Thread: Stirlsilver's Disco Ute Project

Originally Posted by disco_ute

pm me yr email address if you like I have loads of pics of my build that i never posted anywhere.

PM sent, thanks Mick.

Originally Posted by Disco_owner

Hey mate , keep up the good work , like how you have put a lot of thought into this Build , Will be watching with interest, also you seem to be very proficient with Solidworks.

Thanks for the comment

Originally Posted by wovenrovings

If you are going to be in Thailand you could look up the fella's that rebuild the Combi's. I'm sure they could knock up a back for the cab any shape you want. There was a thread with a link on here somewhere.

I saw that guys thread on some forum, the way that he could manipulate panel steel was amazing! I practically read the whole thread when I found it.

Right so it was a big day yesterday.

I started off by making the radiused corner section with the little straight sections as all one piece. Simply a case of butt welding some 35mm x 3mm flat bar together at the right angles and then grinding them down to the finished profile. The printed template came in very handy here!
















I realised that because I was making the gutter lip out of 3mm bar stock, the bottom of the gutter needed to be 16mm across only which works out quite nicely because all I needed then was two long pieces of 16mm x 3mm flat bar.

Anyway, with the radiused corners done it was time to hack at the car some more so I could get the right measurements off the car on how far apart the corners were. The first stage was removing the roof support, a simple case of drilling out the spot welds.









Then I hacked off the majority of the roof off.







I needed to separate the roof where it is spot welded onto the gutter which was a simple case of drilling out the welds (without going all the way through) and peeling off the steel.







Then by trimming back the roof beams to the right length I got the dimensions between the beams and started cutting and welded in the 16x3mm flat bar between the radiused corners.









With the length double checked I then got onto the fun part... Spot welding and bending the 16x3mm flat bar on the outside to form the gutter lip. A lot of measurement were involved to maks sure the damn thing stayed perpendicular and at 9mm from the top! Anyway I eventually got there.























I was very happy with the end result.

Anyway trial fitment... and it fit perfectly











And that was it... it took me about ohh... 13 hours to do that... I didn't leave the workshop until 2am...

BUT at least now I am one step closer to being able to form up the roof

Next step in the build will be fitting the rear beam onto the gutter and joining it to the existing beams on the car. Looks like approximately 1.5m of 35x35x2mm RHS is the go.

It will need some trimming and reshaping to get it to sit within the roof line but that shouldn't be too difficult... just more time spent with Mr. grinder and Mr. Mig.

Looks like it is coming along nicely there Stirling.
Its coming along quick too. Good stuff!

Good work mate!!

well done Stirlo.

Originally Posted by SPROVER

Looks like it is coming along nicely there Stirling.
Its coming along quick too. Good stuff!

Originally Posted by disco_ute

Good work mate!!

Originally Posted by V8Landy

well done Stirlo.

Cheers for the comments guys

Well some more tinkering in the workshop this weekend.

Basically making up the rear beam and attaching it to the gutter I made up last week:





Because there will be a gap between the beam and the gutter (there wasn't any RHS in the exact dimensions I needed) I would need to make up some spacers to join the two together:



I started off by buying some 35x35SHS and cutting it up to weld in some flat bar to create the sloped section.

Cutting it down to the right length.




Cutting it down, getting a nice straight edge when using an angle gridner was difficult but I got there in the end with a bit of patience.




Some 25mm flat bar was just the right size to fit in the gap... the stuff I had on hand was a bit thicker than the square section steel (5mm vs 2mm) so it wasn't ideal but would have to do.




After everything was spot welded in place I set to doing full seam welds, I thought by alternating my welds and only doing every second run I would be able to avoid any warping... but I was wrong, half way through the welding I took a look at the job and found it had turned into a banana... So I had to get creative with a jack under the chassis rails and some heat...


At the end of the day what did it was good old fashioned dropping the front wheel of the car onto the beam with it under some blocks. After all that was sorted I moved onto tidying up the welds. And trimming the corners down to the profile needed to make sure it clears the cutter corners and also the curved roof.






Some checks to make sure that everything should fit together (it according to the model it should). I just used the gutter section and some offcuts of the existing beams on the car. It was all looking good.






You can see the gap here between the components which I would have to deal with later.








After that all checked out I did a trial fitment of everything on the car to see how it all fits up there.








As you can see here I hadn't quite straightened up the beam enough, and the gutter had developed a natural curve from the welding and the way I had bent the flat bar to form the lip of the gutter.




In the end after chatting about it with Wayne, it was determined that having a slight curve at the back of the roof line will make it look less like a "chop job" so I kept the curve and bent the beam slightly to try and follow this profile as much as possible.

Next day I got onto making the beam spacers to join the two assemblies together. Not very exciting, but it was fiddly because I needed to make each spacer just the right thickness so it only went upto the edge of the gutter. Later the skin will sit on these spacers.

I fitted 3 spacers while everything was sitting on the car.






And then followed up to do the remaining 7 off the car.




I was being very careful this time to make sure I wasn't rushing the welds and have the thing bend on me again. Quite tricky when you are actually running out of time because I had to get out of the workshop real soon. Anyway a trial fit up on the car after I was done and it all still fit











It needs some tidying up but it's pretty well done.