Technical Who does their own chassis blue prints?

Most drafting was done on vellum

The drawing I posted a picture of earlier was done on vellum

 

All I have…this zerox/drawing was the start.
The frame rails were contoured by tracing the bottom of the body on a large sheet of paper. The quick change had to “just” clear the back of body. The engine had to fit between the firewall and the radiator with fan clearance. The tie rod clearance…just in front of the frame. The floor pan was built to just clear the bottom of the Turbo 350 transmission, (in the cockpit). All the various brackets were drawn on poster board and folded and checked before committing to metal.
Not too many variables…just lots of measuring and marking directly on the metal, with a sharpie!

 

The chassis guy for my FED is rather talented. He did a scale sketch before starting... I then got carried away with the sharpies:



That got me thinking. I scaled up a photocopy of my daily driver from the workshop manual, and added the trailer:



Getting closer to making the dream reality:



Cheers,
Harv

 

I really admire folks that can just build things based on an idea. OT, but I watch Matt’s Off-Road Recovery, and am amazed and stunned as to how he just starts cutting steel and welding to make builds like his massive International Off-Road rig, or his Bombi snow-cat. As someone who was schooled in both mechanical and architectural drafting and mech engineering, I’m even more impressed. Some truly talented folks out there.

 

I took "mechanical drawing" in HS. I ran across my drawing portfolio and have it in my upstairs closet. Looks like cave drawings now. We developed the "blue" prints using a machine with a 27% ammonia solution, household ammonia is 4%.

After my tool and die apprenticeship, I jumped into night college around 1985 and we had a primitive CAD system called Computer Vision. It was slowwwww, cranky and one bad key stroke could crash the system. Soon after we had the Autocad blue screen versions. Better for sure.

Someone at work had a bootleg copy of Autocad Lite for Windows 3.1, we had it on a dedicated 386 computer. It came on 3 small discs that we guarded with our lives. So we could do school work at work. It was compatible with our in-house CAD system for some unknown reason. Then IT took the 386 and the program wouldn't run on new stuff.

Around 1992 I got into the world of CAD/CAM and we had a good system. I started programming the big CNC mills and doing tool design. The CNC end got phased out and I used the CAD end of it until it crashed and IT wouldn't load it since the agreement ran out, it was unsupported.

This was in 2005 and I HAD to learn Autocad. It took me an hour to learn how to draw a line. I was lucky to remember all the little words from the blue-screen days. I became proficient with it and really only used the 2D features.

I drew an entire NASCAR modified chassis on it, going from the rule book and things off the internets. I had full-on sub-drawings of bumpers and side rails. I printed a few (smaller of course) and hung them in my little office. I also had a full scale DIRT modified body drawn up (to make model cars from).

My latest before I retired was my version of Cal Trac bars for my Ford. I have a full-size drawing of that here. By the time I got out we could not download anything off our computers. Earlier, I did put some model car parts on a thumb drive to take home. Those drawings are small and I have a folder of hard copies.

 

To paraphrase what you said, "I couldn't build anything without imagining it first". The farmer who owns most of the acreage around me is without doubt, a mechanical genius. He often has to have parts made to adapt different implements to his machinery. He has an OT mid-70s F350 that he's put at least 4 engines into, so he decided to do away with the Ford powerplants and use an air-cooled tractor engine instead. He did a lot of measuring on the truck and the engine. I went with him to the machine shop and watched while he and the machinist conferred about an adapter to mate the tractor engine to the existing transmission. The entire process was done with the farmer giving the machinist measurements for everything including the angle at which the engine was going to have to lay over just to get the hood to close. All this was done without drawings or notes, just from what he imagined. When it was done, it fit perfectly, the hood closed and if it wasn't running, a person would just see an old F350. Imagination is a powerful thing.

I am in awe of those people on here who have the ability to see how things can be done and done right the first time. Personally, I can imagine what I want to accomplish, but it may take me a few tries to get it done.

 

N C. I'm big on doing a scale drawing first but did this 110" wheelbase TROG car without any drawing. Owner Todd from Vermont won on dirt last time out. My built SCAT stroker engine! Recently Todd and I built a T bucket chassis without a drawing. The body was back in Vermont. We obtained the body dimensions off the internet. Back home in VT Todd reports engine and body location etc. worked out perfect. PS, 2 x 3 mandrel bent frame and the T 2x4 mandrel bent rails.

