Why I havent been making many knives... My shoptime is going into this!

Justin, I love browsing through this thread. That's a heck of a project you've got there, and you're doing a bang up job!

Keep it up and keep us posted!

--nathan
 
I haven't been doing nothing! My camera is on the fritz so i've only really had my iphone to take photos with. Having no flash, it's been bad for most of the stuff i've been doing.

Tonight I've been gaining a much greater appreciation for good welders. Having bought myself a lincoln mig welder for xmass, I took it upon myself to start the work to box in the differential mounts, and to repair the broken one (right front)

First I fabricated the gussets and tested them for fit, each one needing to be a slightly different size.

In this first photo you can see the cracked through mount
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and here's the other side
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Next I had to take a wire wheel on my drill and get off all the paint where I was going to be welding so that I'd have a nice clean surface.

The first thing I wanted to tackle was the cracked mount... Well, here's my first weld bead. Not horrible, not great. As you can tell by the splatter, I'm using the flux core roll that came with the welder at the moment while i'm learning.

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Then came time to put my first full plate in. Well, I learned that my 'close' fit, wasn't really close enough, I need to do a much much closer fit to get a clean weld. The bead where the edges matched up perfectly is 'ok' if not very pretty. Where there was just a slight gap... not so much, so i tried to build a bit of overlapping weld to close up the gap, and just made it look ugly!

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Seeing how ugly my first one was, i moved over to the right hand mount and decided to do the outside side, where it's least visible, with the thought being that as I do this more, I'll get better at it, so make my next ugly mess in a less visible spot. This one didn't come out so bad, although you cant really see the bead along the other edges in this photo, since I couldn't really get a photo at that angle.

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I got too darned cold out in my garage so decided to come in and warm up before tackling the last two. When done, I'll first grind down the welds flat on the face of the mounts where the bushings contact, and then I will be expanding-foam filling the inside of each cavity so that water cant accumulate in them and then re-painting over the whole area.
 
Well, I cant really say that I got much better between my first differential mount reinforcement weld, and my last one, but... the differentials mounts are boxed in, and shouldn't crack again in my lifetime.

Unfortunately after I finished the welding, I realized that I'm all out of flap disks to clean up the weld with, and the hardware store is already closed for Sunday. Guess I'll clean them up and paint them tomorrow =D

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It's a good thing these welds will be on the bottom of the chassis where no one will ever see them !
 
I've been staring at the pics for 5 minutes trying find something nice to say about the welds.:eek::confused:

Only thing I can think of is: Thanks, now my welds look much better to me. :p;)
 
Yesterday I prepped and primed the work that I had done on the differential mounts, and this morning before work I painted them. I forgot to take photos before I got them all dirty with grinding dust from the work I was doing tonight, but I must say, they dont look that bad all things considered.

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Now the frame has 3 areas that need repair to the boxed in members. The "oh crap" part from above, and a section at the rear on the very end. Tonight I prepped them for repair, trimming back to good metal and sanding down to clean metal around the edges.

Here's the part at the back. There's supposed to be a support in the middle here where one of the bolts that holds the rear bumper support goes, but it was totally rusted out, and all but gone. As you can see, the frame was previously acid dipped, but it's been such a long time that there's a little surface rust forming inside again. I'll spray everything down with that phosphoric acid rust converter & paint prep stuff, and then spray as much good paint inside to seal it again before I do my welding. Here's the rear section trimmed back to good metal.

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Under the Tshirt was the other bad spot. After trimming back one side, I was able to run a vacuum all around the inside of the frame to make sure I got rid of all the loose stuff.

On this side, the top of the frame looks in just fine shape, and the sidewalls on the whole thing are in great shape.
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Again, as mentioned before, there's a little surface rust on the inside, although for the most part it's clean, after the acid dipping that had been done.
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The other side however has a rust hole in the top as well, although most of the metal looks good outside of that one area. The top Tshirt will be coming off and be replaced so that can be repaired as well.
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Next I've got to cut out patches to fit the 3 holes I made, and get them as close to an absolute perfect fit as I can.
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My camera is really on the way out, so again photos from my iphone and nowhere near as good =/

I took to repairing the back section this evening.

