It's been a busy time. The Royale RP-24 project was quite a challenge and reintroduced me to something I hadn't done in a while. Braze welding. The main thing that I learned was that some old English guy who probably did nothing but smoke cigarettes and braze tubes together, was truly an artist. I gave up trying to match the beauty of the welds and focused on making them strong.
All in all 6 chassis tubes had to be R&R'd including the front hoop and its brace. Two suspension arms had to be redesigned, one X brace fabricated between the engine and rear suspension crossmember, two pivot points had to be gusseted and 2 harness mounts moved for the use of a HANS device.
When the owner picked up the chassis, he dropped off a couple of control arms to be repaired as well as an engine bracket. Another interesting project! The once straight control arms were both bent into an L in the same spot. The problem is, how to make the arms stronger without over building the part to where it transfers the excess load on into the chassis. A few ideas are brewing. We'll see how they pan out.
Jeff Templeton brought the Impreza back to the shop for the seat brackets and harness bar installation. Seat brackets are never fun, never easy and never a quick job. Even worse when there are two to build, and they're different! The navigator's seat is positioned as low and as far back as possible. Jeff's seat was positioned about 10" further forward and about 4 inches higher. Navi's apparently do not need to see immediate danger.
Phase one of Izzy's Shop Expansion is nearly complete! For those that don't know, Phase One is adding a second story onto the house so that I can leverage the better half into Phase Two... New Shop Planning! Unfortunately Phase One has left Phase Three (Shop Construction) with empty coffers. I'll figure out how to change that somehow. Meanwhile, I'm playing Harry Homeowner and installing 1,000 sq ft. of hardwood, buying endless gallons of paint and ceramic tiles and constantly balancing the checkbook.
Headers By Izzy's???? No... I'm not going to venture into building headers, but I am in the process of building a copy of a Hooker header for an IT/Production Omni. Mike Glassburner is in the process of converting his IT Omni over to Production and has been having header issues. The main issue being that Hooker no longer makes the header... and it's prone to cracking. This'll be a fun one!
Pics of all of the above when I can dig the laptop out from under the drywall dust.