 

bttt

 

I have an old drawing board acquired in the 60’s when I was an apprentice. I still use it today for various projects but not the detail of some of the drawings in this thread. I worked for an aircraft engine manufacturer in the 80’s and 90’s and we had a very large room with rows of the cabinets of drawings for engine parts, tooling and fixtures. The original drawings some probably 70 years old and most drawn on vellum/linen and we’re not allowed out of the room. If it were anything other then a quick dimension check you needed to make a copy on the blueprint machine (ammonia smell) to work with. Kind of interesting if you worked with the drawings enough you could identify who drew it by the unique lettering of the individual. Eventually those drawings were redrawn using CAD which presented its own problems seeing some were dimensioned in fractions which didn’t match the precision of computers. I have a copy of the original plan view (page 1) for a 1965 Lola Formula Ford framed in my shop which is almost artwork.

 

I too have an old drawing board. I would be lost with out it. CAD/velem etc. this and that is all Greek to me. My 29 I copied a 1/4 panel out of a magazine. I am not a Chip Foose. Got it to scale. Copied the louvers, hair pins and wheel covers out of magazines. I cut out my own white walls. The frame rails are my own. 1" radius on the bottom to look like a rolled pan. Pie cut sectioned 1/4 panels at the very bottom [ with a scissors ] to get the profile right. Those are NOT Dodge Lancer wheel covers.

 

bttt

 

Looks similar to the drafting department when I started working at General
Motors Diesel Division right out of Univ in 1990. I worked in the building that built the Light Armoured Vehicle (LAV) or better known now as the Stryker. The older guys did the layouts using the traditional drafting boards, and the younger guys used ProEng in a small back room. I will say the older guys on the board were more accurate when it came to fitment when building the prototype LAVs than the guys on CAD. It was a bit of a rivalry. Lol!

 

I started at FoMoCo Body Engineering in '70. Pre CAD/CAM. At that time we drew the bodies on coated aluminum sheet and the aluminum plate was drawn on with a stylus. We also used Mylar sheet for sub assemblies. It was easily copied in a blueprint machine. Full scale aluminum sheets, not so much. After CAD came along much of the old stuff got auctioned off. I picked up these useful mold sweeps, also called body sweeps. These are very useful since no body surface has any truly flat surface.

 

I did this F 100 aluminum valance by eye. Would have liked to have a body sweep. It is 1" narrower top to bottom than a stock valance that's why I made it. Some say it turned out OK. I hate that phase. Sounds like what you did was an accident.

 

My doodles make Marty's look like he graduated with a masters degree in drafting.
I've always got a sketch pad close at hand to draw out things either for my rigs or to help explain something but Most of my drawings leave a lot to be desired. A drawing board is one thing I'd like to have though.

 

A drawing board is easy to make from cabinet grade plywood. But you also need a T square, and some triangles, and a few other things.

 

They were literally tossing the big boards into dumpsters at work, big tables and all. I saw pictures of the old drafting rooms from the late 1960s. Something like 100 draftsmen working. We had a CAD room which was dimly lit and the manual room which was bright. I called it leaded and unleaded. I would borrow a manual table spot in the room if I had to update an old drawing.

In grade school, we had a separate set of biography books in the library and I read most of them. Ford, Chrysler, Edison, Eli Whitney, etc. The covers were in green.

One about the Wright Brothers always stuck with me. They talked about making a sled, called the Wright Flyer. The design was drawn on paper first, they said if it was right on paper, whatever you built would also be right.

So that stuck with me through the years. I would save up and go out and buy graph paper. My older brother thought I was nuts. I learned how to draw in scale. One of the 1st things I did was a old push-type go cart, draw it up and then me and my friends cut the pieces per the "print" and assembled it.

 

This is how i did my frame for my 27 coupe.
First i looked at problaby a 1000 pictures of model T coupes on internet.
What i was study was the stance on the different builds. What i liked and dislike.
When i had an idea what i wanted i took some 2x4 woodlogs to simulate the framerails.
Took the body, engine, a old tractor grille and a pair of wheels.
Move those things around until they matched what i wanted.
Measured things up and did a simple blueprint with the mesurements on a bit of cardboard.

