LocostUSA.com

Tell me how that works out for ya

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mobilito ergo sum
I drive therefore I am

I can explain it to you,
but I can't understand it for you.

Didi you find a local business that made those for you? If so, would you mind indicating how much they charged you? PM me if you prefer not to post the amount, but are willing to say.

Cheers,

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Damn! That front slip angle is way too large and the Ackerman is just a muddle.

Build Log: viewtopic.php?f=35&t=5886

Lonnie
They charged me thirty bucks but it was a personal favor and I'm not sure I could get more parts. A local guy saw those parts and is planning to set-up an X-Y plasma cutter which would be good but he is still "planning".

Thanks. I've yet to find a business that will do small jobs. I'll keep looking.

Cheers,

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Damn! That front slip angle is way too large and the Ackerman is just a muddle.

Build Log: viewtopic.php?f=35&t=5886

Last post April 11. It is not that I haven't been doing anything just that forward progress isn't being made
When we moved to the Driftless (gods gift to curvy road lovers) I thought about doing some restorations and generally wondering around, then I caught the builder bug. This would have been alright had I stayed in Milwaukee. The place you can get anything made or find someone with the materials or tools to do it. In the Driftless not so much. I have just figured out that it is going to take a 1" reamer to assemble my latest "brilliant ?" idea. Order the tool on line $ wait two or three days for UPS Right at the beginning of what looks like a good stretch of construction weather. Oh well, either empty curvy roads or a builder culture you can't have everything.

If you have followed this thread you know that the plan is to build a roadster (barchetta) body for this car. You may not know that I have committed to hauling the body buck to the IMM in Oblong to get some help with panel forming. To do this I will need a somewhat custom light weight trailer and to get all this done and to rebuild my buck before October I have switched to trailer building. I hate changing course but, the chassis project needs parts for the lathe so I can make delrin pivots to prototype the A arms and do the bump steer trial.

The trailer design is finalized and the weight with buck should be about 250 lbs. split 50/50. Aluminum is 29 lb./sheet so with a 4 sheet body (very conservative) the whole thing should weigh maybe 350 lbs.. It is nice when things at least appear possible.

I did some numbers on using 80/20 aluminum extrusions for the buck frame. This doesn’t work out so well. It looks like $400 for the material. Too bad, this would be a great way to attach the buck stations and be changeable to other configurations as well as be disassemble for storage.

IMM? That' pretty exciting. I'm a metal shaping wanna be at the moment, but will be doing the real deal later in my build. I did have the chance to spend a day with several guys who have been going to IMM for years and they had photos of "community projects" done there in past years. Have you been before?

I think you should post photos (or screen shots if that's what you have now) of your trailer too. After all, it's part of the build story.

Cheers,

Lonnie

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Damn! That front slip angle is way too large and the Ackerman is just a muddle.

Build Log: viewtopic.php?f=35&t=5886

I've been to IMM twice last time we worked on my buck and a Cobra Daytona Coupe. Then I ruined my buck hauling it home in a torrential rain storm.
Pictures of my trailer as soon as I figure out how to deal with about 10° of twist in the long tubes.

Vroom, you're a bad man you are. Cutting apart that beautiful buck instead of offering it and the panels for sale to someone else is sacrilegious! The body you were building was beautiful and should have been finished even if you were disappointed in it and your new one will be better looking. Rant turned off now. I hadn't read this thread for a long while, just got up to date today. I'm looking forward to seeing more of your beautiful work.

Bill

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Bill H
Winnipeg, MB, Canada

Bill
Thanks for the kind words. The truth about the buck is it's complicated. It had a major error in it that would have required recutting most of the contours and then there was the damage caused by hauling it back in the rain. I still have all the panels and they will be useable as they were made with an e wheel and didn't have a lot of complex shape. You are correct I need to get this project finished.

So here is my question for the day. What is the best buck building material ? For sections the material needs to be 3/16 to 1/4" thick, dead flat and stays flat, band saw able and relatively light weight. I last used 1/2" MDF which warps if loaded when damp and is pretty heavy. Also a buck needs some sort of sub structure to build on. Last time I tried a big plywood box. This was strong and square enough but it really needs to be 10' long and I haven't found plywood that long. I thought about aluminum extrusion (80/20.net) but that would cost about $500, not locost. It's biggest advantage would be that you could disassemble it for storage and modification and would be light weigh. Suggestions please
Something to think about while trying to muscle that 10° of twist out of my trailer tubs.

Sheet foam (insulation) or compressed fiberglas panels maybe? No 10 ft lengths but fairly strong and relatively easy to shape.

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"There are times when a broken tool is better than a sound one, or a twisted personality more useful than a whole one.
For instance, a whole beer bottle isn't half the weapon that half a beer bottle is ..." Randall Garrett

How about Gatorboard? http://www.foamcore.com/gator-board.html

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Bill H
Winnipeg, MB, Canada

Hmmm.
Jack: this buck needs to be pretty strong as I plan an Al body.
BHR: that foamcore place has some neat stuff but the really neat stuff is a little pricey.

Here is a pic of my old buck which was 1/2" MDF glued to a large plywood box. Because the plywood was only 8' long I ended up using a lot of MDF when it should only be required to describe the curved surfaces. This made it a too heavy and for storage it took up the garage space I need for building the car My thought right now is to glue the MDF to marine plywood in sections and screw the sections to a square tube frame made in 2 or 4 parts (front and rear left and right)

FWIW, I thought that Gatorboard looked like a good candidate, assuming it is cost effective. There may be an issue with impact resistance, though. I say buy a sheet and test it out.

If I backtracked through your build log I could probably get the answer to this question, but I don't have the time today. Are you using any kind of software to develop your body, hence the buck? The reason I ask is that you could well find a woodworking shop that could cut those stations out for you if you have certain kinds of data files for them. There are lots of CNC equipped shops now. It would save you tons of time assuming it's not a task you want to do yourself. Your probably need to test out the Gatorboard in that context to make sure it just won't tear up instead of cut.

Also, there is a form of Baltic burch plywood that is stiff, strong and light. It comes in many thicknesses (all metric dimensions) and is probably ideal for what you want. It's dead flat and generally high quality. When they first brought it to the USA, it was cheap compared to domestic plywood, but that may not be so now. It might be worth checking out, though.

Cheers,

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Damn! That front slip angle is way too large and the Ackerman is just a muddle.

Build Log: viewtopic.php?f=35&t=5886

Some news about a light weight buck hauling trailer. Thrown in because I had 3 espressos this morning and am now unable to weld. Duh! The pic is kind of basic and doesn't show diagonals or some of the basic structure. The plan is 1" sq. tube and some rubber in torsion axles. The bed is 84" and the tongue is removable so I can store it tilted on end. The unresolved problem is where to put the trailer lights so they can be easily seen. Maybe on a bar across the top of the buck.

I have gone about the construction in an ill considered way. I thought it would be clever to cut the corners of the horizontal tubes at 45°. This doesn't work so well as it requires the short vertical tubes to be welded in after the top and bottom frames are welded. Had I made two side frames and welded in cross tubes it would have been much easier to jig and weld. We live but do we learn?