Saturday, December 21, 2013

Tube Prep - The OCD Stuff

So now I've got a bunch of holes in my tubes, thanks to some ridiculous notion that it might provide some potential future benefit.  That means it's time to put it all back together in the jig, and start welding it up, right?  Well, that would be one option.  But there's that nagging little voice in my head, convincing me it would be irresponsible to put this car together with tubes that have so much crap inside of them.


First up is getting rid of that nasty burr on the inside edge of each hole.


Now I could stop there, but why half-ass it?  I'm not going to be satisfied until I've made a complete ass of myself.  So I stuff a half sheet of paper towel in the end of the tube and use my highly specialized multipurpose tool to swab it through like cleaning the barrel of a rifle.



Most of the grime comes out with the first swabbing.


And the second swabbing leaving it clean as a whistle.  Come to think of it, whistles get pretty gross...Hopefully cleaner than a whistle.


Then it's just a quick wipe down on the outside with Acetone, bevel all of the edges on the grinding wheel, final smoothing around all of the edges with the wire wheel, and putting it all back together in the jig as shown below in the picture that is not-at-all* the same picture used in my previous post.


My only thought for next time is swabbing the tubes before drilling the holes, rather than after deburring them.  I'm not exactly the most skilled with a deburring tool, such that even with the big bits of burr gone there can still be just a little bit left poking up that can snag the paper towel a bit.

* "exactly"

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Tube Prep - The Boring Stuff

"Anything worth doing, is worth overdoing." - (Sir) Mick Jagger  

So, it turns out I might be going a little overboard with tube prep.  I start out with my jig board, that has now been expanded to accommodate the full length of the outboard cockpit sides. 


Notice the 'flat pack' of tubes all cut to the correct length and angle, looking like they're in a police lineup. 


Each number corresponds to a numbered location on the build table. They are also cataloged in an excel spreadsheet, including their raw stock length, for the purpose of maximizing tube cuts and minimizing odd length excess.  It also might come in handy for future reference.  The full set of tubes are then temporarily mocked up in the jig, where the edges of each tube intersection are marked with a Sharpie.


At each tube intersection where one tube dead ends into another, a hole is drilled.  The end result is that the entire chassis will be one continuous interconnected volume.


One theory is that this improves the finish weld, as the heated (expanding) air has a means of escape other than past the weld arc and puddle.  The other, more important aspect to me is that, should I choose to do so, I will be able to pour the rust inhibiting compound of my choice inside the chassis, rotate it a few times to get into every tube, then carefully drain it back out again.  This would be all but guaranteed to have some 'pools' that would never be fully drained out, and will certainly add a little weight, but could also help the chassis longevity...Or could end up being little more than some quality time spent with my drill.  Hence the quote from the great philosopher, Sir Jagger.

More overdoing it to come...

Monday, December 16, 2013

First Article Welding



Wow…Looking back on my build log, I didn’t realize that I hadn’t updated it with any of my activities in as long as it has been.  Over the past couple of months since my last update, I have not been simply been idle.  While progress is almost never as fast as I would like, it is still happening.   It never ceases to amaze me how quickly time slips away. 

That’s not to say that all of my time has been productively moving the project forward by any means either.  As SWEETA (She Who Enables Every Thing Automotive) will readily attest, I am constantly researching various aspects of exciting and interesting (to me) ideas.  The theory behind this is to gain an understanding of the idea to the point of identifying the obstacles or shortcomings, and devising a method for overcoming them.  However, frequently this obsession gets in the way of making other physical accomplishments as well.  Some of the research does end up being for ideas ultimately related to this car, but are not really of concern for quite some time to come.  The irony being that much of the time taken for the research now, subsequently pushes my actual timeframe to use the information gleaned even further out.  Beyond that I often become totally obsessed with unconventional ideas for a period of time, completely unrelated to completing this project whatsoever.  These will typically last anywhere from a couple of days to a few weeks.  The most frequently recurring of these relapses are the ones that are most likely to be attempted as future projects…Provided I can stop researching them for long enough to finish this project first.  

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, when we last left the project I was just getting ready to add blocks to jig the tubes in place prior to welding.  These blocks are not built into the table itself, but rather are all on a separate sheet of (cull) MDF that can be stored separately without taking the jig blocks off.   Following that was tube prep for the first attempt at executing my planned method for building the chassis sides.  This would serve to prove out a host of ideas and methods I’m attempting, be they successful or not.  More specific details will follow in subsequent entries over the next few days.

 

Once my first article was tacked together, I then focused on improving my welding skills until I could regularly run a bead that wouldn’t make me afraid to drive the car.  I did decide to abandon my attempts at perfecting the ‘weave’ welding technique for now, which produces the stack-of-dimes look, in favor of sticking with the structurally equivalent but less attractive ‘stringer’ welds.  I’d like to be able to say that the time saved was making up for the time I spent researching and gave me more time to work on the car, but there is no amount of time saved that can make up for the time I spend researching…And the reality is more likely that the time saved, just gave me more time to research.


With my welding skills turned all the way up to ‘adequate’ it was time to finish weld as much as possible on the first article piece, to see how badly it would potato-chip.  As it turns out, almost not at all!