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i think the worst ones are the hole punches on joggler tools, uselessly small Actually, this is exactly how I came around to the high heat setting. I am very lazy and it works well with the small punched holes. Believe it or not, you don't even need a hole to do this. I can get the welder set such that the top layer and a bit of metal from the wire just fuse into the bottom panel. You can see the holes in the sill and repair panel that I am installing. The holes were all made with the punch/joggle tool. The sample spot weld above is from one of these panels. And yes, do clean out the weld thru primer. Better yet, mark the spots and don't get it near the weldment in the first place! I apologize for hijacking the thread, will now go back to lurking and admiring the saving of this car.
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I am of the opinion that heat is your friend when welding. This is a 220 volt welder rated for 1/4" plate. This is the setting I use for 18 gauge sheet metal. Using 0.32" wire. Doing it this way using a 1/4" hole makes for a low profile weld that I usually don't bother to grind down if it is not going to be seen. With the small hole, aim for the middle using both hands, a bright light and your face right up there near the action, and pull the trigger for a given count. The extra heat will invite the metal from the top sheet to participate in the action and you need only release the trigger a split second before the whole lot drops out the backside. And keep a pair of wire snips handy. You should trim the burnt blob of wire off each and every time before you do the next spot-weld. It makes a big difference.
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The effort to get the wipers figured let to the HVAC ducting that led to the dash design that let to me grabbing a 1996 dash that was surplus to requirements in order to see what will fit where. Got this far The plan is to use an earlier dash from a 91. While maintaining the plug and play nature of the controls and HVAC, I want to disguise it a bit. This is another example where you need to figure 3 or 4 things out at the same time in order to avoid conflict. I knew going in that the firewall and dash area was going to be the hardest and most critical part of the project if this was to be a nice car to drive as a DD. At this point, wipers look darn near impossible, but I will figure something out.
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Last Edit: Dec 2, 2017 23:23:49 GMT by bjornagn
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Nov 25, 2017 23:10:05 GMT
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Bought two Fat-Boy scales and did some corner weights on the car. I am calling this method about +/- 10 lbs in the accuracy department. Regardless, It is a ball park method and I will continue to fine tune as I go.
LF 591 RF 601 Front axle total weight 1191 lbs
LR 522 RD 520 Rear axle total weight 1042 lbs
Total weight 2233
Front 53.4% Rear 45.6%
The goal was for 2700 lbs total vehicle weight without passengers and it should be close to that by the time the glass and interior are in. The battery will be moving to the rear and there was no gas in the tank, or else the balance would have been closer to 50-50. Not bad for a station wagon. I will go ahead and use these % values and an estimate of an additional 500 lbs distributed accordingly between front and rear to figure the spring specs.
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Last Edit: Nov 25, 2017 23:34:40 GMT by bjornagn
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Nov 21, 2017 11:42:42 GMT
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Could you use a Lucas rack/tube setup like the majority of BL cars had? You can mount the motor pretty much anywhere with those, and sweep, parking etc. is relatively straightforward to vary. I am familiar with those and yes it oculd be made to work; probably would have been the easy button. The universal Hot Rod kits are all pretty much the same idea. What I don't like about the LUCAS item is that it would be mounted inside the car and would not plug directly into the Miata wire harness. When driving the MGB GT in the rain the noise from the LUCAS wiper motor is quite evident and not what I consider a "quality" sound if you know what I mean. As an aside, I note that Miatae in the UK park the wipers on the LH of the car and sweep L to R. Potentially that could give me a better window swipe than the NA r to L motion ( when starting from park) Also keeping the system as close to Miata stock as possible should pay dividends as I go to stuff the Miata HVAC ducting in place. Lets see how big of a mess this design is when I go to fire it up.
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You do realize that after the intro to your tube notching tool,we need to see the thing in action...right?
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I wish it were that easy... you will note that there is no room for a wiper motor since the HVAC system is taking up that dimension. first thought was that I would offset the motor using this device since the was room for the drive: I went so far as to mock it up and drive the wipers with a drill. It could have worked, but somehow did not seem right. For one, it put the wiper motor inside the car and I have never liked the sound of the wipers in the MGB and this is meant to be a step more posh. So, what else could we do? How about make hybrid spindles for the wipers? Turns out the Volvo wiper pivot comes apart and the shaft is just 5/16" steel rod. So with little fanfare and a bit of molten steel, we did just that. Volvo bit after removing from spindle assembly Hybrid made using the Miata pivit lever, some random 5/16" round stock I had laying around and the splined wiper mount from the Volvo that will press right on after I trim for length. And when assembled with the shortened Miata rod in between, I have this That bolts right in and clear what needs clearing. Spoiler, look at the other rod end laying in the cowl. That is meant to connect from the wiper motor to the PS spindle lever. Yeah, it is a bit long, not a big deal.... Also note the odd piece of cut away metal inside the cowl. The GOOD news is that the Miata wiper motor can be re-clocked and used in its factory mounting location. The original clocking wanted the wiper motor and the Volvo tub to co-exist in the same spatial dimensions. So, so far so good. Just one link missing from the motor arm to the PS pivot arm. Should be easy enough to shorten. BUT...that funny bit of metal that you can see in the cowl? It is in the way. Along with some structure that you cant see cause it is further inside the combined cowl. Through some form or as yet undetermined metal eliminating key-hole surgery, I have to make room in there. And I am not delusional enough to think the fun will stop there. Wiper parking, sweep direction and sweep span will all have to be sorted I am sure. Also need to make sure that all parts can be serviced in future if and when need be.
