Mister Towed's Tai Chi build

[davecymru]

Sealey don't have the best reputation and 100amp may be a bit underpowered. Also you'll not always get the best deals for welders on e-bay!

I say this from personal experience as I was in your position a year or two back and i spent ages lurking on the http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/ forums before i bought my MIG welder at the start of last year so that i made sure that i bought the best i could get for the money and something that would cope with everything i wanted to do.

I ended up with one of these from Welders Warehouse, although Machine Mart do them as well:
http://www.thewelderswarehouse.com/W...rke_151TE.html
They are normally rated as the best home/hobby "cheap" welder you can get and TBH mine as been great to learn with!

That said, i would say that after a year and a bit of welding, i could probably do with a little more 'poke'! and if I'd had the money then i would have gone for the other recommend one which is:
http://www.weldequip.com/parweld-171c-mig.htm

Speaking from personal experience i'd also advise you to get an auto-darkening helmet, a good set of gauntlets, a set of coveralls (ideally flame proof!) and have an old pair of leather shoes for garage/welding in.
Trust me on this! I learnt the hard way that weld splatter is REALLY painful, especially when it goes down your ear or down your socks!

[Mister Towed]

I've gone for a 100 amp gasless fluxed wire 'arc' or 'stick' welder for about £60 from Amazon, which included gauntlets and a head shield.

After putting the 'tinted' visor down on the head shield and finding I couldn't see a thing I stumped up about another £25 for an arc activated visor.

My reasoning for buying a relatively low powered rig was mainly to keep the costs down while everything I want to weld is pretty thin so it should be man enough for the job. I'll report back on progress once I actually have a go next week (once the kids are back in School as I don't want my son or his friends to wander in and get 'arc eye').

The main drawback with a cheap welder appears to be a short duty cycle: mine has to be rested for nine minutes after each full minute of use. As a complete novice I don't think this will be too much of a problem as I'll be constantly stopping and staring at the results anyway.

2mm welding rods are £6 for 10 rods from Halfords or £8 for a 5kg box from Screwfix. Guess which ones I bought?

[mulberry]

mister toad

did you say "arc" welding.....i have 20years of welding under my belt and to try and stick weld thin metal is bloody hard, even for me. i thought you were getting a mig welder ???

[Mister Towed]

Originally Posted by mulberry

mister toad

did you say "arc" welding.....i have 20years of welding under my belt and to try and stick weld thin metal is bloody hard, even for me. i thought you were getting a mig welder ???

Erm, yep, I've gone for a simple arc welder...

Bear in mind this car is just a hobby for me to get my hands oily with, the worst case scenario is that I fail miserably to weld up the holes in my chassis and have to pay someone else to do it for me properly.

I'm going to have a bloody good go at it me'self first though even if I feck it up.

[Mister Towed]

I've just looked at the equipment recommended by davecymru. Looks like top quality stuff but well out of my price range for this project.

My Sammio is a one-off for me: I've wanted to build a classic replica (356 speedster or 718 RSK) for almost thirty years but could never justify the outlay to do the job properly. With Gary's simple concept and amazing vfm bodyshell/frame I can build myself the car of my dreams for 1/4 to 1/3 of the cost of either of the Porsches. Once it's built though, that's it, never again. So I'll be selling on all the specialist tools, the compressor, sandblaster, welder etc because I won't be using them again.

By buying a cheap arc welder I can have a go at welding, a mystic art that I've always wanted to try, and if it's just too difficult I can pay a pro to finish the job and still have change from what a decent mig welder would have cost me.

The same goes for spray-painting: never tried it, always wanted to, so bought cheap equipment to have a crack and if it looks dreadful (which it might!) I'll pay a pro to do it properly.

This is the real beauty of Gary's cars: you can do as much or as little of the work yourself as you're capable of and if it proves too difficult there's not much that can't be put right afterwards.

Call me crazy if you like but that's the way I see it.

[mulberry]

your not crazy.....im in the middle of spaying my first car...i have done lots of spraying b4 just not a car , heck i have the same feeling if i get it wrong can allways rub her down and start again..."back to your stick welding" find the smallest rods u can find for thin metal work, dont allways go for the cheap rods, murex "good"and "esab" r good tooo...and when ur welding a little figger of 8 with the rod works a treat, it pulls the flux out of the weld....

[davecymru]

It always cheers me up to hear that others have exactly the same approach to this build as i have! Except that in my case I'm using this build to further kit out my garage for future build(s) (Lamborghini Countach!), if/when finances allow, hence me stumping up for the Clarke

Good luck with the welding, and also to Mulberry with the painting as I'm in the middle of mine atm and learning something new every day!

[garyh]

I've seen the various bits of welding you have done, so it will probably be what i need.

