First I disassembled the second Sierra 1.6 rear drive shaft to half way like I did with the first one earlier. Before assembling it back I need to change CV joint boots to the inner joints.

But even I can start the assembly process with the new drive shaft/CV joint configuration I need to wash the parts:

As you can see I have even vacuumed the table since there was plenty of metal shrapnel from the previous exercises. I poured some diesel fuel to those CV joints since I hope it will dissolve the grease a little bit. The real washing will be the next task when I’m able to continue, let’s see how soon that happens…

This is how they look now:

The next task is to wash all front drive shaft parts and start assembling those. I will also finalize the front diff adapter flange at the same time. After the drive shafts are ready I can start figuring out the final shape of the front axle frame.

Today I needed to do some winter preparations at garage like clean roof waterducts etc… So not that much progress with the front axle.

However I managed to weld the upper ball join mounts:

Hopefully tomorrow I have the lower balljoint mounts welded + stiffeners added. Lower mount probably will not need any stiffeners due a bit different installation angle and welding possibilities.

No real progress today, but I used a little while for planning and testing how the things will be working. So couple of photos about that:

At least I was able to grind the last one which I welded yesterday + drilled mounting holes:

Current holes and bolts are 12mm, but I most probably “upgrade” them to 14mm. I also planned to weld small pieces of L-rod for additional weight carrying to the short sides. Once again maybe I’m over-engineering this, but at least it should be then strong…

Next task is to weld these to the ball joint upper mounts and decide what kind of stiffeners they will still need. Tie-rod  will also need some more clearance so I need to cut small pieces away from the long sides.

Yesterday wen’t with other things so I weren’t able to work at garage. Also today I arrived a bit later than originally planned, but at least the frames are now welded:

As you can see the last one is not grinded yet since it got too dark outside and I did not bother to set up lights there. I try always do grinding outside if possible since I don’t like cleaning/vacuuming that much.

Hopefully I’m able to work with this at least one evening before the weekend, but that remains to be seen…

Here is one photo how I used the first frame as a jig to ease the welding of the others:

After welding those horizontal seams I grinded the vertical seams fully open and welded those. So the end result should now be 100% welded seams without any unwelded sections inside.

Some progress also today:

Let’s see do I have tomorrow evening time to weld the other two.

It was a bit boring task to do, but now paint has been removed from the front axle rectangular frame pieces:

Next task is to weld them together and after that weld two of them to the ball joint upper mounts.

Lathe guy brought me some goodies:

So now I have flanges for diffs. At weekend I will take a closer look of the front diff flange does it still need to made thinner or is it good like it is now. It now is a bit more than 45mm thick, so it’s also a bit heavy even that should not matter too much at this project. I have the feeling it cannot be made any thinner without also trimming the wheel hub nut thread (cardan axle) and diff axle hub nut thread shorter. And it might be that I don’t want to trim those.

Playing heavy metal is hard job, especially when you do that couple of hours with 230mm grinder:

It took time to cut since I used material found from my scrap metal stockpile. It was U-shaped rod and it had all kind of possible other metals welded to it… But at least now all rectangular frame pieces have been cut. Next task is to grind the paint off since that is not helping the welding. After that I can weld the frames together.

The front axle will be quite heavy since I’m using quite thick metals, but hopefully it will be strong. And the weight should not matter at the end since this is not a racer. 😉