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Nov 19, 2017 11:34:39 GMT
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Curious what type of flare you need to make. There is a double inverted flare used in most NA cars and a bubble flare used in European cars. Also, the English bubble flare is not exactly the same as the Euro bubble. All require a different flaring tool. that your friend the plumber lent you a flaring tool concerns me since plumbing flared fittings are a different matter again. Sorry, he’s a plumber building a kitcar, So it is an automotive one, will do single and double flares.... I was led to believe a double flare would work for a bubble flare (?) the brakes are vw front and Porsche rear, so should be bubble flare I have in a pinch used a double flaring tool to make bubble flares for my MGs. What you do is stop after the fist step where you used the mandrel. Since I hate chasing fluid leaks, I increase my odds of success by buying pre-made lengths of brake-line and then only have to flare the cone end after I cut and form the line. Not as economical as working from a roll.
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Nov 16, 2017 22:11:40 GMT
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Going home Satrday?....That is not enough "test and tune" time for me!?
It's not JUST that I would want to Hoon the thing around for a few hundred miles, ( i would) but there is always teething problems after major surgery. This be like sending a patient home home the day after open heart surgery.
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Nov 15, 2017 19:51:39 GMT
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Curious what type of flare you need to make.
There is a double inverted flare used in most NA cars and a bubble flare used in European cars. Also, the English bubble flare is not exactly the same as the Euro bubble.
All require a different flaring tool. that your friend the plumber lent you a flaring tool concerns me since plumbing flared fittings are a different matter again.
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Nov 15, 2017 19:45:44 GMT
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Since I declared this project to be back on the front burner, figured I should post something to back it up. So, while one of the three Petes labours on getting the front sheet-metal ready to be welded back on, ( Big milestone to me) I am starting to address one of the things I have been dreading. Windshield wipers. As those of you who have done this know, the firewall merge on a chassis swap can be the tricky part, what with merging the technologies and dimensional realities of the two cars. While this might look underwhelming as a picture, it represents a big step forward in my battle to get wipers on this car. A wiper mechanism has been located. To be precise, a Volvo wiper mechanism, using the Volvo mounting hardware! Success!!!! The only thing missing is a method to drive said mechanism. From this point, I am trying to contrive a way to drive the wipers with the Miata wiper motor. The benefit is that it will plug into the Miata harness that I want to use, and hence speak directly to the stalk controls, avec multiple speed options, as per the Miata factory intentions. I know that I will know how to do this in the future, but right at this moment I don't have a clue! Failing the Miata motor, wonder if a linear drive of some sort might be out there? Maybe a servo that I can control speed and stroke-lenght?
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Nov 15, 2017 12:24:36 GMT
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This truck is keeping it's 8 lug hubs and it's twin "I" beam front suspension. It will get new front coils because the new lump doesn't weigh enough to drop 'em down where they need to be. "Lower?" not really. The owner likes the higher ride height. I have to do something with the front coils though, so it handles right and wears tires properly. It's going to look factory on the outside and sound quite a bit different! Love the build so far, I really can't complain except it took SO LONG to get some of the parts. This should have been done and gone by now, but hey- it's getting real close! You bring up an interesting point here for those playing along at home thinking this might be better than working for a living. As someone who helps finance his hobby by doing work on other peoples cars on occasion, the calendar time to get the job done vastly exceeds the actual job time. Waiting for parts and sorting out wrong parts eats up weeks if not months of calendar days. With a 100 hour job taking two months to finish, its no way to obtain a steady cashflow!
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A tip that works well for me...
You want the end of the tube to be as square as possible. The tube cutter does not always do a perfect job of this. What I do is chuck it in the flaring clamp facing the wrong way. Then I use a file to file it flat to the surface of the flaring clamp. Bit of a touch from the countersink tool to deburr and it is ready to flare.
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The vice and a hammer to make the coil nice and straight works a charm With the NiCop tube, don't go too heavy handed on the flaring tool. When you feel it stop moving, stop crushing it or you end up with lopsided flares. Don't buy a cheap flaring tool, it will make life miserable, scuff the tube and not give consistent results.
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The vice and a hammer to make the coil nice and straight works a charm
With the NiCop tube, don't go too heavy handed on the flaring tool. When you feel it stop moving, stop crushing it or you end up with lopsided flares.
Don't buy a cheap flaring tool, it will make life miserable, scuff the tube and not give consistent results.
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Nov 13, 2017 15:35:47 GMT
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The willingness to make the hard, time consuming and expensive decisions to re-do something will pay off when the project is complete.
The sum total of all the "Good enough's" undermines the final results of a lot of car projects.
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You mention that the tubes are 4130 chrome-moly. In my experience I have only seen chrome-moly TIG welded. Is the MIG just for tacking or are you going to MIG the chassis?
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Once I got about half an hour into the two hour drive, I started to relax and really enjoy the car. It cruised effortlessly and with the OD would have had no problems keeping up with traffic on the highway had we chosen to take that route. As it was it was country roads in late fall with the temp around 9 degrees C.
Surprisingly, I was quite comfortable in a ski jacket, hat and driving gloves. The truth is that this car seems to generate a fair bit of heat that makes it into the engine compartment.
This was not only my first time driving the car (had to hire someone for the first hour-long shakedown) but also my first time driving a big Healey, and while in some ways it feels like a Combine going 120 km/hr, it does have an appeal.
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Last Edit: Nov 5, 2017 15:59:41 GMT by bjornagn
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Two hour top down fall weather drive in order to return the car, Ran perfect and no other issues.
Now to get back to the Molvo.
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