I held my rad up to my chassis and in the nose, I have almost no room to play around with because the radiator is too big. I cant tilt it forward because it will be too tall, and it cant go up or down because it will hit the top of the nosecone. On the plus side it does fit in the nose, so the largest size rad you can fit is 19"x19"x3" inside of a CMC Locost nose.


1/4 view with front suspension, nose and radiator.

Radiator from engine bay, tight fit

EVERYTHING on my car barely fits!

Things that barely fit are looking proffesional

I WOULD BE MORE WORRIED ABOUT THE SHIT WELDING YOU HAVE DONE ON YOUR CHASSIS....

At least he had the balls to build his own chassis.

fair play.. and i admire him for that...
but you can see why we need an sva test now ....would you be happy if your chassis was welded like that? lo-cost building is a great thing gives people a chance to do their own stuff ..and i fully support it.. but come on lets get the saftey side of it right... that's all
davec.

It has to be strong not pretty.

Hopefully he has cut some test welds on half and made sure they're strong.

agreed don't have to look pretty... i am not a qualified welder but i can weld very good.. to me it looks like the wire speed was too fast and not enough heat into it,poor penetration ?
i am not meaning to have a go at him.. but i nearly had heart failure when i saw the welds!!

quote:

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Originally posted by bikerush
I WOULD BE MORE WORRIED ABOUT THE SHIT WELDING YOU HAVE DONE ON YOUR CHASSIS....

---

andy.. as i read his post he seemed worried about his rad only just fitting .. and then i thought he should be more worried about the welds ....if you think i was wrong to say that fair enough .. but the fact of the matter here is the welds simply don't look good enough...that's my only point..
wasn't meant to be a dig at lo-cost builders in any way shape or form..
dave.

Derf lives in america

there isnt any friggin sva out there......!

so there.

Any weld defects can be easily sorted by grinding back and re-welding.

'just fits' is all thats needed! I mentioned to Hicost once that his turbo was almost touching th chassis rails, he pointed out it wasnt touching.

so fair play - just is good. doesnt is bad.


atb

steve

[Edited on 27/9/04 by stephen_gusterson]

The wels look terrible, but every one that I have cut open has had full penetration to the other side. I have cut out a few welds that I didnt feel were strong (usually because they sit on top like a slug).

Different states require different things. In NJ any welding done on the chassis has to be inspected and signed off by a qulified expert, Ive had my chassis looked at and he said the same thing they look terrible, but they are strong.

If you dress the visible ones down a bit, and paint with a decent 'build' layer of paint, they will look a lot better.


At the end of the day, very few welds are actually visible on a locost

atb

steve

Noter that all the welds shown are fresh, and I havn't even hit them with the wire brush yet, not only that but alot of them look like "stacked coins", but because of the bad photo quality they look like straight lines.

Have a look at a TVR chassis, then say something. For £35,000 I would expect a lot better workmanship. I don't think they go through SVA as they are type approved. It looks like fluxed wire or pure CO2 weld. If it fills the nosecone it means the air goes through it not round. I had to cut the brackets down on my Escort radiator to get it to fit.

[Edited on 27/9/04 by Peteff]

look at any 70s jap motorbike

when i took delivery of a brand new one in 1976 there was still strands of mig wire sticking out some of the welds!


A guy here with a W reg busa has a swing arm with welds on it that look like birds droppings. Nothing important, just bracing for the shock mounts.......



atb

steve

Yep, the old Jap bike frames were awfull, spatter everywhere and like you say bits of wire sticking out of the welds (or "hedgehogging" as I like to call it )

Must admit, my welding skills have really improved as I've worked on the car to the point where I've gone back and redone some of the earlier ones. I still have big problems trying to weld into acute angles though.

I cut one of my old shrouds into a point which helped.

bikerush is correct in pointing out the welds are bad wots the point of building a car taking for sva to be told that it needs completaly stripping down cus the welding is not good enough for a shopping trolly

must say some of my early ones looked pretty ugly, thats why i got the suspension arms made for me...now my welding is much better.

keep at it man!

I have found with the 16 gauge tube its very easy to get a very strong weld, they dont allways look nice but when you try to break one your more likely to tear the metal. It looks like the same issue I get often of trying to weld sideways and its a bitch to do -and you get build up from the wire speed being a bit high or your welding a bit to slow-(my issue often) but usually it just means extra bead on top of the finished strong weld. Once you have seen what your strong welds are like and tested you can quite easily tell when you f(*&ked one up and can redo it.
Dale

Welding is like riding a bike ! Practice makes perfect. I agree with most of the above, wire feed too high... that was my breakthrough into good looking welds. Slow the feed down..... gives you time to swirl to get the ripples showing. Practice, Practice, Practice ,Practice.