I borrowed an electrical pipe bender from my work to do the second pipe of my strut brace, not the first time I have used one of these benders for a project. It only needed a slight bend either end and is yet to receive the reinforcing supports because I am still making them. It also still only has temporary welds holding it together for now.

 

It was far from easy to do though as the first bend I did kinked straight away, so at each end I had to bend in two close together sections. Heres how it looks:

 

 

 

 

 

 

All in all it has been a very tricky project but so far the work has really been worth it seeing that it's rock solid and weighs under 1.5kg so far. I still have a fair bit more work to go though.

 

 

this is one of the flat sections of plate that I used to make my brace before I welded it:

 

 

It took me a considerable amount of experimenting to make these pressed holes properly. Using a lathe I made up a special die and 2 punches to get the right shape. I did it with one punch initually but the force on the metal was too mcuh and it was warping the steel, so I made a starter puch that had a gentle angle. I can post some pics of this if people want to see it. To punch these holes the way that I decided to do in the end I have to follow these steps:

 

- Mark out holes 30mm apart on some steel

 

- Center-punch

 

- Pilot drill small hole

 

- Drill a hole a 13mm hole

 

- Deburr hole

 

- Place my die under the hole, and place the starter punch into the hole

 

- Using a press push the starer punch in and remove

 

- Change to the finishing punch and press

 

 

 

All this about 50 times, oh yes I am patient, but I can do it pretty quick now.

 

One of the problems I had was that I couldn't drill a 13mm hole into the sheet metal, if it wouldn't make a triangular shaped hole it would rip at the steel, try and pull it out of my hand and leave a rough hole. So what I did is regrind the tip of a drill bit to have a very sedate cutting profile on the tip, you could almost call it purposefully bluntening it. After I did that it would slowly cut through and leave a perfectly round hole without ripping at the material when it went through.

 

Regardless of how I acheived it the results I was quite happy with. During my trial peices I would start with a floppy peice of sheet metal and once I had stamped all the holes it would become quite rigid, and all while I had actually removed material from the sheet... funny

 

 

 

My strut brace is now finished and bolted up, i will have pics soon.

 

 

Also for anyone who is interested I bought my Cro-Mo from a place called Airport Metals. There are very few places selling 4130 grade steel so I thought I would post the info here for anyone else who is interested.

 

Airport Metals

26 Lillee Cresent

Tullamarine Vic

 

(03) 9310 5566

http://www.airportmetals.com

 

They also sell some other exotic materials like 6013-T4 Aluminium, Titanium and even Hastelloy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

now for something different, I did this a while back but I might as well post it seeing its related to my car and someone might like the idea.

 

When I was living at my previous place I found I needed alot more light to work on my car so I was going to buy a worklight from the warehouse. Finding that they only had high wattage hallogen fittings at the time I decided to make my own. I bought a pair of batten holders and spent some time designing something. I decided that not only would I have something that could be adjusted to light up my engine bay it would also be adjustable to fit under a car or over it. So I bought one tiny normal castor wheel and two slightly larger castors with a brake on them from Supercheap auto. I made up most of it in an afteternoon and wired the rest up later. I initually only wired up two globe fittings due to a shortage of batton holders at The Warehouse store and I also used energy saving globes for a nice white light. The next day after leaving it at my place I found my other roomate at the time using it to paint part of his car, so he obviously liked it. With the four fittings now in place it is a bit bulky but it does a very good job and I use it all the time. Also as a bonus it cost me like under $30 for everything. Heres some pics:

 

 

 

Edited November 26, 200619 yr by Sam_Q

took a pic of my brace which I installed this morning.

 

 

it ended up stronger than I expected, when I try and push it with all my weight I can't feel it flex even a few mm .

 

Also the final count for the weight is: 2.4KG!!!

 

 

 

Needless to say I am pretty happy with this.

Edited June 15, 200719 yr by Sam_Q

some nice f@$king work there :2thumbs:

That looks amazing!!!

when do you get your PHD? awesome custom work!

thanks for the feedback guys, I am very open to any ideas or sujestions if anyone has any.

 

It might be a bit of a while till I get a chance to do more work though, I am in the middle of fixing a car up for my partner.

one word, pure tallent. oh thats 2 what the hell :y:

you can come work on my car any day (for free)

not so much tallent as persistance, stubborness, a crazy amount of patience and a perfectionist attitude (to my standards). For anyone looking at my work and thinking its really something then keep in mind that I have been working on this almost non stop for 3 years now. I am constantly fighting my time and energy levels, its a real struggle, but I try hard.

 

casey: theres a bit of water between me and you unfortunetly. So is it true theres heaps of fun cornering roads in Tassie?

yep pretty much, sidelen(spelling)

the road from launceston to scottsdale, damn fun if your with some one who will give it a squirt,sadly thats only ever been once or twice with me in the car, other times i just throw up in the car :y:

been to tazzie the roads ROCK!!!!!!! pitty most of them end up with a drop to death

I love the road's around the mountain south of hobart towards huonville / dover. There's some real nice bends, such a pity it's wet most the time. I should do another road trip down sometime to visit my mate in launy.

You guys want winding hilly open roads come to beaudesert and do a ummm nice cruise. :y:

 

EDIT: By the way your quality of work is mind blowing and your imagination is not to be reckoned with.

 

Would you be interested in making another strut brace to suit a ke70?

Edited October 12, 200619 yr by too quick

oh thanks, unfortunetly this strut brace took make an obscene amount of time and also I had to weld it on the car to make it fit. I think that it is such a one off that it probably wouldnt even fit on many other sprinters.

 

I really wish I had time to do work for other people for both PCs, cars and electrical but I have to decline, I am drowning in work I have to do for myself and ontop of all that I occasionally get to do a little bit of work on my car. One day I don't know how but I want my own workshop, then things will change.

 

 

I am starting now though I have decided to make a small amount of 20v rear bypass plates cheapy for people to see if they will sell. I have almost finished the jig for it at work.

I haven't been able to work on my car much lately but I have done a few smaller things on the side:

 

 

 

 

 

 

- I now have made a small batch of RWD 20V bypass plates which are for sale for $50 each. Also I will be making side plates shortly.

 

 

 

 

 

- I have continued to work on my own home-made gaurd roller. I have drilled out a huge plate for the hub and the roller is bellow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

- I managed to buy a pair of Corona XT-130 lower control arms from the wrecker, i will be fully repainting and reconditioning them. I have already pushed the bushes out, ground off the steering stopers, pushed the ball joints out, cleaned + sanded + painted them, fitted new ball joints and I am working on doing the bushes. Heres how one looked when i bought it:

 

 

 

 

Hopefully it will look like new once I am done.

Edited December 20, 200619 yr by Sam_Q

right now my sprinter is no longer running. I was doing some wiring and somehow I killed my DLI module. I dropped it to the guy who built it and he currently looking into it. Other than that I still managed to do some work:

 

 

I reran the wires for my coilpacks and also cleaned up my relay/fuse panel.

 

 

 

 

and I finished my lower control arms:

 

 

I did the following:

 

- Started with XT130 arms

- Chopped off the steering stoppers

- took the ball joints out

- took the bushes out

- cleaned them

- painted them

- pushed new ball-joints and bushes back in

 

I hope to install them soon, also they cost me a total of $35 each!

Edited June 15, 200719 yr by Sam_Q