the middle of the hole, pull the trigger and count to one. This should be the result. Nice low profile spot weld that should require little or no attention from the grinder. Two other tips: Make sure your panels are clamped together with no gap or you will make a hole. And before you do a spot weld, cut the little blob of molten-oxydized wire off the end of the wire, it makes a difference.  |
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