Today I spent a couple of hours at garage, but the only visible progress is this:

Those beams are only tagged to their place and seems I need slightly adjust the left one (right in this photo).

It takes plenty of time to get the measurements to acceptable level until doing any changes and then measuring yet again… But I want to make this properly and working with this complex shapes take time.

Some quick & dirty modeling after todays exercises:

But seems that this beast will be looking rather badass soon. 🙂

Todays efforts were cutting the rear axle of Ford Ka so that I got the wheel bearing mounts out. Then some planning and I was able to start cutting some steel beams + prepared parts for welding. Hopefully this progress continues for tomorrow also.

Now I have recovered from the little issue of reverse steering:

So maybe finally at next weekend I’m able to start building the frame.

Even I planned to continue the work at weekend I wasn’t able to do so due other things & events. But today I managed to spend a couple of hours at garage and finalized the tie-rod welds:

 And I also bolted some pieces back:

The next task is to modify right side (left at this picture) tie-rod mount bracket since it does not fit. The other one needed only small bending, but this one needs to be cut and welded together with slightly different angle to make room for the steering axle and tie-rod oil pipes. Shouldn’t take long to modify that, but let’s see when I can have some time at garage…

Next time I can weld the tie-rod properly:

It took surprisingly long time to get it align properly but finally I was satisfied to it.

I have been a bit busy and it could be the next weekend until I have some time to continue with this.

I only managed to get a short stint at garage today and the only result were these modified tie-rod mount pieces:

Next time I should be able to weld them back to their place.

Yesterday evening I started to think the steering a bit deeper… And I started to think that probably the steering is reversed at my current construction. Needless to say that I was correct. There were at least two options how to fix the situation, either to add one set of gears to the steering or swap the tie-rod 180 degrees. Both fixes would need some amount of work, but I decided to rotate the tie-rod:

So I needed to take the front-axle once again to pieces and grind the tie-rod mount points away…  Now when the rie-rod is rotated those mount points need to be installed to a different angle + they need to be slightly modified. But this solution will be beneficial since at right side there is much more room than left side.

So no frame construction today nor at next session when I have time for that… But that does not matter since the end result is more important than the date when this is ready. Next task is to fit the tie-rod mount points once again. Hopefully this time permanently. 🙂

This week has been too busy with some other activities and I have not been able to spend as much time at garage as I would like to. However I managed today to spend some hours and now the project is looking like this:

I started with diff upper mount bolt hole + threws and then continued to floating system bearing assembly. After that I took the front axle parts and finalized all the welds that were still pending. When assembling it back together I also added wheels so I can really make sure how everything will align.

Hopefully tomorrow I can start building the frame, but I still need to do couple of checks to finalize my plans.

Update 12.11.2014 23:10 EET: I just started to think that probably the steering is currently reversed… Since Ford Ka has tie-rod behind the axle center line and now I have it on the front of that. But actually this could be a really good thing since it can be solved by rotating the tie-rod 180 degrees and there is much more space at the right side for the steering axle than there is at the left side. But clearly this is now something I need to consider and see is it causing any other issues or not… Another way to solve this issue is to use a direction changer gears, but I try to avoid that.

The long lasting build of the front axle is now at least 90% ready:

I will still do some minor things like adding upper corner bolt to the diff mount before moving to the frame build. Also some welds needs to be finalized, but maybe during the next weekend I really can start building the frame.

After the frame starts to take shape I can finalize the front axle build to make sure there is enough clearances for the floating system to operate.

Well… The front mount is not ready yet but the pieces start to be:

Some welding and drilling the holes to the front-axle frame and it is ready.