Volvo P1800ES...kinda

Here is the most significant statement of the corner I have turned:

The chassis table has move on to its next life as a raised garden border. The wife unit has been bugging me to build a defined border around her vegetable garden and I reckon this should do the job. I will remove the two crossbars.

At this point the rear chassis work is complete. The Miata chassis has been extended with the donor pieces, and the Miata chassis has been tied in to the original Volvo frame that runs from the Valence to the wheel-tubs.

This leaves me with two rather large side "paniers" that I am not sure what to do with. Not quite big enough to house a spare, but too large to leave unused.

Was thinking maybe I could foam in the sides and use them as a built in beer cooler?

clearly that's where you put the tank for the alcohol injection you will add once you boost the crap out of it.

Or ice for the air to water charge cooler.

My vote would be tools/needed but rarely used E36 M3 storage.

Or fiberglass sub enclosure for an 8 inch sub or two.

Good spot to stick the jack and lug wrench.

I like the subwoofer idea, but then I like loud and good sounding stereos.

Forgot to add...198 days left till it has to be driving.

So... roughly the end of June... why the deadline?

Ian F wrote: So... roughly the end of June... why the deadline?

Cause that will be the last day of spring and I have a $1000 bet with the wife unit that it will be moving under its own power by then. All I need to do is drive out of the shop to the end of the driveway to collect. OR my buddies will push the car up to the front of the house and I will hand her $1000

As far as "Done" is concerned, I have scheduled winter of 2017/2018 to get the paint and interior finished.

Whew... OK. So I have another year to gather parts before sending the ES up to you.

Two weeks till paint?

In reply to NOHOME:

I thought I was bad at negotiating with the spousal unit. Let me get this right. You are building the car for her and if it's late you pay her $1,000. I vote you re-negotiate the deal. If it's not running she helps you out every night until it is. If you win then I'll let you negotiate the prize with her.

Adrian_Thompson wrote: In reply to NOHOME: I thought I was bad at negotiating with the spousal unit. Let me get this right. You are building the car for her and if it's late you pay her $1,000. I vote you re-negotiate the deal. If it's not running she helps you out every night until it is. If you win then I'll let you negotiate the prize with her.

The woman keeps my shop beer fridge stocked with Stella Artois. I ain't going to rock that boat! The car might be the lesser of the two expenses.

Moving forward by going backwards!

Some pictures of her as of last night:

Rotisserie modded to work without the chassis jig as a base and the suspension and front end blown apart. While it might look like I am going backwards, this is actually a major turning point.

Now that the chassis work has been finished in the rear, I can go ahead and do the underside painting that I wanted to do in the spring. Next will be the engine compartment painted in actual body color. Means I have to settle on an actual body color. And by "I" I mean SWMBO needs to settle on a final color.

And Mr Burrito can take me to task if the engine compartment is not painted by Valentines day!

Be careful. She may just stall so she can take the money.

SWMBO don't need a reason "so she can take the money".....

Inevitably, I come to jobs like this. Jobs that I have avoided and dreaded. Jobs that require that I get into uncomfortable positions and cut/grind/weld in awkward locations.

In order to cross of a line item that says "Finish rear chassis work" I need to tie in this corner where Volvo meets Miata. Working in the red circled area.

1000 yard view

View from the top into what would be the "spare tire well". Red lines are where Miata needs to be joined to Volvo.

And the view from inside the wheel-well. Kind of a dogs-breakfast. Need to trim along the dotted line and spot-weld along the dots

The goal last night was to get both sides done. But this took a lot longer to do than I planned. So we do the Julia Child thing and show the finished (other) side.

Made up a plate to cover the gap from the top.

From there we move to the comfy wheel-well. Grind grind, cut cut and weldy weldy and more grindy grind and finish with a bit of trim and grind.

That killed three hours when it was meant to take one.

As usual - nice work; it'll all be worth it when done...persevere. Mine's finally back all working as it should....just in time for winter! Although, not really 'winter' down here...

MichaelYount wrote: As usual - nice work; it'll all be worth it when done...persevere. Mine's finally back all working as it should....just in time for winter! Although, not really 'winter' down here...

I think you posted some pics somewhere that I saw. Looked factory!

That was the goal. Yours will too -- that really cool, one-off factory. Love to pull up a chair behind yours when it's done at a car show/cruise-in and just watch people scratch their head trying to figure it out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l5tpY6SXMc

The rear chassis fabrication is now crossed off the list. Yesterdays task was to complete the DS tie in to the tub, and a bit of extra fabrication to finish off a detail that needed a solution. This involved capping off a piece of recatangular tube that was used to join the Volvo wheel-tubs to the Miata Wheel tubs.

Im loving the homer and captions you're doing now.

Did a lot but did not finish anything...some days are just like that.

With the back end pretty much in hand and ready for paint underneath, I move to the front.

first order of business was to trim the back corners of the engine compartment back further than they were:

Sensible man would have stayed on task and finished the metal fab to fill in the corners, but that would not be me..

Decided the oilpan could use some mods that required welding rather than metal fabrication.

So, go t rid of the low-oil sender unit:

And since the front drain plug was going to dump all over the front crossmemebr and steering rack, might as well relocate that bit also.

Also got a start on tying in the edges of the Miata engine compartment to the Vovlo structure. The two need to be sealed off to keep fumes out of the car and muck out of the engine compartment.

Bit of time in the e-wheel to put a crown in and take out any ripples

Then I decided that the k member needed some love in the form of some caps on the engine mount crossmember.

Caps on the outer ends:

And the angled bit to blend the lot in

Somewhere in there the Minion managed to TIG weld up a sheet-metal plenum for some wild ass forced induction that he is working on. Forgot to take a picture. He does pretty good for a TIG newbie and did not set himself on fire even once.

Actually came close to finishing something tonight. And happy with the results.

Working in the rear corner of the engine compartment where the frame to firewall gusset needs to be cut out square(ish). A V8 conversion kit comes with a piece to weld in here, but since I am coloring outside the lines, I get to make my own as i see fit.

I want an arc. Too bad the arc at the top is not the same as the arc on the bottom of the frame. But I do know the frame section is 3.92" wide, so I bend this up:

And it does straddle the frame nicely. But it is not an arc.

So over to the metal shrinker and stretcher tools and push-pull on the legs until we have something that fits.

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I can live with that. Still need to weld it in, but first I will do the LH side. More funner cause steering column.

Today I crossed off the line item that read: "Finish metal work in engine compartment." This involved the rear corners and a clearance issue at the top of the gearbox-firewall.

The top of the gearbox is a bit tight at the top. While the pic makes it look worse, there is only about 1/4" of clearance. I want to open it up to the top of the yellow tape.

So what I did is to cut where the two red lines are. The cuts extend two and a hlf inches into the tunnel. Then I drilled the spot-welds and pushed the tunnel up as far as the top of the yellow tape. The front section was then folded back and the original spot-weld holes were used to re-join the two panels.

This left me with a Doritos shaped holes on either side. The top of the triangle is how far up I have moved, and the line across the tunnel is how far back the raise goes.

And when all said and done, the opening is moved up 1.5 higher and both corners of the engine bay are finished.

I now move on to the stage where I start adding coatings to the car as it comes together permanently. First the underside and then the engine compartment.

I think bubbly is in order when the body reaches paint stage.