Popular Post Hurmeez Posted May 8 Author Popular Post Share Posted May 8 Shortly after completing the above, I got sent to the states for a couple of weeks for work which killed all progress for obvious reasons. Still, I got to see a space shuttle and shit, so that was still pretty sweet. Once I got back, it was a matter of ticking off house jobs for a few weekends and various other stuff, all of which meant it was a month or two between finishing the thermostat housing and getting stuck back into the car. For reasons I've grown to despise, you'll recall I cut the rear quarter panel off the car over three years ago now. Given it is still not welded back on, this is still the main focus of the work. So far the list of jobs I wanted to do while the quarter was off has included: - Wheel tub outer repair DONE - Rear jacking point rebuild DONE - Inner sill brace section DONE - Inner sill/Floor outer repair DONE - Seat mount re-engineering DONE - Outer sill replacement DONE That leaves a very short list to complete before the quarter is ready to go back on. Namely: - Pinch weld seam repairs IN PROGRESS - Repair Cert IN PROGRESS - Properly paint inaccessible areas NOT YET STARTED That is unless I embrace a bit more scope creep... As one does, I was excitedly showing off my progress to my partner one day (who is lovely but doesn't pay too much attention to how I burn away my spare hours) when she noticed that there are no rear seat belts. "Of course my love, it's a 50 year old car" was my almost truthful reply. It was at this point that I was informed in no uncertain terms that under no circumstances would my small daughter be riding in a death trap like that. Which sucks, cause I have many fond memories of drives with my dad in old death traps, and I'd hate for my kids to miss out on the same. So we came to a deal. I'd put lap belts in the back. Diagonals were technically an option back in the day, but at the cost of a big ugly vertical bar the mounted the top hanger in the middle of the rear windows. While looking at how I could do that nicely, it occurred to me just how little effort had been put into any kind of side impact protection back in the day. It makes sense of course. There's a reason these old cars are so light compared to new ones. But it still isn't great. Given my track record with RWD cars (stacking only the second one I've ever owned on the first day of ownership at 18), and the likelihood of catching a rouge mum in a Q8 blowing through a roundabout in Dorkland, I figured it would be prudent to at least have a go at improving it a little bit. To begin with, I wanted to improve the door structure. Any improvements in the door itself would be largely pointless if the impact was able to tear it off the latch, so that was the first point of modification. When we wrecked the Capella for its V6 waaaay back in the day, we saved as much of the interior mechanicals as was practical. Because of that, I have a perfectly good burst-proof latch assembly that just needed to be grafted in. Initially, I just roughly mocked it up to give me a good idea of where the male part would need to mount. Once I had a good idea of where things would need to end up, it was simple enough to make a quick cardboard template to mock up the latch mounting arrangement. Note how it all tucks nicely behind the window track. Like it was meant to be there. Transferred it to steel, and added a 3mm doubler behind it to give the whole area a lot more strength. While I was in this corner I also took two seconds to fill in a speaker hole that I'm not planning to use. Before I got too far ahead of myself, I took the time to sort out the linkages to make sure I could use all the standard Escort parts still. I had to make my own key by taking the barrel out and reverse engineering it from each wafer, but it worked out fine in the end. Oh and splash out on a 3D printer. Been looking for an excuse to get one for a while anyway. Once I knew that would work, I got stuck into the brace itself. Each end is gusseted with 2mm sheet braces. The hinge/front end of the door already has a big 2mm spreader plate from factory, which the brace is welded directly onto, and the rear end is welded to the 3mm doubler I installed before. I opted to go for 25x50x3mm box, just cause I felt like moving the bare door around the garage was too easy and I could do with the extra weight training. Because I'm also a weak scrawny little runt though, I did cut a bit of gravity out of the inside face before installing it. The window and latch mechanisms all clear, and it looks pretty good on the car. So that's the door pretty much sorted. Next is to beef up the B pillar. It's all well and good having a strong door, but if the B pillar just folds in and drops the fence post in your lap anyway, it's all kind of moot. For this, I used a similar design. 3mm doubler welded to the wheel tub, 2mm gussets to the main member, a 25x50x3mm box section, and another 3mm doubler behind the door catch to transfer the load from it into the vehicle structure. And that's it. I've taken to thinking of these braces as "open casket bars". God knows they're probably not going to save anyone's life, but at least they might help give my ugly mug an open casket funeral. I'm also mentally justifying the extra weight and time spent with saying they'll stiffen the chassis up a bit. Probably just going to make the car slower in the end, but ah well, I'm a great believer in the sunk cost philosophy anyway. I've again got more stuff photographed and ready for writing about, but Imgur's hellishly poor usability totally killed my motivation to make updates recently. I've switched image hosts now, so I'll have a crack at writing a bit more in the near future to bring it all a bit more up to date. Cheers 21 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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