Aluminum Structure

March 3, 2013

Had to take the car off the dolly today and put it on temporary wheels on wheel dollies from Harbour Frieght. (Unreal pricing on Chinese tools and stuff)

Plan is to get the body on temporarily to square it and mark the firewall for location. Also to roughly measure how much wheel and tire we can squeeze in.

Bought these “temp” wheels on Kijiji (Above)

Mounted for now them moved chassis on to wheel dollies (below)

Seems the best way to fit and square body up is to start at the rear, set the correct height; level it square it and move forward. Everything seemed to fall into place by the time we got up to the firewall.

March 17, 2013

So it’s been a few weeks. I’ve been kind of in a hold pattern until I get back from the F5 build school next weekend. In the mean time I’ve got a few decisions made and gone forward with the firewall.

Once the firewall was in place I marked it and removed the body. A few of then welds where the chassis and firewall meet had to be ground away to allow the aluminum to sit flat. will have to touch that up once the pieces go to powdercoating. I got most of the drilling, tapping and screwing done (that came out wrong) but ran out of steam today. Very tedious work but relaxing in a funny sort of way.

I used a few good #21 bits and a #10-32 tap. For now we have some stainless button heads but I will get chrome ones for the firewall once it goes in for good.

April 10, 2013

So time to test fit the body/firewall one last time before powder coating. Seems my buddy Mark O. is not to happy mounting the body to the firewall with just a few screws so he sent me off to fabricate a support bracket that will fit behind each corner; tapped and threaded so the firewall screws will create a fiberglass sandwich. here there are…. one jigsaw and 6 blades later, they are cut.

May 3-4, 2013

Spent some quality time in the garage this weekend. Finally. Got the firewall back from powder and decided to lizard skin it… Both products SC first and CI after a day. Once complete I made a pot of coffee and set to polishing the 10-32 stainless button heads for the firewall…. I knew I should have bought a buffing wheel for my bench grinder… I still have no feeling in my right thumb and index finger. Lol

Tedious work to clean up the edges of the firewall before mounting but I really like the “thud” sound it makes now. According to the folks at Lizard skin, the CI product will help reduce heat even when applied inside.

Well that was my weekend. Seems like I’m a turtle compare to many of the guys building these things… But I just plod along and and before you know it the day is gone. Funny thing is this darn smile I have on my face when I look in the mirror… Can’t figure it out.

Sept 14 – 20, 2013

Yes in deed… that much time has passed since any aluminum work was done. I have to mock all the floors and trunk up so we can start the wiring.

First up… mark and drill all the floor panels.

If you have never heard of a Cleco tool or clamp is… i must say it is the best invention ever!! For this car it’s a must. Basically there are temporary rivets.

Next is the placement of the tank. This is the Boyd Welding replacement mentioned elsewhere in the blog. As per Dan Ruth (he designed the tank) it sits about 1/4 inch ahead of the trunk upright.

Next is the placement of the battery box. This is a billet one I got from Summit. Very reasonable. I want the batter in the trunk for a number of reasons, but primarily I hate the way Factory Five has it mounted below the floor below the tank. Impossible to service.

Now the inner floor designed by Tim Whitaker at Kootenai Valley Customs

This is a great idea. It allow a little extra insulation and the ability to mount a dimmer switch and throttle linkage without the mounting hardware being visible on the engine side of the firewall.

Its a bit of a fussy install and I have to come up with a way to support it at the tunnel side better.

January 26, 2014

Had to come up with extra protection from heat cause by the mufflers. Will the Lizard Skin be enough??? Who knows. Better safe than sorry.

I installed HeatShield Products (See them Here) to the bottom of the floors in the area frames around and above the muffler.

After marking the floors from underneath the car to lay out where the frame members are, I taped out the layout, then cut the HP Sticky Shield to fit. Then followed their recommendation to protect the edges with their Armor Weld Tape. That band will sit above the farm and hold everything in place.

FEBRUARY 1, 2015

Time to sound deaden and start buttoning things up prior to fitting the body panels.

Because of the InfinityBox Modules and battery in the trunk, i had to jump ahead and actually carpet the top levels of the truck and get the wiring tidied up back there before we get to far along on body fitment.

It was a days fussy work but the trunk area will look pretty good once the amp and everything is installed and wires all hidden.

As you can see from all the pics above, I’ve gone with FatMat Mega Mat and have used it on the floors and will put it wherever I can stick it to help quiet things down inside the car.

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