Thread: Stirlsilver's Disco Ute Project

Originally Posted by McDisco

Nice one Stirling! Glad to see you back into the project. Its looking great...look forward to watching it progress.


Angus

Hey Angus! Thanks! Good to hear from you mate, it's been ages! I'm going to have to keep pushing and pushing to get this job done... there is certainly a lot of work to do.

Right as for an update.

I went in to the workshop to cut and tack weld in the upper horizontal brace for the wall.





So the rear part of the frame is done (in terms of cutting and tack welding anyway). Now I need to get the design of the side braces finalised, but before I can do that I need to get a little more info for my model. So the rest of the time was spent taking photos of the side braces to be able to mosaic them in to a side and rear view.

Side view:


Rear View:


You may be wondering why I did this in multiple photos. The reason for that is that the lens of the camera bends and image towards the edges, so to reduce this effect you need to use smaller pieces when you want to use a photo as a geometry reference.

While I was at it, I also took a bunch of top and side photos of the exposed portion of the chassis so that it can be modelled as well... Although I haven't had time to go and align all the photos and join them together (it takes ages)

Hopefully over the course of next week I will produce the model of the B pillar and then finalize the design of the side braces to fabricate them up next weekend.

That's it for now.

looking awesome....


i need to ask though.... seeing the amount of detail you're going into for this project.... do you think you'll get bored once this is finished? lol

Originally Posted by eddie_tdi

looking awesome....


i need to ask though.... seeing the amount of detail you're going into for this project.... do you think you'll get bored once this is finished? lol

Thanks eddie. As to if i'm going to get bored... I'm sure I will always be able to find something to keep me busy. If not, I can always fall back on training for martial arts... or something.

Ok, another update:
By using the left and rear set of photos of the B pillars, I was able to construct a much better model of the B pillars, the process is shown below.

Load the photos at 90degrees to each other and align them.


Using the photos I was able to get the cross sections along the length of the B pillar.


The cross sections were then swept to produce the formed pillar.


The complete item.


I then removed the original profile of the B pillars that the car originally had and added in the more detailed ones I constructed. Then set to actually resizing everything. In particular the positioning of the side braces.


Then produced the drawings to construct the side braces.




So it's time to buy some 6mm plate and get to work this weekend!

Now I guess I better go to bed...

To counteract the fisheye effect, You could place a ruler/measuring stick (or get some known measurements) at the top, bottom and middle of what you are photographing, then in an image program skew/distort the image until all three rulers are the same scale. YMMV of course.

Thanks for the suggestiong isuzutoo, I was aware that you can compensate for the distortion using software. I actually have an SLR which does has software that automatically detects the lens that was used and then ajusts the distortion created by that particular lens. But in this instance I figured that using many photos was a better way to go as you see the whole profile square on, which I think makes it more accurate.

Well, to update on what I got up to in the workshop:
The place next door to where I work kindly gave me some 4mm sheet steel which was thinner than i had originally intended, but I figured it would work still (in hind sight 6mm plate would have been overkill and wouldn't have fit!).

I cut all the plates out, stacked them and ran a strip of weld along the edges to hold them together:


For the side where the 40x40 RHS was welded to, I drilled and tapped the M6 holes for the bolts that will hold the rear doors in position:


Then a similar process for the side where the hinges used to bolt to. Drilled them all the 9mm holes through all 4 at once:


When I offered the cut and drilled plates to the B pillar, I realised I was a bit too skimpy with the lengths, so I had a a gap!:


I carefully tacked the plates to each other across the gap:


It was at this point that I realised I had actually brought a proper camera and didn't need to use my mobile phone:


All four mounting plates tacked together:


I then set to welding up the corners, I tacked the plates to some scrap steel to prevent them moving from thermal expansion while I welded:


All four done and tidied up:


They fitted perfectly:


I cut out the upper left side brace and tacked it in (the drawings were very handy for this):


I cut bar into short lengths and then drilled out the centers for the bolt:


It was at this point that I realised that I should have mounted the rear door before tackinig in the side brace. So I had to do it all with one side brace already fitted (in hind sight I should have just cut off the tack welds!).

It was pretty hard going trying to get everything to line up, but I eventually got all four mounting collars tack welded onto the doors (many lessons were learned here!!). I will take these doors off again later to tidy up the welding of the collars, they are good enough for now to hold everything in position:


Then fitted the lower left side brace:


And bolted up the left door:


It was at this point where it was about midnight, the grinder was starting to play up and we had run out of Argon gas. So I figured it was time to go home. I'll do the right side another day.

Right, well i've done some more homework. This time dealing with getting a model of the exposed part of the chassis going. Basically it was the same procedure like I did with the B pillar in that I took a series of photos of the chassis from two angles (top and side), and then joined them all together.

It was pretty fiddley aligning all the photos, but I got there in the end (the top view of the chassis ended up being a photo 8000x10000 pixels! The computer didn't like that too much. Anyway, the stitched views:

Top:


Side:


Like I did before, I loaded the images in to solidworks, scaled them and aligned them:


Then went about using the images to form the shapes. Here is the left side rail:


I then carried on and tried my best to locate the various other items which was quite tricky:


And the final item (after hours of work...):


Just to give an idea, here is the completed chassis positioned (roughly) on the complete model:




Now I can start looking at the design of the tray, chassis modifications, cylinder mounting and the like!

More progress:
The right hand door was mounted in a similar fashion as the last one. Although this time I got a friend to come in and help me out (thanks Donovan!) It made things much quicker. And as usual, the second time was waaaay neater than the first.

Here are the collars tack welded in to the door (I probably should stop calling them doors since they don't have hinges anymore):


The proof that I had some assistance, free labour is the best kind of labour:




I went about making the little pieces which are to be welded on the ends of the sills and to the bottom of the rear wall frame. The left hand side was a simple case of making an angle cut in the RHS. But the right... well, I cut the sill too far forward, so I had to build this material back up. As you will see by the little boxy thing:






Then I decided that while I was at it, I might as well at looking how I would tie the rear frame to the outrigger. I had come up with a concept earlier on, but I didn't go with that. I just went with something simple, as the photos will show.

Here is the left side:




I think the car is ready for its first engineers inspection!

Good luck. Not that you'll need it. In fact, just point that at this thread!