Appleseed said:As soon as you posted the Duster hulk you'd be using, this is the moment I've been waiting for. When it ceases being a chassis, and becomes a car.
Same here sir. Same here.
Have to cut the cowl and firewall, and do some more cutting on the door and a pillars.
In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :
You gonna bring the rear tires out with a different backset or something?
Looking great! Nice work!
Stampie said:In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :
You gonna bring the rear tires out with a different backset or something?
The quarters are resting gently on them.when the tochers are about 10 inches closer together they should slightly poke out.
In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :
BERK YEAH! So rad.
So do i do a full write-up of the weekend before the body fits, or.wait till after?
After makes a better story. Before gives the opportunity for suggestions outside the itty bitty E36 M3ty committee in my head.
That is friggin' amazing!
Just curious, how much did that main part of the body weigh?
jimgood said:That is friggin' amazing!
Just curious, how much did that main part of the body weigh?
Rough estimate between 2:00 and 250 lb. It may have actually been lighter. Brother Dustin and I were able to pick it up pretty easy with one of us on either end.
Touchdown!
Badass. Two thumbs up.
Thanks everyone. The upvotes and comments are really helping my attitude.
Im feeling less discouraged today after looking at my interference photos. I think by cutting the existing dash and firewall above the flange (horizontal line just above the cage tubes), skinning the sides down to the vertical a pillar and b pillar tubes, and trimming the ledge below the roofrail more itll slide down the rest of the way, taking care of the extreme gaps to tubes and spread eagle nature of the body. Im not sure if i have to pull it back off to do that, or of i can do it in place.
Im going to try in place first, but i want to spend the week looking at it and pondering. I need to be more methoical at this point.
As light as you say it is I vote on and off to keep from touching the the cage with the wheel of death....do the rocker panels set the stance ?
In reply to 759NRNG :
More or less. Rockers and cowl are the big ones for vertical orientation, a pillars are horizontal.
Problem with on/off is that it takes multiple people stretching the rockers apart to go over the door bars. But i agree about the death wheel. Plasma, assuming my new tips get here, can be utilized in a lot of it. But not all.
More staring and pondering will be done before every action. I know the first five surgical cuts i need to make before anything else can be determined, and now its thinking through the best way to do that.
Looks like you're close, it looks so good! Keep it up!
Also, doesn't look like the doors are going to do much. Are you just going to weld the skins on and climb through the window?
I think you are getting close and when you make a few adjustments it is going to fall in place for you. It looks to me like you have 2 issues to address. I had to keep going back to the picture to understand what I was seeing.
It looks to me like you need to cut the rocker panel out to allow the front of the quarter panel to suck in. The rest of the quarter looks "right" on the tire but the front is too wide. Looking at it over and over I think the center of the body is being pushed out by the rocker, once you weld the doors on the rocker won't be visible anyway. In late models I have seen there is usually a crush panel that ties the bottom of the "door" back to the frame rail (aka, there is no rocker panel). This crush panel would allow you to cut out whatever you need and then get your rigidity back after it hangs right. If you did that you may have to cut a recess for the top of the quarter right behind the door to clear the cage?
I agree with what you said about the cowl, it has to go down, the greenhouse needs to align with the cage to make the top part look right, it may require you to bring the back of the roof up a little (very hard to tell from the pic, you may not have to either).
The very small parts of body hanging I have participated in on race cars has started with greenhouse first, then quarter panels, then nose, then fill in. That is a little easier with Late Model bodies sine the fenders and doors are less defined than a real car body.
The more I look at the current state the more I think the rocker may not exist at all when you get the greenhouse to where you want it to be?
A few parting thoughts
1- This is awesome, you have done an amazing job and I know you will get this just right
2- Anything I said above it only trying to help, not second guess at all. I hope you take it that way.
3- If you get stuck there are probably a lot of race car guys in your neck of the woods that hang bodies on similar cars regularly. The bodies are different but they may have good advice on techniques or order of operations that could be helpful.
Nick
So, i hadn't posted the area specific photos of interference. However, seems like a bad call on my part.
The rockers are currently resting on the verticals for the door bars, but will travel inward more as the body comes down more.
That issue should be solved by lowering the cowl, as well as removing everything outboard of the a and b pillar tubes
Ill also need to thin down these channels that are hitting the halo bar
I think these cuts will allow the body to drop to the point that the top of the cage nestles into the roof and the rockers come into the frame.
At that point, i think the tires will be hitting and spreading the cody shell. Ill pull them at that point, and see what is the next cuts needed.
In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :
That is a lot more clear. You can see the clearance from the race car dash to the cowl in the third picture. I thought it was sitting on the dash already. If you can trim the parts shown in pic 3 to lower the cowl you may be low enough for the rockers to suck back in under the door bars. That would make a huge difference for you to plan the next move.
I think you're in pretty good shape. It's not exactly the same thing but when we skinned Street Stocks in the North East in the '80s we were using factory bodies over tube chassis pretty much like you're doing. We did generally make the cages to fit the body profiles but sometimes we changed brands by changing the skins and the engine so there were compromises and that's closer to what you're doing.
For what it's worth, we used less of the body structure than you're attempting to use. Those inner roof channels that are hitting were cut out completely. We didn't use any of the inner rockers or other door frame structure. Basically we suspended the floppy skin over the chassis and built braces out to support it from the cage and chassis. We then added all of the crush panels and fire walls that seal the cockpit area. That includes the dash and rear deck lid.
In reply to AWSX1686 (Forum Supporter) :
Well see where the intersection of the door and door bars winds up, but currently the plan is operational doors for maximum entry and egress room.
Ny nick: its not obvious in the pictures i have with me, but the cown is firmly resting on the dash to the leading edge of both. Its solid, and cutting the whole with for the dash, firewall and kick panel assembly should allow for a satisfying thunk of the cowl being where it needs to be. However, im afraid that i will have to get a different intake to not have the truck one sticking through the hood. But thats a problem for future me.
Apeowner: thank you! This is all new to me. Im taking my best guesses. The roof edges of the original nascar body were tacked to the halo bar, so i had theft the duster ones in place to allow for the same. I definitely left too much of them.
Looking snazzy, Mike. I'm really diggin the body + hemi orange LS. All sorts of cool vibes!
Closer....
In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :
That's sexy. Like real sexy. I need to look away it's so sexy.
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