 

CAD/CAM is a traditional, HAMB accepted technique.
Cardboard Assisted Drafting/Cardboard Assisted Manufacturing.

Cheers,
Harv

 

At 81 now,it's been a bit of a gap,from last time I needed to draw a neat n clean type blue print.
Did years ago for customers,but not much more then napkin scrible for my self,having things in my head.
I just look,but seems I've lost most all of good drawing from the 60s,70s n 80s.
I did find a scrible of a EV racer that I designed, used to build battery power, that maybe fun to see. I built it way back,won every race for 2 years> Funny thing was,I never compleated the aero body*,after we won the first event with out any aero body,in what we thought was only test it out form ,with no body , won a number of laps ahead of P2. A write up from AUTOWEEK.

 

Anymore, I rarely do any actual blue prints, but on even simple parts I like to sketch one or two views with the critical dimensions. I sometimes add a perspective drawing, just to help remember all the details I want to include, like this battery tray / switch mount I made recently. It is not uncommon for my finished part to diverge slightly from the initial concept drawing.

 

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention these clever scales, called "Zero Centered Scales" that have the zero mark in the center. Often used in picture matting and framing, they are extremely useful for speeding up making measurements off of, say, a chassis centerline. I have a yardstick I also marked up as zero-centered.

 

Good idea !

 

Blueprints, lots. I drew construction drawings on AutoCAD for a living, and I'm good at it. Actual chassis, though, not so much

This project is ongoing after 14 years, and still in the design phase. I stopped posting blueprints after a time, though.

 

This is what engineering notebooks used to look like. The old timers I knew all carried one with them, chock full of little conceptual sketches. Even the lettering was neat and uniform.

I'm friends with a guy I went to college with, I saw him last night in fact. He used to sell airbrushed car shirts to us to make some cash. Never a lesson of any sort, he could draw anything and still does.

Around 1974 we had a mechanical drawing lesson, we had a few things to choose from, draw it with no ruler or circle template. This guy turns his in and gets an F. He goes back to the instructor who said, "no ruler or circle template". My buddy says, pick another design, I will draw it here and now in front of you. Which he did, that F was now an A.

 

Yup. I still have a few of those around somewhere. In some classes, like Strength of Materials we even had to do our assignments in notebooks like that and hand them in from time to time where not only the problem solutons were graded but neatness and accuracy of the drawing was too.

 

Good tip. Lufkin also have a tape ruler with double markings on it. Normal full size and another at half scale sort of. Full scale reads 23 1/2 inch. Half scale reads 11 3/4. So if you want to know the center of the stock being measured, no math gymnastics. You know it's 11 3/4 inch is the midpoint.

 

I'm glad they only counted neatness and accuracy of the drawings in drafting class!

 

We sat for Technical Drawing in high school. First few lessons were woodwork... build your own t-square and board. Then on to third angle projection and all the fun stuff. That class turned in to Engineering Studies for the two final years where we learnt materials, corrosion and loading. Field trips to see foundries, smelters and aviation mechanical workshops. Been many years since I saw a Pourbaix diagram.

Was taught by a true gentleman who wore a dustcoat and tie, and was missing a finger. We all thought it was funny to tuck a finger into our palms when shaking hands with him. His Australian sense of humour was matched only by his patience with us.

Funny how some stuff you learn you keep for decades, and other stuff just never sticks. Can still remember a full class struggling with how load is transferred at an angle (the "greasy pipes" lecture). He would probably be mortified with some of the stuff I sketch now.

Cheers,
Harv

 

I used to build most of my stuff off full size drawings but now I have most details committed to memorie and just cut parts and lock them on a chassis table. I tossed a lot of drawings a few years ago and was moderately amused at how much time I spent on them. Very detailed to say the least. I usually drafted on floor protection paper. Heavy enough to take a beating and takes markers nicely. Also you can cut patterns out directly if you manually cut parts.

My background in Architectural drafting both hand and CAD helps immensely. Most of my stuff now is so simple it doesn't take much thinking.