#241
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Hi Joel
the inner well is coming along great! As for the welding have you thought about preheating the panels so that your start up of the bead looks like the end. Steve
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Steve Hamilton Hamilton Classics Auto Restoration & Metalshaping |
#242
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Quote:
I just ordered a larger torch tip so I can apply more heat without putting the torch into the "hissing zone". I've got more fender liners to build so I can get the heat level fine tuned before getting to the more visible body panels. Thanks for your input on this.
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Joel Heinke Be original; don't be afraid of being bold! |
#243
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Front clip fender liners (cont.)
I welded the final piece of sheet on this fender liner and the result is what I consider a good O/A weld on aluminum. Not perfect, but there was only a very small amount of metal to remove from the bead to metal finish it. The most obvious area for improvement now is to make the tack welds smaller. You can see where the tack welds are still visible outside the O/A weld bead. I’m tacking the pieces with a TIG welder, getting better at it, but still needs some improvement.
And the backside: As you can see, the backside has complete fusion except for the small area on the picture right side. I need to make sure to go slower over the tack welds as the extra thickness slows penetration speed. A quick fusion pass on the backside with the TIG fixes that right up though. Here’s the completed fender liner mounted to the front clip framework. The inside rear section had to be brought tight to the tire (when tire turned fully to the left and with suspension fully compressed) to clear the cowl support member. There’s about ½” clearance between the tire and the fender liner and another ½” clearance between the fender liner and the support member. I tipped the outside edge so it sits on top of the ½” square tube that frames the wheel opening. The plan is to glue/bond the fender liner to the tube but I’m going to wait to do that until I’ve built out the body work around it. I think I’ll move over to passenger side and build out the fender liner there. That way I can apply additional lessons learned to the drivers side liner mounts before finishing it completely.
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Joel Heinke Be original; don't be afraid of being bold! |
#244
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Looking good Joel.
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#245
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The bonus for building your Miura from the inside outward is your skillsets will be honed from much practice! The dividend will be delivered later once you do the external skin itself over the completed inner. (note: Imagine if you built the skin of the car first and tried to put all the inner structure, wheelwells and more into it after the fact...)
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• me: Mark • home: Dry Heat, Arizona USA • quote: What did you design or build today? • projects: Curve Grande and the 11Plus Le Mans Coupe |
#246
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Quote:
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Joel Heinke Be original; don't be afraid of being bold! |
#247
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Front clip fender liners (cont.)
The passenger side fender liner is the focus of this post. Since the passenger side fender liner is the mirror image of the drivers side, I used the same paper patterns and process so I won’t show the progress pictures.
To give you a feel for the amount of work involved, here’s the numbers. Each fender liner is made from 7 panels of Al 3003 .050 thickness, shaped using mostly shrink on the mating edges and some stretch on the wheel opening edge. Each fender liner has 6 butt welds traversing edge to edge for total of 132” of weld seam in each liner. I didn’t count the exact number of tack welds but I usually space them about 1” apart so there’s probably about 125 tack welds in each liner. Each weld seam is fully metal finished with a hand filed finish on top and planished finish on the back side. Final planishing and shaping for each liner was done on the English wheel which becomes very challenging as the final panels are welded in. By the time I was laying down the O/A welds on the passenger side liner, I had the torch flame and weld speed dialed in. I don’t claim expert status yet, but I’m now starting to get more of the flat weld beads that I aspire to. Here’s a portion of the weld bead that didn’t require any metal removal and only some planishing to finish out. Passenger side fender liner with mounting framework completed. The front clip is starting to look like more than just a skeleton now with the back edge and both fender liners attached. And the chassis front view is starting to look more like an automobile than a go-kart.
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Joel Heinke Be original; don't be afraid of being bold! |
#248
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Looking good on the shaping and the welding.
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#249
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Coming along great there Joel.
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Marcus aka. Gojeep Victoria, Australia http://willyshotrod.com Invention is a combination of brains and materials. The more brains you use, the less materials you need. |
#250
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Thanks for following this build and for words of encouragement.
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Joel Heinke Be original; don't be afraid of being bold! |
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