This past week's project at day job

admin

Here are some of the things I worked on this week at the day job.  One of our cars won in its class at the 24 Hours of Lemans road race, so we decided to build a replica of the car for a display vehicle.  We had an early prototype of the same type race car, so we used that as the base.  Here is what it looked like at the end of the day today (no, that is not me!):We stuck a used stock 4.6l engine in it like the street cars we build have, along with a standard street going transmission and differential.  That is where the fun begins.  This car has full racing style brakes and hubs so our street going halfshafts wouldn't work.  But, the race cars have X-Trac racing diffs so the race halfshafts wouldn't go into the street diff.  So, it was time to cut up some $1600 each Pankl racing halfshafts and some Ford Cobra ones as well.  The Pankl's were hollow so I turned the Ford stub down to a press fit inside the Pankl.  I also made a sleeve to go over both with holes for rosette welds.  I pressed the 2 together and made a root pass with 309l filler.  I was taking a stab in the dark with the 309 - actually the entire project!  Here is the root pass and all the machine work starting:After that I made a full pass with thicker 309l filler:After that I slid the outer sleeve into place and finished all the welding - jumping around a bit to keep the heat from building up in one area.  Oh, I almost forgot, I checked the shaft for runout in the lathe after the root and final passes prior to welding the sleeve - looked great.Don't look too closely at the rosette's - I was rushing and they got a little messy!  Ok, here is the finished and assembled halfshaft:And here is one of it installed in the car:
Reply:Ok, another project on this car was the exhaust.  The real racecars had custom headers with the runners coming individually out through the chassis to collect in the back of the front wheel wells.  The street engine has stock manifolds which exit inside the tranny tunnel - lots of fun to connect side pipes to those!  I made up a bunch of 2.5" OD x .065 wall mild steel 90's on my mandrel bender at my shop along with a pair of side pipes with 45 degree turnouts on them.  Then, at work I fabbed up the following system.  I needed a bend that was too tight for my dies on one side, so I made some pie shaped slices and welded them together to form a very tight bend.  Here are the pics.Passenger side:Notice the tip coming out of the rocker:Driver side:Oh, I the car leaves Sunday for Monterrey so I didn't have time to send them out for jet-hot coating.  Instead I hit them with 1200 degree BBQ paint.Last edited by TubularFab; 08-11-2006 at 10:32 PM.
Reply:now thats what i'm talking about..good job ..but dont rush anything...it shows.. ...zap!I am not completely insane..Some parts are missing Professional Driver on a closed course....Do not attempt.Just because I'm a  dumbass don't mean that you can be too.So DON'T try any of this **** l do at home.
Reply:At many indoor car shows they are VERY touchy about having any fuel in the fuel tanks of the display vehicles for fire safety.  It is a royal pain to empty the tanks, so I decided to make a simple little 4 gallow tank that was removable for this car.  It has a quick-connect dry-break on the fuel line and is mounted with quarter turn fasteners.  So, in a couple of minutes you can pop the tank free and remove it completely from the car.  It also houses the fuel pump and is stuffed with fuel cell foam.In between these projects I also got to work out the wiring.  It is a 2001 Mustang Cobra engine with it's stock fuel injection.  I made a drastically cut down harness that just made the engine run so there wasn't a ton of extra wire in there.  I forgot to snap pics of the wiring.  This car started out as a display vehicle, but the owner really got into the project and decided he wanted to be able to drive it around some.  It should be up to what he wants it to do.Gee - I hope I'm not impersonating Zap with this long post!!Jason
Reply:Zap - unfortunately our shop is not air conditioned.  We were hovering right around 98 - 99 almost all week, and that equates to about 106 inside the buildings.  Mix in afternoon thunderstorms and 90% or more humidity and you do tend to start rushing.  I love welding, but when it get's this hot I'm glad I don't have to do it all day long!
Reply:no not at all...see what i started?but thats good to see before during and after stuff..and i already replied to the first batch of pics...me fast  ...zap!I am not completely insane..Some parts are missing Professional Driver on a closed course....Do not attempt.Just because I'm a  dumbass don't mean that you can be too.So DON'T try any of this **** l do at home.
