Kimjon

Okay, here goes everything...

@Geophy hooked me up with less Aliexpress looking taillights. Period correct looking glass trailer lights. The usual fuckery to fit them, but well worth near knocking myself out with the drill as the holesaw bit, and the drill handle swung around to smack me right in the eyes socket. Felt like getting punched by Mike Tyson!

Safety locks made, so the suicide doors don't fly open on their own. Looks simple, but took a bit of thinking before deciding how to do it.

It's cool, but those are slooooooow.

Templates made. Hopefully I'll get time this week to pick up some sheetmetal.

Hinges x2, and a door that opens...fuck yes! Winning...

Other parts, meet other parts... It's ummmmm....functional??

Other parts...

Door handles are off a 33 ford. I then needed to make other parts to make it work.

It's so tiny... But shitty things also come in small packages too.

What's behind door No2? More fucking work to do...that's what. But I see it as a milestone. By the end of this weekend I plan on having it mounted on its hinges and handles like the other side. I also cut out the small radius donuts I tig welded together. The radius was too small and it didn't look right to me, so I made bigger ones (picture above has the big radius "bends". I'll mirror this on the original door too.

Oh, and I managed to buy a reproduction front headlight off ebay...fuck yeah! So pumped about this. Wouldn't be the same without it.

Calling it done. Unless papper isn't a great choice for panel work, in which case it's still a long way off being done...

Did a test panel to test a few assumptions. I think, hope, pray...this works on the main door skin.

Cool idea. Out of interest I weighed the door this morning. Was only 3.6kg (no sheetmetal). The steel is super thin wall.

Changed it up a little. There were several versions of this model of Ape. One had suicide doors. So I'm going down that path...just cause. Took a little figuring out, but i came up with a mechanism that offers the articulation needed to clear a few things.

I'm lucky to have the workshop right next to the house, so I can put in hours when I get the chance. It's probably 20-30hrs a week??? I'm too poor to pay for someone else to fix/make stuff for me, so i just roll up the sleeves and get shit done.

This was the last but piece of the puzzle. its far from perfect, but im getting shit done.

Doing things the hard way since ages ago... I cut two bits of sheetmetal, then stretched one bit, and shrunk the other. Making the panel beating equivalent of a 69 with equal and opposing halves. Then tig welded it together. A lot of work.

I'm out of mig gas, and doing this type of work by yourself with a tig is punishing. If I was an octopus it would be okay-ish, but with only two hands I'm not loving this task. Slowly getting there, but I may park it until next week when I can get some ArCO2.

But, it's slowly getting there. And I'll be well pleased if I actually achieve it.

So, to make a door - it needs a frame. I thought about the different ways of doing this and settled on buying 20x20x1.6 SHS off a steel websitein Akl. When I went to collect it, I was told they didn't stock it. Ffs!! So i left with much bigger 25x25x1.6 which is considerably harder to work with. Google cunt of a job, and you'll most likely see images of someone who was planning to use 20x20x1.6, but ended up with 25x25x1.6 instead.

Then cut it in half, then cut it in half again... Now we're getting somewhere.

Donuts? Who doesn't love the guilty pleasure or glazed carbohydrates... But these ones are guilty free: I did some rough maths, ignored it...made these because the size was roughly in the middle of the two bends I needed to create.