Updates:
Finally finished adding tubes, which is good because I'm about tired of fitting tubes. There will be a few more when I fit the tunnel, which I cannot do until the frame is sitting on the drivetrain, but it's a small number of little tubes and it should be fairly simple.
I moved on to building brackets (called by other names by some, as the very word can make one shudder).
The first ones were the front and rear bumper brackets. I needed these to be built of heavy stuff, and they needed to hit hard spots on the frame as much as possible. I do think I'll run bumpers for some kinds of racing and often for street driving, and I'd like them to be truly functional; they should be somewhat disposable/replaceable and should protect the tube chassis from damage. So, not only do the bumpers need to be relatively 'soft', they need to deliver the load to the frame where the frame is very strong.
I chose to use bits of 1/2" plate drilled for 5/8" bolts, butted up against the end plates on the square suspension-mount tubes, heavily beveled and multi-pass tig welded, with 1/4" plate gussets (also drilled for headlight mounting in the front). I also added some lateral supports at the connection point in the front, and I may add similar vertical supports on the bottom in the back. I'm not looking for 30 mph bumpers, but 5-10 mph protection would be nice. I might need vertical braces of some kind. I know how I'd do it in the back, not so sure in the front.
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I also built the front and rear upper control arm mounting brackets.
The fronts are purposefully built 1/4" narrower than the stock Corvette locations, to allow me more room to get lots of combined caster and camber. C5 owners often complain about maxing out the adjustments in that direction, it's simple enough to add 1/4" worth of shims between the control arm and the bracket to get to the factory spots. The extra narrowness also allows me to correct things if my mounting tubes end up not being totally square or equally distant from center once everything is fully welded and off the jig. The brackets are made from scrap 3" x 1/4" angle (left over from building the jig), so they're robust.
The rears are also built narrow, but only 1/8" (shims go behind the bracket in this case, between the bracket and the frame). I also put 1/8" washers on both sides of the control arms when setting up and welding, so that I have a full 1/4" of adjustment fore and aft to correct for possible variations or inaccuracies in my build or in the non-centered placement of the rubber bushings in the suspension (which I think I have on the driver's side arm). These brackets have no provisions for vertical adjustment. They are bolted to the chassis with 1/2" bolts, through compression tubes in the square 'suspension mount' sections of the frame. Four bolts for the back mount and 2 for the front. The back plates are 1/4" plate, as are the outside ears, while the rest is 1/8" plate. I still need to buy the 'real' bolts for these brackets, as I cobbled together various nuts and lengths of all thread to put them on.
What I really need to do is find a place online to buy a box of 50 bolts at 1/2" x 3". I'll need nearly that many of that size!
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