Projects My Deuce Coupe Project

Lookin' great so far Oz Rat. Am I gonna get to see it at the Chopped Show?

 

I'll be there for the weekend (accomodation already booked) but the Chassis won't be with me. I'll offer it to Lowsquire to take with him if we wants to display his work...... looking forward to the event.

 

I went over to Rancho Deluxe today to check up on things...... Here is the latest.

Lowsquire had fabricated the Torque Rod. Here is a pic of the section connected to the Diff.



And here is a pic of the other end of the Torque Rod as well as the Handbrake bolted to the Chassis



The Rear Exhaust Hanger Brackets as well as the Brake Line Tab were made.



I managed to score a set of Right Hand Drive Square Back Spindles (very hard to find)...... Very happy with this score as it will give the Ride more of an authentic look than the Bolt on steering arm option...... Now over to Lowsquire to bend them up enough to clear the Hairpins.



Not too much left now...... The installation of the Front Spring, R/H Drive Spindles, Handbrake Cable, Pedal set-up, Rear Panhard Bar and she can leave Rancho Deluxe.



Lowsquire presented me with my L/H side Rail. For those that have followed this thread from the start you will remember that the L/H side rail had to be replaced because of excessive pitting & subsequent weakness. The Engineer made Lowsquire cut it up in three pieces and also removed the original US Frame Number to keep in his files......... Ya reckon some JB Weld could put this back together?

 

I have enough JB weld to fix the rear section of my Z'd rails, so I can fit a 32 tank in my rails. Can I have it?

 

Very nice JT....

Rat

 

Nice progress Rat and Lowsquire!

HC.

 

I paid Lowsquire another visit today...... Here is this week's progress.

The Spindles were bent to clear the Axle & Hairpins. The clearances are still a little tight but it should be ok once some load goes on.









The Rear Panhard bar was fabricated. I'm quite happy with the way this turned out considering the restricted room & clearences. It's getting quite busy back there now and there is still Exhaust, Brake & Fuel lines to go.

 

Looking good, one thing is there enough clearence on the axle end of the panhard rod not to hit the floor ??? looks like it might be tight

 

Good pick-up there Langy. The Panhard will protrude about 60mm, at maximum lift, above the floor line. So I'll have to box a section for that clearance. There was no real other way to build the Panhard mainly because of the limited room between the Rear Crossmember & the Diff.

 

Do you really need it?

 

Yeah It's needed.
I'm running a narrow diff (56.5 inches) which means the Tyres will be quite close to the Body, that is the way I wanted it. So I want to avoid any side movement and possible rubbing of tyre up against the body.

 

Looks good, keep us posted

 

Great looking stuff, keep up the good work!

 

Nice progress JT!

HC.

 

At least its a nice long bar so will work good, Was there not room for it behind the axle or in front as its mounted fairly high. Hope you don't mind me suggesting.

 

Ben & I worked through the various possibilities, but there was simply No room in front or behind the Diff, as you can see in the pic showing it side-on. We also had to make allowance for the exhaust.

No issue with you suggesting things. That is what this forum is all about. Thanks mate.

 

Nice build here!! I'm glad we don't have "Vic Roads" beaurocracy in NZ to deal with

I'm curious about your panhard setup [ I know it'll work fine !! ]

Did you consider using an alloy backing plate of a Falcon diff and a complete Watts linkage system.
The Falcon diff is a BW the same as the Nissan diff you have there.[ 9-bolt to you Americans ]
I swapped a Falcon Watts linkage into a 3rd gen Camaro for circuit racing, it was easy to do [ and successful ]

 

I never considered your suggestion of the alloy backing plate, but I did suggest a similar method of fabricating something to bolt to the rear of the diff using the bolts that the backing plate bolts to, but the issue is that the Panhard bar needed to be at least 1 metre long for it to be effective, which means it would have needed to fix to the Chassis Rail, if it attached to the backing plate. This was not an option as it would have left no room for exhaust..... the exhaust will run through the rear crossmember hole that you see.

 

You still have enough room there for a Watts Linkage.
Just mount one side above the exhaust and the other side below [ you can even shorten them up, because the two Arcs that they move on always cancel each other out. [ it would be a shame to have bump steer in that beautiful chassis you built ]

Also, looking at your Iron case Toyota G/box, some Hilux's with bench seats have the shifter moved forward a bit to clear the seat [ they all used the same box, but had different inputs and clusters to lower the ratios ]

 

cool project its looking good.

The dropped front axle is a neat peice, we dropped a couple of the model A axles with the squared out reveal ends like that, i think they were a replacement axle.

JEFF

 

Savages! I can't believe they make you destroy parts that they deem to be unsafe.

 

Thanks for the suggestion, but I think my room is restricted for such a set-up.... see pic below.


As for the shifter position, I measured my seat position and found that it was going to be tight with the rear offset shifter that came with the box, so I purchased an adaptor with no offset from Dellow. That moved the shifter 150mm forward and fixes that problem.

 

That's cool ! I cant wait to see it finished.

Now for an espionage question!

Those nicely done holes in the boxed chassis, is there any change of posting a pic of the tools used to swage them?

I have a similar need for them!

Thanks Kerry

 

Kerry.
Here is an idea.
Check this out.
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=451644

 

You can make the dies pretty easily on a lathe or get someone with a lathe to do them for you, on thicker stuff like a frame they need to be made in steel, I use a flypress or a bearing press to form them.

Here are some i made in aluminiun for thinner sheet, same idea

 

Langy hit the nail on the head.....

Lowsquire has had three or four different sized Dies made up, as the ones shown by Langy. He cuts the hole out to the size of the inner circle, then fits the Die and presses them together....... You get a nice even press & bell shaped hole.

 

Thanks a lot guys, I've used a 30mm flared chassis punch before
[ I went swiss cheese crazy on a Camaro race car ]

With the big holes, I had visioned some big assed shop press
But it looks really easy with a bit of patience

 

Kerry,

to let you know, the biggest holes I have a die for are 90mm, and to correctly press them in 3mm plate takes about 12 ton, according to the gauge on my 20 ton press. its just a medium assed press..

I had a engineer friend turn mine out of tool steel..bit excessive, but they should last forever.

 

More clever engineering from Lowsquire......

This is the Handbrake/Emergency Brake set-up. He devised this pivoting system to ensure the cable was pulled from a central position thus applying even braking pressure on both Drums.

 

Wow that is clever!