Reply:Originally Posted by PanozengZap - unfortunately our shop is not air conditioned.  We were hovering right around 98 - 99 almost all week, and that equates to about 106 inside the buildings.  Mix in afternoon thunderstorms and 90% or more humidity and you do tend to start rushing.  I love welding, but when it get's this hot I'm glad I don't have to do it all day long!
Reply:I forgot to mention - the Ford part of the halfshaft was simply mild steel with the splines on the end hardened.  The Pankl racing shaft was some very nice, very hard steel alloy.  So, on a W.A.G. I used the 309l filler to join the 2.  I used ER70S on the welds between the mild steel outer sleeve and the Ford stub.  I used 309l on the 2 rosettes closest to the inner joint between the sleeve and the Pankl shaft.  On all the other sleeve to Pankl welds I used silicon bronze filler and kept the temps as low as possible because I was afraid of creating an over brittle spot and hence a crack.  I can't guarantee it, but I'd be willing to bet it'll take anything the 4.6l street engine can give it.  Please - feel free to argue against the method I chose to join these - I was going to post on here prior to welding it and get opinions, but didn't have time.
Reply:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------I forgot to mention - the Ford part of the halfshaft was simply mild steel with the splines on the end hardened. The Pankl racing shaft was some very nice, very hard steel alloy. So, on a W.A.G. I used the 309l filler to join the 2. I used ER70S on the welds between the mild steel outer sleeve and the Ford stub.well i would have annealed that part afterwards..but it should be ok..other than that   ...zap!I am not completely insane..Some parts are missing Professional Driver on a closed course....Do not attempt.Just because I'm a  dumbass don't mean that you can be too.So DON'T try any of this **** l do at home.
Reply:Nice work Panoz......http://all-a-cart.comWelding Cart Kits and accessories
Reply:Nice work. It must be nice to work for a shop that has enough money to build a shop car and Lemans cars!  Are they hiring?  Hahaha!John -  fabricator extraordinaire, car nut!-  bleeding Miller blue! http://www.weldfabzone.com
Reply:Good god that's a sweet car! There would be no keeping the hotties out of that thing. I need to borrow that one saturday night, I've been in a drought for over 1 month now.
Reply:Man that´s a nice job!You said Monterrey...did ya mean monterrey, Mexico? I live therE! maybe I can meet ya. I like the welds. I would also have heat treated that critical part since it will carry a lot of stress. Hope it will stand the abuse . Cmón post more pics and some vids too!(didn´t almost every le mans race was won by audis? )
Reply:beautiful work Panozeng your work in a great shop very nice looking car do you get to take it for a burn  Creative metal Creative metal Facebook
Reply:Originally Posted by wellobeautiful work Panozeng your work in a great shop very nice looking car do you get to take it for a burn
Reply:Actually, I haven't had a chance to drive the orange one yet, but I definitely will!  There is one car at the shop that has been driven by only one employee at our division.  Guess who has driven it to a couple of local car shows?  It's got a 600hp Roush built aluminum block dry sump 6.0 pushrod V8 in the front and a close ratio transaxle in the rear.  It's all carbon fiber with the engine and the tranny being structural members holding the the suspension in place.  Weighs somewhere around 1900lbs.  Goes like nothing else I've ever driven.  Oh, and the price tag is somewhere around $1.5 - million!  It's unbearably hot, deafening loud (straight cut gears in tranny rigidly mounts to the carbon tub you sit in!), and totally obnoxious to drive - but I'd drive it every day if I could!
Reply:Please tell me he didn´t go with the regular gas!Post more pics! I´m SOOOO FRIKIN interested in this =)My Babies: HF Drill pressHF Pipe Bender3   4.5" Black and Decker angle grindersLincoln Electric PROMIG 175that´s it!
Reply:Nope - I was filling it with 93 octane.  Sad part is I came across the receipt a few weeks back - that was march of 2005 and high test was $1.69!!!!!!!!!
Reply:Originally Posted by PanozengNope - I was filling it with 93 octane.  Sad part is I came across the receipt a few weeks back - that was march of 2005 and high test was $1.69!!!!!!!!!
Reply:I would buy a ticket to watch y'all work...great stuff there, Panozeng.  What did you say the educator's discount was on one of these???  If I can get a couple of dozen fellow profs interested we might just get ONE.Smithboy...if it ain't broke, you ain't tryin'.