1964 Dodge A-100 Hot rod sort of rat rod build thread.

onanysunday said:
That was a big time challenge making those rally style corner pieces. Spent about an hour with PVC first. The two copes were not exactly lined up and had to rotate the tube about 3/8 on one end. Getting closer on this cage. Tomorrow I can bolt it up in place and the only thing left is that front crossbar at your feet/knees.  I am sore from all the twisting and turning to try TIG weld this whole thing. Certainly gaining some skill along the way. Fun project. I did find a real nice set of C1 Corvette visors with the little brackets. Hopefully they will work with some brackets. My bottom plates for the roll bar are supposed to be .125 to pass tech. The plates I have are only .115. Miniscule difference but I have to decide if I'm going to buy more steel and make this tech Worthy.

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Great idea using PVC for your mock up parts

 
Pushed hard today and damn near got my plates made and welded in. Ended up stopping at the metal yard this morning and buying 0.125 thick material. So it now has the proper material. Although then I decided why do I need a 10.5 second certified cage when I'm not going to take this thing to the drag strip and do 130+ mph in it. So I'm going to leave it the way it is other than the front cross bar which I still have to build. 8 point cage instead of a 10-point. I just felt it was going to be such a pain in the ass to do the sheet metal work around those additional crossbars from the main hoop. I think this chassis will be pretty stiff and work well. Really happy with the cage and feel a lot better having that over my head. I still have to weld some down pieces into the step area to keep my 6x6 total coverage for those front two plates.

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Cage is done finally other than the crossbar under the dash. Might start playing with the steering tomorrow and that will dictate where that bar goes. It was only 94° at 6:02 this morning in the shop. Getting nasty already. I would not have guessed 2 full days work to put those plates in but that's what it took. On the four joints I did use the tig to go over top of the mig and added some more rod. It's not going anywhere now.

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Pull this crossbar out in the morning and weld the last bracket up.  More than strong enough .120 wall  1 5/8 tubing to hold the steering. But I think I will do another little bracket going down to the bottom lip of the dash itself. Exercise in futility really but I think I will do it anyway. Just the way my brain works. Then weld the crossbar in for good and the roll cage will be finished. My goal was to be able to slide the steering column in or out 1 inch if I wanted. Right now I have the steering wheel one inch closer than what my Corvette is.

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So I found out the splines coming out of the EPAS power steering unit are a funky 16.5 mm by 36 splines. Tried to buy a reducer steering joint from that to a 3/4 36 spline. No bueno. So this is what I need to do. Use a straight coupler going from a 36 3/4 spline to a 3/4 DD. Then make a short little probably 2 to 2.5 in long shaft that goes between the joint and the coupler. Originally I wanted to make bracketing to mount this unit coming off of the aluminum cradle. That would be a stupid amount of steel to try build that. So I'm just going to run some of my 1 5/8 .120 wall tubing across between the frame rails and hang this unit from two pieces of tube and brackets. I just need to double verify the bolts that bolt the aluminum cradle to the Rick dobberton bulkhead mounts can't come loose. I don't think this frame is going to twist much anyway up in this front area. Then on the other side of this unit will be another short around 2-2.5 inch piece of 3/4 double d shaft going into another coupler and the lower v dog box. Quite the combobulation but this stuff is all standard stuff and I think it's going to work fine. There will  be a third piece of tubing between the frame rails to mount the lower v dog box to. The entire steering system will probably get up into the 75lb range. Hey I know what I'm doing I saw a couple videos on YouTube.

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.001 cut. 1/3 of a human hair. There was one more .001 cut after this to clean it. Start building the motor on this in probably a week to week and a half. I did talk to Mike at turbos direct today about my little baby 67 turbo. Originally this was going to be for a 5.3 making 600 crank horsepower. He said we should still be able to make 600 to 650 at the wheels so crank horsepower should end up in the 700s somewhere when the turbo runs out of steam. Looking forward to some torque with the stroker.

 
Upper steering column and mount are finally completely finished along with the cage and crossbar. It has been a road to get here. When I first built the mount it had some flex in it so I added a couple vertical pieces to box it in. Super strong now. The real problem I have coming up is trying to get a hanging brake pedal with a remote master to actuate the secondary clutch slave cylinder and hydroboost. I ordered that Willwood pedal assembly and it arrives Monday but where the top of that pedal needs to sit and that entire assembly that reverses the rod is going to sit in the exact space where the upper v dog box is going down. I can see some serious engineering or finagling coming up to get that to work. The steering had to come first so I did not have a choice. The master for this hanging pedal will be hanging down below the dash and be visible. There will be visible brake lines as well which I think will be kind of cool. The shifter cable will also be out in the open exposed. Hot rod.

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Also with that Master stuffed way up under the dash I will either have to use a squeezy bottle and a mirror to fill it or maybe it will be easy to pop one of the EFI gauges out and have access to the top of that little master.

 
Didn't have the right size steel tube so I had to make that collar out of a piece of billet steel. By the time I went to the metal yard and then would still have to cut a piece to size I just spent a couple hours and whittled it out. Normally that electric power steering unit connects into a regular steering column with an aluminum collar versus steel. Little short 2-in piece of 3/4- DD steering shaft to connect the coupler to the joint.




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