The 510 Realm

Oh sheesh, that's a good idea that seems so simple once someone suggests it.

510rob wrote:Oh sheesh, that's a good idea that seems so simple once someone suggests it.

All my life I have just assumed you couldn't bend tungsten without snapping it... then I find out you can as long as you heat it

Yeah I do have a gas lens, I tried a super long stick-out on another project and was getting some porosity, although having said that I think in this case the shape of the crossmember might make a nice little "trench" to hold the gas. I'll give it a go on the other side.

I feel the same way! Duke wins the internet today for his post about bending tungsten.

Another thing to be aware of are double long gas nozzles for TIG. They are helpful to have on hand for those once-in-a-blue-moon cases where they solve an access problem...

http://www.weldingcity.com/tig-torch-pa ... a-cup.html

Crossmember still ongoing. I wanted to finish the gearbox stuff (or at least the fab side of it) so here we are.

Got the mandrel back from machining (I don't have a 4-jaw so I can't hold it true enough for this job on my lathe), broke all the old tacks, checked and measured then started going for it.

This was really difficult, not just because it's cast but I really struggled to get everything warm enough and to keep it warm enough to ward off cracks. Instead of fully welding the outside and then taking it off the jog and fully welding the inside like I had planned I had to do a few short runs on the outside to keep it aligned, then remove and fully weld the inside.

This was necessary because the L16 block was acting as a very effective heatsink and rapidly cooling the bell housing.

After that I had to die grind out all the outside welds that had cracked right down the middle, preheat and then bolt it up to the jig and begin rewelding the outside as fast as possible before it cooled. It seemed to go ok, I only got 1 crack and was able to reweld it.

Now I just need to clear some bench space and win lotto so I can afford the remaining bits to put it together.






Overall I'm very happy with how it turned out at this stage. I'm currently wrecking a 70 Deluxe, the engine's locked up so when I pull it out I'll fit the bellhousing and input shaft up and check the clutch range of motion so I can make any adjustments I need (I sold the crank out of the block I used as the jig).

Did some more stuff and ended up finishing up the fuel pump plumbing and ran the front to rear brake pipe. The oval hole where the original fuel hose from the tank went was reused. I made a small alloy plate with angled bulkhead fittings in it for this and rivnutted it into the floor.

I was putting this off because I’m lazy, it involved spending money and also I didn’t really have a clear picture in my head of how it needed to be.

It’s all quite tight in there but nothing is touching anything else. Just need to rivnut a few P clamps to hold everything down and then I can flip the car back over.