First here's a photo of how it looked before i trimmed it out (post above) This is a real bad photo, but you can see it's got a ton of little holes in it and is in bad shape.

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After trimming it out, I cut a repair panel as close as I possibly could with a lot of grinding on my belt grinder to get the fit exact


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The magnets held it in place while i tacked the repair piece down. In so doing I realized my ground was bad, and i wasn't clean enough around the weld to get a good arc, so i stopped here and wire brushed the rest of the paint off in the back. Then i proceeded to make a bunch more tacks, and then started to connect them messily.
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The individual runs of weld weren't so bad this time, it looks a lot worse in this photo than it really was

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I forgot to get a photo of the next part, but I then took my flap disk and ground all the welds flush to make sure that I had full penetration, and to make the repair seamless. I had to touch up a spot here and there and re-grind them down again, but for the most part it was good. I then went and pounded away all over the panel with my pick hammer to make sure everything was nice and solid. Finally I hit it up with some self etching primer, inside and out, and I'm waiting for that to dry overnight before I put a finish coat of black on it.

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Here's a photo of the weldable primer that i'm using. Picked it up at a local welding supply house.

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This afternoon I prepped another side for welding, and will be heading back out to prep the other side and get the patches fit exactly

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I cut out another area that, while not perforated, didn't seem as solid as I'd like, since I only want to have to be down here welding once.

I welded in the patch, and unfortunately without my real camera working right 90% of the time, I cant get photos of my much nicer looking weld beads =P

Here's the spot welded in before grinding.

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and here it is after grinding down the welds flush (I did a much better job with penetration this time, and didn't have to spend a lot of time re-welding after grinding) and priming it

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Aaand, time to fill in that new hole that I cut.

Here's the patch shaped and tacked in place.
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This is the best shot yet of some of my welds. They're messy still, but at least I'm getting that overlapping dimes type look in them so I'm moving a puddle and getting penetration. To prevent warpage, or getting an area to hot, I've been playing connect the dots with my tack welds.
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After cleaning up the weld, everything is flush, the dimples you see are from my pick hammer, going over everything and listening to make sure it all sounds solid.

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And lastly, re-priming this area to let it all dry so I can go over it with the top coat enamel tomorrow and be done with this side (until I get my replacement bottom tshirt from Moss motors, it's in the mail)

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A box from Good Parts arrived today with parts I need to start re-assembly ! The front springs are back-ordered for a few weeks, but I still need to disassemble, clean, paint etc all the parts for the front suspension rebuild anyways, so hopefully I can have that all done by the time the springs arrive.

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I did my frame repairs on the other side of the bottom of the frame tonight. Pardon the Iphone photos again. I think I know what camera I'll be getting to replace my broken one though !

First I had to fit the replacement patch to the first hole that I had cut out. As with the other side, I also opted to replace more metal where it was solid but seemed too thin for my taste while I was in there.

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I made it this far before... I ran out of welding wire! Thank goodness it was a little before 9pm still, so I was able to zip down to Lowes and get some more. I just had a centimeter or less of length to finish this patch.

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Here you can see my fitting the other replacement patch. A close fit really helps when I get going.

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The way that I've been welding these patches in is to first tack them every inch or so. Then I've been laying down weld on opposite sides and connecting where I tacked it. I've been doing this to prevent from overheating any particular area, which I've still managed to do occasionally, leaving a molten hole to repair.

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Here's everything welded up and ready to clean up

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And here it is cleaned up. On both sides I have a slight dimple between the patches, because the patch material I used was 1/8th inch thick, and the frame itself is 16 gauge. This didn't let me quite get everything perfectly smooth and seamless looking, but it'll be under the Tshirt when it's done anyways. Again I beat the heck out of everything with my pick hammer to make sure it was all solid after welding and cleaning up.

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And finally I primed the area, and the inside of the new bottom tshirt. Tomorrow morning I will paint these areas with the top coat, and tomorrow evening I'll get the bottom tshirt welded on, so I can then flip the frame over and chop the top tshirt off! The repairs that I will have to do on the top should be far far far less significant than the bottom. In fact, it looks like only one side may need any repair at all, and that only a small patch. I was able to poke and prod and explore around at what the metal on the top should look like from the inside when I had the holes chopped out.

