Acid's Lemon flavored co-pilot airboat poor man's C8 bread

Strut your greasy stuff!
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Acid666
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Been doing the lord's work. Practicing my welding and shits.
MOAR PIKTRUES!!!



Finally got to use my little press that my friend made for me. 1/8" plate bent into brackets. Tried to weld some shitty normal nuts to it but the zinc coating just poo poo'd on it and it didn't hold. Found a bolt shop that had some proper weld nuts so I bought a set of 6. 4 for the seat and 2 to trash and test on. I'm pretty pissed that Amazon's Prime ain't 2 day shipping anymore, because there's lots of bullshit hardware like this that I'd order in a heartbeat on the fly. Now I'm just gonna do what I should and drive my ass to the south side of town and support local shops. Which I don't mind, but being able to beep boop it into my phone is so much easier for my socially inept ass.

I need to make 3 more of these brackets, and then I'll custom grind each end to seat as best as it can to the floor pan to get as much weld surface area as possible. Then I'll mount em up, and then make some gusseted bracket plates to attach the seat brace to the new floor mounted points.
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D Griff
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Dat :mk6: shirt, :doe:
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Acid666
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D Griff wrote: Fri Sep 10, 2021 4:05 pm Dat :mk6: shirt, :doe:
Lol that was one of the first shirts I made for myself when I started cutting vinyl and pressing my own tshirts.
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Acid666
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Been at it a bit. Started on the support boxes. Got 3 sides up for the roll bar, don't have a pic of the custom contour cut floor panel but it's made. Going to finish trimming the profile up tomorrow and then tack it up together. But first see if the profile works for the opposite side then I'll go ahead and cut those out.



And I finally got myself a damn welding table. Grinding and welding shit on a plastic fold out table has been killing me. No real way to clamp my shit down either while I grind, and having to constantly ground to my part just drove me nuts.
Finally went on sale at Northern Tool, and I used a $20 coupon.
Got some cheap Hazard Fraught clamps as well along with some casters so I plan on building a frame at the base to mount them to so I can make it mobile. Then start to build out some shelves for storing most of my tools.

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Acid666
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Moar grindin, more C25 lovin.
Seat mount finished up and painted.
Roll bar boxes finished up, used the drivers side pieces to mock up the passenger side and it pretty much mirrors it so it was easy peasy.
Fillet welded the insides of the boxes so that I could bevel weld the outsides and then grind it down and there would be material behind it to support it looking like a smooth box. I think I did ok for my first real attempt. I call this kinda shit out on prints all the time but I've never done it in person so it's cool to see what kind of hell I put shop welders through lol.

Also tried my hand at saving some material stock by combining two. My stock 1/8" plates are 10"x10", and I couldn't make two of that long side piece with the triangle. I would of had to use 2 pieces and had scrap. So I made them square and simply added that triangle. Bevel welded both sides 1/16" and grinded it smooth. Good test to see if I'm actually getting penetration in my welds too, so it helps to get more confidence in what I'm doing.

I went and bought a roll of .024 wire to swap out from the .030 that I was using because I read it might help not blow out the metal when doing thin sheet metal on the floor pan. It really did work. I could stay in the pocket longer with it (when I fixed some welds on the seat mounts) and it just was more fluid. I might order a 10lb roll of it and park the 10 pounds of .030 that I was using for a while.

Next up is to get the roll bar designed, the sunroof cut out completely so I can plan where to put my A-pillar bars, and then work my way back. I'm a lot more comfortable with welding so I may take a stab at fixing some dented in body work on the rear quarter panel. Been watching a ton of videos on people doing sheet metal and body work. Nothing crazy like some big contoured curved panels, just some simple patch fixes for now. Also, this fucking table is a godsend. I'm planning on building it out and decking with shelves and places for most of my shit.

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Acid666
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Been too damn busy. Pulled a 55 hour work week a couple of weeks ago, followed by a busy weekend. I find myself constantly too busy during the week to be able to find the time and energy to more some progress on the metal side. A lot of it is because I get home and I've only got a few hours of daylight and then I'm cutting and grinding metal in the dark. Which gets old.

Got home last Friday from work and immediately started to work on the base on my welding table to put the casters on it. Because if I spend my time on it Saturday then I'll burn half my day designing, cutting and welding and make no progress on the car. Worked till about 10pm and finally got the table moving. It's decent but not great. I bolted the casters in because I may change them out to a big ass rubber tire that might take up some slack and keep the table level. These hard rubber casters seem decent now but if I move it around the surface might not be too level and it can potentially will wobble. Overall it's workable though and helps me not have to move this table with my back anymore.

Bent the first test piece of pipe, cut a bunch of short stubby pieces as well to practice welding them to plate and work on coping together. Bent the roll bar, screwed up the bend and clamp mark locations from my software and ended up with a short leg and a long leg, but luckily I anticipated something not going to plan so I added a lot of extra length and I can make this work. Now I know how to get it accurate for my next pieces.
So roll bar is bent and fits nicely. Going to cut the long leg shorter so I can maneuver it into place and then see where my helmet height lands compared to this bar. I need 2" from the top of the bar to the top of our helmet to pass tech, so I'll check that next. Then work on the A-pillars and rear supports to the strut towers. A pillar will be difficult and there's a slighhhhhhhht possibility if I can't get this to comfortably clear the helmet area with foam then I might punch it thru the roof and do an exo frame just maybe half an inch sticking out from the roof line and then weld the roof skin to the cage and grind it smooth to be clean. Likely won't need to, but if I have to do it to pass tech then I'll just say fuck it and do it.


Also, roll bar is just kinda shoved in this spot for the picture. It'll be jammed deep in height into the ceiling in a pocket, and the sunroof metal sheet metal framing will all be cut out.
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