Okay, back in business! Well, sort of. Anyway, the body rebuild is again well underway. The exemption request is still underway, and a lot hinges on it.
The focus points of the build are front end and the rear subframe, the rest will have to wait until exemption permit goes through (as it hopefully does).
Here's the fron end box section repair:
The front end parts were made from 1mm mild steel.
After that the remains of the subframe came back from the sandblasters, and I started to work on that.
Here's a detail shot of the subframe after sandblasting:
Unfortunately that's not the only part, the entire left side of the subframe was like that, and a largely throughout the entire structure. I am hoping to build a tubular subframe in the future, but until then it's for the best to try and rebuild the original subframe to the best possible condition.
The next part is the internal channel of the subframe. Instead of 1mm steel, it was made from 2mm sheet, which is practically impossible to work cold. Here's a shot just to highlight the difference:
and here's the sheet after a bit of heat and hammering:
The shape is good enough to raise too many difficult questions in the inspection, I hope. The double whammy in here is while 2mm sheet is much more difficult to work with, it also needs to be much better fit because it cannot be dressed while welding on, like the thinner sheets can be. Also trying to clamp the patch in place will more likely to deform the subframe rather than force the patch to conform. Fortunately, the right side is in much better shape and doesn't require nearly as much work (knock on the wood).
I'm hoping to get the chassis fixed and rolling this summer, so I could take it off the rotisserie and get to the fun parts of the build soon
