Technical CHASSIS, Day 3-7 on urkillinmesmalls' A-V8...

Days three through seven weren't as lucrative as day two... but nonetheless we gto most of what we needed to get done, done... and Matt's stuff is loaded up and on its way to Chicago as I type this.

After getting the motor mounted, the K-member in, the front axle located, the wishbones on the rear and the torque tube shortened we began the most daunting task of the build... THE REAR KICK UP... dunt-da-da!!!

First off was measuring to see how high we needed to make it.

 

I knew about how much the spring would end up getting compressed because I had pulled it from a gennie '40 Ford the week before...

So knowing how high I needed to make the rear crossmember I drew it up on a piece of cardboard and transferred it onto a piece of wood. Because the frame rails have rounded corners, and I was going to use this piece as a form... I routed the edges with a router. The form continues the taper of the original frame down from 4" to 2"... After doing this one, I learned something (I'll tell ya later).

 

After I decided on how high to do the kickup... I cut the rear x-member out...

 

Then we marked out and cut the frame rails out... what this accomplished was a gentle/sexy kick-up that utilized the original upper and lower frame pieces... for strength and good looks.

 

and the cutting...

 

Here I heat the upper rail and "eyeball" how much to bend it...

 

Clamping the upper rail to the wood...

 

After the upper and lower rails were bent around the form... I made a template out of cardboard and then transferred it onto metal to fill the gap.

 

I'm LOVIN' that kick up!!!

 

Thanks Jim... but theres' more to come!

Tack welded the plate in place...

 

keep em comming this is a sweet tech post!!!!

 

Hot rod porn on a dial up!!! The suspense is KILLIN' me! I have first dibs on borrowing the patented "SAM-O-RAM Kick Up Blocks".

 

That is if it didn't become kindling in a bizarre welding incident!

 

I have heard of Structural foam but structural Pine?

 

Here's a little tip... instead of welding the outside up (and blowing through with your welder)... I ran a nice bead in the inside first. By concentrating on the upper rail... the weld naturally sags (not a bunch) downward... and I kind of "flick" the stick out down to get penetration into the (lower) side rail.

 

Sorry guys... I had a phone call.

Once you got the nice bead goin' on in the inside, lay one on the outside and grind to desired finish.

Don't fret about the tail end of this kick-up... all that uglyness will get cut off and replaced with some 2x2 square tube... and transition nicely.

 

Here you can see the 1 1/2" x 1 1/2" tube that we used to reinforce the splice. The holes are for rosette welds... and the entire thing will get boxing plates.

 

I am also going to take this time to say that this kick-up was a bitch... Matt and I took about 2 hours to dope it out... and then two and a half days to build it and the rear X-member...

More...

 

Sam, you rule dude, that shit is sweet. That is a really good idea!
Jimmy White

 

NICE work Sam!
I remember HARLIN did one much the same just after he started his shop! Not sure if he actually used a wood form like that to shape it out. The form will make for nicely consistent radii on the bends.
Clever!

Bill

 

It really looks better in person and transitions a lot nicer than in the pics... the pics make it look lumpy fo' some reason.

Anyway, for the rear X-member, we decided to lay the stock rear X-member on it's side... Matt spent the better part of the day carving it into shape and then I boxed it with some flat stock.... we tapered the ends to meet the 2x2 tubing... Matt will grind welds once he gets it back to Chicago.

 

Oops, replace this pic with the one before it...

 

Great tech post! I'll have to remember these tricks when kickin' the frame on my next project.

 

The nice thing about laying the X-member on its side is that is curves nicely around the banjo...

Here we start the boxing plates by clamping flat stock to the rails...

 

And then Matt trimmed to fit with ChopperBob's plasma cutter...

 

For the spring clamp we used 9/16" bolts with the head cut off... and welded to the x-member... oh, and original '40 Ford spring clamps on the bottom...

And finally, we can call it DONE!... overall it was a good week... considering all the other non-car stuff we had to do...

Now it is up to Matt to finish this thing back home in Chicago...

 

sexy!

 

Very nice, I like the sweeping rear instead of a straight Z
TZ

 

I do too... but I have to give credit to Harlan for the idea of it... I had no idea how he did it, so the wood form is what I came up with.

Harlan did this sort of kick up on a AA frame... where you have a lot of metal to waste... but with this A frame, you don't. Especially if you run the spring behind. If you did the Model A spring on top... you could probably get away with not having to extend it.

The hiccup that I had with the whole deal is where we added the 2x2 piece in the back... If I had it to do over, I would have figure EXACTLY how long we needed the kick-up to go rearward... and then I would have made the form extend to the rear-most part of the frame... then I would have made the center piece go all the way too... and only had to add a piece of flat stock on the top and bottom.

Oh well, there's always next time.

Sam.

 

damn sam thats bitchin. now that I think of it I neevr asked harlan how he built that swooping kickup but it looks damn good in person to bad the guy he was building ti for ran outta funds. Theres some other nice features on that frame that hopefully I will ahve my camera the next time I am there and post pictures. yours looks bitchin too can I get a copy of the samokickup jig? haha