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More parts arrived at my place today! A package came from Rat-Co containing my rear shock in coil conversion kit, specifically made with deeper seating cups for use with lowered springs so that the shock wont bottom out. Also I got my ratco throttle linkage kit as well =)

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It's really starting to feel like I'm just about at the point where I start re-assembling. I've got to weld on the bottom tshirt and paint it tonight, and then flip the frame over, chop the top tshirt off, and assess how much repair is needed. As far as I can tell from having looked through the holes I cut in the bottom, currently it's just one small section that's got a problem on the top, so should be a quick fix.

After that will be disassembling the suspension, breaks, etc from the old frame for refurbishment.

On a side note, i was pleasantly surprised to find that the rat-co shock in coil conversion kit comes with new spring seatings, which means I've got an extra set of rear spring packings in poly since I ordered some with the springs from GoodParts as well, oops, ah well =)



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Bottom is finished (well, except the top coat of paint)

Welded on the bottom T-Shirt plate

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and primed the area so that I can paint it black and flip the whole thing over

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Looking good. One possible suggestion for interior frame paint is Eastwood's interior frame paint. It's got a couple feet of tubbing and a brass nozzel. Works great, I used it on my Scout after blasting the frame. Just find a hole in the frame and snake the tube in and spray till you see green/yellow colored paint running out of everywhere, move to new section and do again. It took about 4 cans to do my Scout, but I went a little over kill as it's a 4x4 and will be in mud and water.
 
The frame is done! Well, mostly.

Even with as light as the frame is on our cars, flipping one over by yourself is kinda a pain. My engine hoist helps move a lot more than just engines!

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To chop off the top tshirt, I first cut a line straight through the center and then did one side at a time
As I more or less knew from having inspected the metal from the inside when repairing the bottom, there was only one spot that needed fixing on the top, and even that spot wasn't bad at all. But no point in doing things half way.

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Again, careful fitting of the patch piece makes for easy welding.

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Next I primed everything with self etching primer and let it sit over night. The next day I went over it all with chassis black, and then let it sit for a day again.
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Finally I drilled and then filed out to sufficient size the holes for the 4 bolt holes in the frame. Not the prettiest holes when i was done, but they'll work. I then welded the top tshirt on, primed it and let it sit over night.

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Finally this morning, I went in and top coated the new Tshirt on the frame and all the areas around it where I sanded / ground / brushed / etc off the paint

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Next up... dismantling the suspension from the old frame so I can clean it all, and rebuild it on the new frame with all the new bushings, springs, parts, etc!

I also, after a good bit of research, and reading up on custom car forums, placed an order for 3 Handi Foam II-22 kits, which should, I believe, be sufficient to 2 part closed cell urethane foam fill the cavities on both the chassis, and, once I get to them, the rocker panels / sills. This foam is the exact same foam that used to be sold by a different company (who just bought from FOMO and re-packaged it) as "AutoFoam" and which is still sold in much larger kits by FOMO for automotive purposes.
 
MMM, cleaned and powder coated suspension parts. (no this isn't all of them, just the ones I took a picture of =D)

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Concerned by what looked like a hairline crack I found when starting to clean off my trailing arms, I bought another pair of trailing arms from a fellow in New England Triumphs and picked them up this morning. They're in great shape, although a few of the studs are missing, but the threads inside those holes are not stripped and are very good. I got one of the trailing arms mostly sandblasted, but then something clogged in my feeder pipe and I've got to take it apart and unclog it before i can finish. It's taken a combination of a brass wire cup on the end of my drill and sand blasting to get 40 years of road gunk and tar off these trailing arms. I'm going to finish them with VHT silver caliper paint once they're fully blasted and cleaned. I have new rubber plugs for them as well already in hand. I hope to get these new trailing arms all set and ready to go by the time my stainless hardware arrives.

I'll do the drilling and filing needed for the RATCO shock in coil conversion prior to my painting it as well.

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Also here's the rest of the front suspension parts all clean and powder coated, along with the uprated spindle kit from Good Parts.

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