Lagoonblue's MK2 1600 deluxe

[LagoonBlue 143]

Great work as always

 

Thanks! :thumbup:

 

 

Continuing with the sill;

 

 

This time around i tried something different and tack welded a scrap piece of steel on sill plate to keep it in line whilst welding, seemed to help some.

 

 

 

Both sides are now done! :winner: Before plug welding the bottom lip and ends i painted the weld seam with zinc spray from within, same as on the other side.

 

And not a moment too soon as winter is setting in.

 

 

 

I might make the rollover jig before wrapping things up for the winter months as it gets too cold to do any precision work.

 

Also, finished up my first 5kg reel of 0.6 MIG wire :shocking: Granted that most of that has been grinded away. A bad welder makes a good grinder as they say :P i'm getting better at it though.

[LagoonBlue 143]

What a looong winter it has been.. Work has been keeping me really busy the whole winter and it has been too cold to have any work done with the car. On the other hand i did plan on taking a break anyway ;)

 

But this week i had my winter vacation and made this;

 

 

 

No more lying down on my back and having crud fall on my eyes :lol:

 

Instead of using bumper mounts to hang the body i made adapters to bolt in place of front cross member and rear spring hangers and a long beam to span the whole length of the car, this should minimize torsional forces to the shell.

 

Front;

 

 

Back;

 

 

I also added some bracing;

 

 

 

There is a good reason for me being so paranoid about body distorting. As you can see the front chassis rails are pretty much gone :shocking:

 

 

Rear rails are in much better condition;

 

 

Apart from jacking points that is, a common bad spot on these;

 

 

Spit works really nice, solid enough and i can turn the body around using only one hand. With the combined weight of beam and adapters the pivot point is lower than what it would of been using bumper mounts, glad i made everything adjustable.

Body can be raised and lowered by adjusting A-frames and fine tuned from uprights (two telescoping pipes with allthread going through them).

Except the long center beam, bottom of A-frames, most of the bolts and some other odds and ends the spit is made of scrap, Roughly estimating my costs were less than 80€. And as a bonus i got to hone my stick welding skills :lol:

 

I also had a local garage dismantle my front struts for 20€ Too scared to do that myself :bag:

 

As the weather permits (still single digits out there but not below freezing) i will hopefully get some more work done, in the week ends at least.

Being careful not to over extend myself between work and Cortina as that will drain the joy of the hobby, the car will be done when it's done no need to rush :thumbup:

[Danish 294]

I like your jig - it looks like it can roll around, and it can lift the car up itself? :thumbup:

[LagoonBlue 143]

I like your jig - it looks like it can roll around, and it can lift the car up itself? :thumbup:

 

Thank you :cheers: And yes on both accounts. After i removed the axles i was surprised how light the body shell actually was, maybe slightly less than 300kg? :headscratch:

[Nick in Beds 0]

Excellent thread - I'm doing my 2 door Mk2 and having very similar rust issues as you - keep the updates coming, I will do mine a thread when I stop being so lazy, got loads of pics ...

[LagoonBlue 143]

Excellent thread - I'm doing my 2 door Mk2 and having very similar rust issues as you - keep the updates coming, I will do mine a thread when I stop being so lazy, got loads of pics ...

 

Thank you, and i will. Sadly have not been able to get much work done with my project lately but finally had some off time from my day job for this easter.

 

I started repairs on the framerails and their "sockets" that extend below firewall towards rear.

 

 

 

Both sides were in quite sad state, but there was enough left to copy the original design, more on that later.

 

 

Cleaned up what was left of the sockets.

 

 

Made some patches, went maybe a bit overboard with plug weld holes :rolleyes:

 

 

 

These are 2mm plate (original 'bout 1,5mm) and were really nice to weld.

 

 

 

And the rails themselves, really pleased on how these turned out ^_^ Really not that much more work to do these properly, though i had to use a proper sheet metal brake at work to do the long bends. Originals were ca. 1mm thick but that seemed a bit thin to me so i made mine in 1.2mm sheet. Might add drain/coating holes before mounting.

 

For the rails i made a rough CAD drawing and printed templates in 1:1 scale

Last time i did mechanical CAD was in DOS era and that shows.. but could be helpful for someone else so links below.

 

Preview pic:

 

These are in Google drive, works with chrome and Firefox, might be little tricky with IE? Feel free to use as you please :)

Measurements in .PDF:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4kzyBc9yTqrMzB4Zmg3VXBTcUE/view?usp=sharing

 

Same but in .DXF:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4kzyBc9yTqrVXJ1UGJwTlFCTzg/view?usp=sharing

 

Front template in .PDF:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4kzyBc9yTqrZWtzYTlPSlZpTUk/view?usp=sharing

 

Back template in .PDF:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4kzyBc9yTqrQUUxUnl5cmlZVzA/view?usp=sharing

 

You can get the measurements in the first file and then fine tune the ends with paper templates. I first made a simple U shaped box then made cuts to separate front and back then re-flattened those and bend the back end in a vice to suit.

