Tonight I touched up a few welds, made the power hop damper bracket and prepped the engine to be removed. Tomorrow my neighbor is going to come over and help me flip the chassis over.
Tonight I touched up a few welds, made the power hop damper bracket and prepped the engine to be removed. Tomorrow my neighbor is going to come over and help me flip the chassis over.
The roll cage works.
bgkast wrote: The roll cage works.
shoulda strapped yourself in for the photo-op!
Great pic
Just looked through this, nice work. Making your own car, amazing!! I go to vancouver often, would love to stop and see it.
In reply to JohnnyBquick:
Anytime! Email me at my username @ gmail.com
I got most of the way through welding the bottom joints yesterday. I should be able to finish them in the next day or two so I can flip the car back over and start on the suspension.
My fuel door arrived this weekend, and it fits the Miata filler neck like they were supposed to go together!
You started better than me, when I bought it, my fuel filler said "water".
Just make sure you grind that label off.
The chassis is welded!
(Well expect for the two joints I noticed after taking off all my welding gear )
Huzza! When's the first drive? 
You make this whole thing seem possible. I might need to build one of these.
In reply to turboswede:
Hopefully around this time next year...I'm sure all the fiddly little bits will take longer than expected though.
In reply to bgkast:
They usually do and that is where many projects can stall due to a lack of perceived progress.
In reply to bgkast:
My favorite quote on this kind of project:
"The first 90% of the work takes 90% of the time, then the last 10% takes the other 90%."
In reply to Ransom:
I should be able to drive it when it's 90% done though.
Ransom wrote: In reply to bgkast: My favorite quote on this kind of project: "The first 90% of the work takes 90% of the time, then the last 10% takes the other 90%."
This is truth right here... I have a Vw based rail project which I am going to get done in the next month.. I am.. The darn thing.. I worked like crazy.. had Ill the mods done to the frame.. and had a flashback when I saw yours flipped over to be welded.. I got it running and then decided I needed to go "bigger and better" on some things (namely the engine). This snowballed into lots and lots of little things which ended up putting the project on hold for nearly three years.. Then automotive ADD kicked in...
Now it will be done.. My advice is if you even have a hint of something which might cause you to set it aside even for a a few weeks... LEAVE it in a running or at least it looks like it is running condition!
Otherwise you will be thumbing through the net dependent on some other guy going like crazy on a good looking project to motivate you to work on your own...
Looking good BTW!
It was "Mom's night out" last night, so I was in charge of the 3 little monsters. Since I wasn't going to be able to work on the car I took them all on a family Harbor Freight run for some quality tools. I picked up a die grinder to clean up and re-do some of the welds I'm not happy with, and this brush which is just the ticket for cleaning up welds on the chassis:
http://www.harborfreight.com/steel-bristle-brush-38491.html
It is narrow and has long bristles to get into the tight spaces between tubes. The metal point on the end can also be used to chip out stubborn slag and to remove welding splatter balls. Best 0.89 I have ever spent!
After the kids were in bed I finished setting up the air compressor I got a few months ago by replacing the drain valve with an easier to operate version, securing it to the wall and finishing the pressure switch repair. That thing is a beast! It was able to continually run my new die grinder and still build pressure.
Last night I went over all the welds looking for joints I missed, cleaning them, removing splatter and grinding back ones I was not happy with. Hopefully I can finish welding them all back up tonight.
With the exception of 4 welds that I want to do with the car upright the chassis is DONE! Now to clean up, flip it back over and mount the front suspension pickup points.
The car is back upright. I weighed the chassis: 260 lbs. Yesterday and today I made a jig to locate the front suspension pickup points.
260 is not bad. Good job!
I actually thought it would be heavier...it's a beefy frame.
Last night was my anniversary so I didn't expect to work on the car. After dinner I was hanging out with my wife as she fed the baby to sleep and she ordered me out to the garage. Guess I have her trained!
I'm waiting on some reamers I have ordered to finish the suspension jig and to start making suspension brackets, but they haven't arrived yet. In the mean time I made the chassis side of the front upper brackets. The ends are a odd V shape to fit the "bitch tubes". I cut them with my HF band saw in upright mode, which I hadn't used yet...works well once you get the little table on it set up!
Still no reamers, so no progress last night.
STILL no reamers 
so I worked on the front tubes that support the radiator and steering rack. I decided to make this a bolt in sub-frame rather than welding it to the main chassis so that it can be replaced in case of a minor crash (it's thin wall 1" tube rather than 1.5" like the rest of the chassis so it should fail first).
Yesterday I ordered $150 of ball joints, tie rod ends and other front end goodies, today I ordered $267 of rod ends, bungs, and other hardware to make the rest of the suspension. The end of my self-imposed $5000 is now in sight. 
What kind/size of reamers are you waiting for?
I have a very nice set of adjustable "Kingpin Reamers" with guides and pilots that could be loaned out to a guy in need. They're good for a whole lot more than Kingpin rebuilds, and might be just what you're after.
Essentially the bottom-most reamer in this image, but (I think) eight of them from about 10mm up to 22mm-ish.
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