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I finally got a chance to do something!

I had a general idea of how I wanted to do my trans mount, but had no idea of how the trans tunnel would tie in. Everything I visualized got real complicated.

I went to wally-world and picked up posterboard to play with.

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It worked great to eliminate a couple of ideas that didn't work in real life.

I started off making fronts to the seat bases. The beefed up bead roller is fun to use (as uposed to frustrating).

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I then traced the panels to see the "box" th trans mount had to fit in.

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I mocked up a mount in posterboard. It worked good enough to transfer to steel.

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Even though it is a short span between the seats, I felt the mount needed more beef.

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I bent up a simple reinforcement to double the material and add gussets

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now for the tunnel

I screwed around with the idea of a beefy safety loop, but nothing seemed to work. In the end I just made a simple tunnel.

First in posterboard

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then in steel

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Nothing is welded in. I am considering bead rolling the tunnel, but need to know where the seat back will be before I can finalize a design.
 
yea trans mount! My O.C.D. is finally staticfied....[cl

I like the bead rolled panels. Looks good.
 
I played with front end pieces too....trying to figure out what my upper control arms might look like. I did a comparison of front spindle relative to the bottom of the car and the current rear "ride height". ...the front is about 2.5 to 3 inches lower (spindle higher). It ought to be fun trying to make this crazy mismatch of parts sit right. It looks like it will be plenty low.

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I put a vacation day request in for this Friday. I'm gonna work on it again this weekend.

The pieces are finally falling into place. Hopefully I will have motor mounts after this trip.
 
The 6'5" boy doesn't fit quite as well as my daughter did, but nobody can resist the chance to make racecar noises.

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The goal for the weekend was motor mounts.

First I needed to figure out what the motor would attach to. Before I could do that, I needed to figure out exactly where the steering would be....

I started with a brace from the firewall cop car brace to the front crossmember.

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then thought about going from that diagonal to the front framerail swoop
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I buzzed in the diagonal and added a brace to that
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The steering crosses from the outside (at the column) to the inside (at the rack). I neede to figure out where the middle shft is going to be.

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I cut apart a Toyota four runner steering sector (partially to see how it was put together)
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I made an adapter bushing to match up the splined section I needed to the crush section
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The bushing started out as a 1.25" collar that I ground down to 1"
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trial fit before welding

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bzzzzzzz
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I have steering!
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still a lot of decisions to be made on how the whole underhood bracing will tie together.....

Started on the other side
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not a whole lotta room next to the oil filter
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I didn't get around to motor mounts...too much basketball watching.
 
Story of my life......I set out to do something but first I have to do this, but before I can do this I have to do that, but I'm not quite ready for that because I haven't designed that other thing yet :rolleyes::eek:

Difference is I usually get frustrated and give up for the day but not Mr. Flipper, he just forges ahead :cool: Nice work as usual and hey, there's another happy kid :D Looks like you all had a good weekend [cl

[P[P
 
I'm not real sure if I'm happy with angling the front braces out to the outer frame rail like this:
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I kinda think they need to go to a radiator hoop or something.
 

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