Now the measurements might not be spot on but considering that in my sample size of two cars there was difference of 30mm on the back flare so i think that the tolerances are not that precise in this case :shocking:

 

 

Rails mocked up, i will cap the front side after rails are tacked in their place.

 

Underbody tolerances section of service data book below has in it distance of members measured at the back ends (inside face of member 30 49/64", 78.1447cm). that alone should give me enough data to position these right.

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4kzyBc9yTqrVEVoMmlucEJIaUE/view?usp=sharing

 

And that's all for this time, was nice to get something done for a change :lol:

[jonsey 0]

Outstanding work. I have recently done this myself. (Photos on mk2 OC on facebook). I made mine out of 1.6mm plate as I don't want to do it again in my lifetime...Phil

[LagoonBlue 143]

Outstanding work. I have recently done this myself. (Photos on mk2 OC on facebook). I made mine out of 1.6mm plate as I don't want to do it again in my lifetime...Phil

 

Thank you :thumbup: 1.2mm was easier for me to work with as the sheet metal brake i used was quite large, and quite frankly that was what the local scrap yard had in stock that day :lol: BTW. they said that this material was old military surplus, deep draw sheet for making helmets. Could be true, did seem different to the usual black iron :headscratch: Anyway, 5€ for 0.5Mx3M sheet so can't complain too much.

 

Can't go wrong using thicker material with Cortinas, after all these were designed to last for maybe 5 years, 10 tops. If not for under seal there would be nothing left of mine :glare:

 

Sorry don't have Facebook.. i'm kind of old fashioned when it comes to all that social network stuff, though might look into that someday.

Edited April 6, 2015 by LagoonBlue

[MLI 8]

Outstanding work indeed, and very nice welding :thumbup:

[LagoonBlue 143]

As usual, work has been keeping me very busy but i finally had a free weekend (+Fri. & Mon. also) to work with the car.

 

 

Parts that i have made, for this stint i decided to get cross brace (the one that loops over the transmission) repaired.

 

 

Found a section of rotted floor that i had missed previously so tried something new this time. My main problem thus far with making patches has been that they have been too "tight" preventing good penetration of weld. I had spotted in other threads people using these kind of clamps that leave a nice uniform gap, so i made some to test with.

 

 

 

 

 

Came out ok, will need to practice some more.

 

 

While preparing existing box section ends for welding i again found some rust that i had missed earlier. Though the section looping over the transmission was solid all the rest was rotted, moisture must flow to these lower parts ruining them.

 

 

Simple enough to fix.

 

 

Prepared the area that will be inaccessible later on. Red oxide to the middle and weld through zinc primer under the flange.

 

 

Registered the new section to existing stubs and welded both ends.

 

 

Now the problem is that so much work has been done to the floor that surfaces are not flush and even if they were if i had tried plug welding now they would have separated even more.

 

 

Using this jig i can gently push back from the other side.

 

 

And the finished product :)

 

Glad that i made the roll over jig!

I hope that i can continue with other chassis rails soon, too tired to get anything major done after work :thumbdown:

[jonsey 0]

Cracking job on the repairs. Looks so much easier with a roll over jig.

[MLI 8]

Top job :thumbup:

[LagoonBlue 143]

Cracking job on the repairs. Looks so much easier with a roll over jig.

 

 

Top job :thumbup:

 

Thank you! :thumbup:

 

Had a second free weekend in a row and continued work on the chassis.

 

 

Used same methods here as in the previous post.

 

 

:magic: done!

 

 

Next bit on my to-do list are the front jacking points. I had made a go at these ages ago but now they look just too ugly <_<

I will need to make a new pair that are closer to originals, will have to figure out how to fabricate them.

 

 

So that it's not all doom and gloom here is a nicely preserved bit of the floor :lol: Using a scraper i removed most of the underseal and gave a good clean with cotton rag soaked in white spirit.

 

Next i will wire brush to the bare metal and temporarily give a coat of zinc primer because that is the easiest paint to remove when i am ready to paint the whole lot in 2K. Though i guess that it would be ok to just paint over the old paint in the good parts :headscratch:

 

Rough bits in the back passenger foot well steps (right hand in the pic) i will spot blast and see if they need any welding.

[consul315 180]

first seen this thread (brought my laptop in the Office, so i can see pics as well :thumbup: )-

 

hats off to your excellent work and your skills! good luck and keep the piccies comin please! :cheers:

[the-ford-cortina.com 226]

(brought my laptop in the Office, so i can see pics as well :thumbup: )-

 

 

 

:wife: you are going to get caught ...