Progress has been made. Some is very visible and some is not. I did a lot of small welding jobs on pieces that had been heavily tack welded for engine/transmission fitting, but weren't fully welded in place. The notch of BR12 is 95% complete. I just need to remove the waste material that makes up the wedge I carved out for the rear axle pumpkin. The 1/8" plate (tie strap) was installed and fully welded in and painted. You may notice that the clearance wedge has been cut through adjacent to the 1/8" plate. After every thing is fully welded in place, I'll cut out the remaining piece, which is cutting along the black lines in the photo below. In the mean time, its presence will keep things from moving around.
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The finished piece looked pretty much like below. I did add a couple of more small welds after this photo was taken. My belief is that this construction will handle any tension/compression, twisting or bending loads across this joint. Time will tell.
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I also got the reinforcing plate at the right rear of the transmission tunnel fully welded in place, all welds ground down and the new work painted in primer. That's going to give me a little bit on insurance with respect to driveshaft clearance due to the 3/4" offset of the input shaft for the rear axle.
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Here's the additional 1/2" of clearance for the driveshaft it got me. I made the tunnel as narrow as possible to allow for wider seats, which I felt our street cruiser would need. I thought I had the driveshaft clearance taken care of, but after it was constructed, it looked like a potential interference problem that would be harder to solve in a finished car, so I did this alteration.
If I were doing it again, I'd make the passenger side of the tunnel wider at the rear, and accept a slightly narrower seat for the passenger.
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Tomorrow, I'm going to try and get all the welding done for the new triangulation pieces added a little while back. I'd like to have all tasks for the tunnel done as I'm going to need to do spackling and painting next week before our new window coverings are installed.
Cheers,