[Psycho pops]

Originally Posted by Mister Towed

I went for the kit listed for the Spitfire mk I - III, Herald and Vitesse mk I from Canleys because I'm leaving my swing-axles as Triumph intended (apart from slamming it onto the tarmac).

http://www.canleyclassics.com/search...LD&ptno=KIT33B

I chose the blue 'comfort' bushes instead of the red 'sport' ones because I don't want the ride to be too hard. I've driven too many cars that've had the ride and road handling ruined by being 'uprated' for the track when they're only ever going to get used on the road.

The Peugeot 306 is a case in point: supple and well damped as standard they can be driven safely to their considerable limits. When the 'Max Power' readers start adding stiffened springs and gas shocks all they get is wheel hop, understeer and snap oversteer followed by a view of the bottom of the nearest dyke through the sunroof.

Back to the polybushes, not sure what the differences would be with the swing-spring setup, but you can buy each bush individually so mixing and matching the correct ones shouldn't be too difficult.

Good luck!

My Poly Bush kit arrived today, stupid me never read the small print, no Damper bushes included, or the rear diff mounts doh, thought if i spend the extra money would get everything - the kits on E bay seem to have all but I thought they were so much cheaper the quality may suffer..

The only choice for the damper is to keep standard bushes no poly bush available, will this make any odds to the set up do you think what did you do ?
Cheers Psycho pops

[Mister Towed]

Originally Posted by Psycho pops

My Poly Bush kit arrived today, stupid me never read the small print, no Damper bushes included, or the rear diff mounts doh, thought if i spend the extra money would get everything - the kits on E bay seem to have all but I thought they were so much cheaper the quality may suffer..

The only choice for the damper is to keep standard bushes no poly bush available, will this make any odds to the set up do you think what did you do ?
Cheers Psycho pops

My polybush set came with the rear diff mounting bushes included, perhaps there's a difference between swing-spring and non swing-spring sets?

As for the shock abosorber bushes, I've bought new shocks all round which came from Rimmers with new rubber bushes fitted. I'm happy to use those because, if you think about it, their only purpose is to isolate the shocks from vibration rather than to affect the stiffness/compliance of the suspension, which the shocks themselves obviously do.

If anyone with more chassis tuning expertise than I disagrees please feel free to put in your two new pennies worth.

[garyh]

I have bought all new standard bushes as the car will be 25% lighter, lower and the bushes won't be 40 years old.

[Psycho pops]

Thanks for the input,
I bit the bullet and bought a set of rear diff bushes from Canleys, additional £30, got the poly bush damper set from Rimmers, these are one piece as opposed to the two part rubber bushes, don't have a clue what the difference will be but, after shelling out £150 on poly bushes thought the £4 difference between them and a set of rubber was worth it, just got to get them in now. ( by the way mine was the spitfire iii / herald bush kit so you scored with the extra bushes....

[Mister Towed]

Originally Posted by garyh

I have bought all new standard bushes as the car will be 25% lighter, lower and the bushes won't be 40 years old.

I'd have done the same for the same reasons but I couldn't find a set of rubber bushes listed anywhere and I was too idle to build up a set from scratch on line.

From the ones I did look at it appeared that there was little cost difference between rubber and poly bushes anyway and although a hundred and twenty quid for a full set made me go faint for a while, in the grand scheme of things I don't think that's too excessive.

Out of interest, how much did your set of rubbers cost you? (pseudo sexual innuendo fully intended).

[garyh]

all bought on ebay as part of various re-build kits while you're here, what size are your seats? W H D.

[Mister Towed]

I picked up a pair of newly re covered MGB seats from ebay for £39 the pair.

Not in the position to measure them at the moment as theyr're tucked away in the roof space in the garage while I'm refurbishing the chassis.

Having plonked them into the bodyshell to see how they looked I know I've got my work cut out making them fit: they're possibly going to be a bit big, but my grand plan is to cut off the prop-shaft tunnel brace bars from the Sammio subframe to allow a very low profile aluminium prop cover to go in.

I'll be able to do this because of the dash mounted handbrake handle of course. This should free up a couple of extra inches each side for the seats, and if I can't get them to fit then I can probably sell them on at a profit on ebay and have a rethink.

[Mister Towed]

Just dropped one of my seats down to take a pic:



Dimensions are:

Height - 560mm (recline set almost upright).

Length - 680mm from a line drawn down from the top of the backrest to the front of the seat cushion (variable with different recline settings).

Width 1 - 530mm (across widest part of backrest).

Width 2 - 480mm (across widest part of seat base).

Spookily similar to Davecymru's bucket seats I believe.

[garyh]

66cm h x 53cm w approx overall with a seat depth of 46cm

[garyh]

What do you think... who was fitting seats from a boat?

[mulberry]

im fittin boat seats,,,,,just in case we get RAIN....but im sure we wont..

[garyh]

Any pics, or are they in the front room with your steering wheel, and you pretending to drive...