Made a trip up yesterday to get a little work done. The main goal was to get the tubs cut out and the wheels mounted up. Some other work got done too, but I'll get to that.
One of the biggest challenges in building one of these cars to the rules is that you can't touch the frame rail for tire clearance, so I was careful to only remove the metal that needed to go, and I stayed as far away from the rail as possible.
Before:
Fire, fire!
And that crazy face one gets after cutting up a car:
A little more room:
With the tubs cut out on both sides, I was able to finally get the wheels on:
I need to do some more measuring, but last time I was up there I welded the stock axle solidly to the frame (you can see it in the photos above). When I mounted up the wheels, I had great inside clearance on the driver's side, but no clearance on the passenger side. Either my stock axle is offset (likely), or there is a difference in the shape of the rear frame rails. It doesn't matter much, as the wheelbase is correct, the axle is square to the chassis, and I just need to get a total width to order the proper axle. It will be easy enough to fix when the real one goes in.
And on the ground:
So, in addition to the tub work, I got to learn a lesson I already knew.
I did not like the rear cage down bars. They weren't in the right location, so they had to come out. Once I cut them out, I noticed that the cage diagonal was partly mounted to the drivers down bar, so the cage diagonal and the harness crossbar had to come out.
Lesson: Never, EVER, weld things all the way in until you know they are in the right place.
At least I'll have some more room to work when building the 3-link.
