Midlana: First "Book" Build

I made some good progress on the floor over the weekend.

I hoped to get a bit more done, but I ended up spending most of Sunday running around and buying that large compressor in the background, got it for a song because the pressure switch is bad.

Keep it coming! I am looking forward to seeing this one come to fruition.

Thanks! Using your build as inspiration I am going to try to make some progress on it every day after the kids are in bed.

bgkast wrote: Thanks! Using your build as inspiration I am going to try to make some progress on it every day after the kids are in bed.

THAT's high praise. You'll be under my budget, and schedule, and have something way more fun to drive as well!

Well see about that...it will probably end up taking several thousand dollars and several years to finish.

I have made more progress over the past few evenings. I completed the final major floor tube last night. The floor can now be removed from the jig, tack welded on the bottom, then fully welded. I hope to bend my cage tubes this weekend.

Between the Midlana and The Exocet threads, Im kinda having a hard time walking around upright.

I'll be watching this one

I made some good progress this weekend. Saturday morning I hoisted the engine up on to the build table to make sure it was going to fit before I got too far along, luckily it did.

I spent Saturday afternoon bending the roll cage tubes. I used a friends air over hydraulic bender, it was much nicer to use than the "arm strong" manual benders that I have used before. I laid out a template of the main hoop in tape on the floor, using the dimensions in the plans and a piece of scrap to give my bend radius.

The first two bends took a long time: bending, test fitting to the template, reinstalling in the bender and repeating. The DOM tubing springs back several degrees when the bender is released.

Once I had the first two bends it went much faster, I just had to duplicate them! The digital angel gauge in the first picture (looks like a level) made the process much easier, allowing you to check the angle of the bend as you went.

The front hoop was much easier, and they turned out good.

Unfortunately on my last bend I berked up and messed up my friend's bender. The tube is held to the inner die with a u strap and a pin. The pin passes through the u strap, through a hole in the die and then through the u strap again. Despite checking I didn't get the pin through the u strap the second time making it into an L strap when I applied bending force. I called pro tools today to order a replacement and they told me that they are $100 AND you have to drill the 1/2" holes for the pin yourself. I'm now between a rock and a hard place, I want to make.my buddy's machine whole again, but can't bring myself to spend that kind of coin on a piece of 1/4" by 1.5" steel bent into a U. A whole die set is only $270 for Pete's sake! I think I will see if a local fab shop can make one for me.

Yesterday I flipped over the floor to tack the bottom joints. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the floor fit the jig blocks after I flipped it, so the floor is pretty symmetrical. Once I tacked the bottom I fully welded the side joints and bottom joints, then ground the bottom joints flat. Hopefully today I can flip the floor back over and weld the top joints.

Great progress! Hope you can get your friend's bender straightened out in a reasonable way...

At my friend's suggestion I called up JD2 (they are a competitor to pro tools) and ordered a U clamp from them for $40. I don't even need to drill any holes in it! Hopefully it will fit, if anything the holes may need to be reamed out a bit. If I ever get a bender pro-tools is on my ban list, what a crappy way to support your product!!!

In other news the floor is finished! Last night I ground all of the welds on the sides of the floor down, flipped the floor back over and finished welding all of the seams. The floor still sits flat on the table and fits the jug blocks, warping was not an issue! :D I also pulled the floor off the table to clean up all of the grinding dust while I could still lift it.

I am getting better with my swap meet special "Power MIG" (the little hickup in the middle is my original tack)

those are some pretty good welds!

Thank you! It's been a few years since I did much welding, so I'm trying to re-gain lost skills.

I got the main hoop in last night.

Once I got it up and tacked into place I found that my bends were not perfect (I had a hunch they would't be...tube bending seems to be about 25% luck) and the "vertical" parts of the hoop angle slightly outwards from the floor by a degree or two. This will give me a touch more shoulder room though, so I don't think it's a bad thing. I also noticed onne of the vertical legs is slightly more vertical than the other, making the hoop slightly canted towards the passenger side by about degree. I am going to try to get my tube notcher set up tonight so that I can make the main hoop diagonal and pull the hoop over to the perfect alignment.

I made some good progress on the car this weekend. Saturday I tried out the tube notcher and made the main hoop diagonal. Next I tackled the front hoop. I had to get a bit creative with my band saw to make the second cut.

I used some spare angle bar clamped to the main hoop to hold the front hoop in place. It took a surprising amount of fiddling to get the hoop perfectly aligned .

Sunday I started to make the top bars that join the two hoops and promptly broke the tube notcher. The hole saw caught and the threads that hold the saw to the notcher stripped out…the saw would freely spin on the arbor, but would not thread off. After spending an 45 minutes messing with it trying to get the hole saw off I finally split the hole saw in half to get it free. A post-mortem showed that the arbor adapter that came with the notcher was to blame. The threads on the large side that mate with the hole saw end about 1/16” before the bottom of the adapter. When you thread on the 1/8” thick threads on the hole saw on there is only about 1 thread doing anything. Not surprising it didn’t hold. I spent most of the day running around to stores trying to find parts to fix it, with no luck.

So that the day wasn’t a total waste I cobbled together a clamp system to use my small drill press as a notcher. It is possible for something to work worse than a harbor freight tool; I created it! The tube will spin around if the saw catches, and the drill press runs a bit too fast for the hole saw…at least it will keep me in business until a replacement arbor adaptor arrives for the notcher.

At the end of the day I was able to finish the top tubes. Here is how the car looks now:

Gotta love garage ingenuity; 'grats on the progress!

Thanks! I'm excited it looks vaguely car shaped now!

In reply to bgkast:

Love the build man

Really awesome! I'll be watching!

I celebrated New Year by making door tubes! New year's eve I laid out the side bars in masking tape, which is very useful to get length and angle measurements from.

I first built the top bars, and finished at 11:50, just in time to wake up the wife and pop the champagne.

I spent most of New year's day installing a new sink in the kitchen, but snuck out to the garage long enough to make one of the diagonal bars.

I have been using tube notching templates from metalgeek.com to make my shallow angle notches (http://www.metalgeek.com/static/cope.pcgi). They work great and are almost faster than the notcher.

I also tacked in the upper tubes. Any tubes that will not be accessible via rivet holes for rust-proofing are getting coated with zinc weldable primer inside the tubes and at the joint.

Once the tube is in place and before tacking I wire brush the excess primer away from the joint.

The cage is done! I just need to make the diagonals that form the bay for the fuel tank behind the seats, then on to the front!

Wow, you're cruising right along! Looks fantastic!

Yeah dude, I spent all night welding in a piece of sheet metal and knocking it around. Nice work!

Good progress this weekend!. I got most of the main front tubes cut and tacked in place.

The build book calls these short tubes "bitch tubes" due to their complex shape (the notch on the far side is different due to the slope of the tube that fits on top). I cut out the tube per the diagram in the book, and expected it would take quite a bit of work to get a good fit, but it dropped right into place on the first test fit!

I traced the second one off of the first in a effort to save some time, but the second one lived up to it's name.

A few days ago my 6 year old son asked if he could help weld on the car. I told him that he needed to practice first, and showed him the technique with a paper and pencil. Once he had an idea of the technique I set him up with some kid-size leather gloves and some of the scraps I practiced on before starting the floor. Here are his first (square tube) and second (round tube) attempts. Not too bad, but he got a bit excided and sped up as he went.

I'm sure with some practice he will be out-welding his old man some day. You can see some of my practice welds on the square piece next to his weld. Mine are looking better with practice too. Here is one of the front bulkhead tubes.

You sir are winning the internets today. Good job on the project and more importantly spending quality time with the kiddo while you're at it!

A bit more progress, though nothing worth a picture. I made a few more diagonal tubes for the front end last night, and ordered my radiator from FSR. They are making me a 22x19 double pass with the inlet fitting moved up the end tank and angled up 30 degrees, and radiator cap fitting replaced with 1/2" female pipe thread for a bleed port. All for $217!