The current state of my Fug:



Its at the bottom of my garden at the moment having its chassis stripped and repainted.

When I originally built it I made 3 big mistakes:

I painted the chassis with Hammerite which seemed to chip if you looked at it too hard :angry:

I sealed the floor to the chassis too well which meant when it rained it turned into a bathtub :unsure:

I painted it white which showed absolutely every rust spot :(

I ran it for a while and then it went under a tarp when it got scruffy really quickly and I got demoralised.

Anyway, as you can see it's out now. I have about half of the white Hammerite stripped and about a quarter of the chassis wire brushed and painted with this two part epoxy based primer / basecoat which seems a lot more robust. Once that's done I intend coating the more exposed tubes with stonechip and / or schutz as well.

At the back you can just see my type 1 1776 with a Dick Landy supercharger on top. And just in front of that you can see the type 1 gearbox which I expect to explode at any moment .............

Thought that you might like to see the state of the tubes that I'm repainting:



And that's not one of the worst ones!

Made the same first two 'mistakes' - and I agree it's best to
sidle up to it, not staring too hard.

I went for hammered blue, over 2 coats
of red-oxide.

I keep a small sponge under my seat - to bail out as required.

'stonechip and / or schutz ' sounds interesting: as I was wondering about
alternatives.

Anyway, I was just meaning to offer moral support, having been in a similar
place. Keep at it, it WILL be worth the effort. [that rust don't look so bad...
superficial even :blink: ]

I took advantage of the bank holiday sunshine B) to do a bit more work:



The first coat of primer is now completely finished and I'm half way through the second.

I may take a picture after the top coat is done - but I'm not sure it's worth it as it's going to be black so it won't look too different to this ;)

Looking out of the window now it's p***ing down so work has stopped again :(

While scraping at the mank I had a thought - were so many 70's cars brown so that they wouldn't show the rust?

Yay - it's a nice day!

So ----- I've been hard at work and the top-coat's finished now:



We have:

• two coats of Rust-Buster EpoxyMastic two-pack primer
• a layer of Hammerite Stone Chip Shield on the more exposed tubes
• One coat of Solvitol Re-Paint brushing coach enamel for the top glossy coat

with a rub-down between each coat.

I have to admit it's not that pretty up close (you can see it's brushed) but it looks ok and I'm hoping it'll be more durable than the hammerite enamel was. And anyway, I think the brushed look's ok on a rail.

I can start putting it back together now .........

Very nice Is stove enamel any good on these frames or is this the preferred method?

Not sure about stove enamel - all I know is that the Hammerite that I tried the first time was a dismal failure. I don't know if it was my fault for not preparing the metal properly or whether Hammerite is just too brittle for this kind of job, but it chipped really really badly. I've nothing against Hammerite itself, by the way - I painted my drainpipes with it 10 years ago and they still look great. But the chassis looked really bad in less than half the time.

I'm not sure if this scheme will be any more successful but so far the occasional thump that I've given it accidentally doesn't seem to be doing too much damage. Its harder to penetrate the paint, and if you do, you get a tiny hole rather than a huge chip.

Some people swear by powder coating, but I've heard bad things about that too. Apparently if you puncture the plastic coating it rusts underneath and peels off in sheets.

I think that the ideal would be sandblasting then a professional spray with professional 2 pack paint. But that would be really expensive unless you have a pal with the equipment. I did get an offer to sandblast it but that would have meant a complete strip of the chassis and it was going to cost over £100 to get it taken by lorry to the sandblasting place. And it would still have needed painting.

Any more progress yet. I hope you are not slacking off this week ;)

Not much. I have about 100 Rivnut threaded inserts on the chassis for bolting on the floor. I spent about 5 minutes replacing the damaged Rivnuts and 2 hours running a tap through the undamaged ones ready to bolt the floor back on.

Boooooooooorrrrrrrrrriiiiiinnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggggg............. :blink:

Just need to clean the body panels and floor up and bolt them on and it'll start looking like a buggy again.

I'm just contemplating whether to re-use the old bolts or buy nice shiny new stainless steel ones B)

:o

That's all was it? It took the best part of an afternoon to clean the floor of 15 years of ground in crap, using progressively more violent methods.

First I used a scraper to remove the lage lumps of crud.
Then white spirit to soak off the foam rubber cushioning that I used between the floor and chassis.
Then detergent and a scrubbing brush to scrub off the rest.
Then a cood rinse with cold water.

And the result? It still looked like something that you wouldn't want to touch without rubber gloves on!

Ok - start again. This time with steel wool. I was trying to avoid that as if you get fragments in the aluminium then they rust and you get - well - rusty aluminium. But, I gave it a good wash afterwards, and at the end it looked - well, ok. It doesn't look too bad in the photos, and in a few months it'll look like crap again anyway, so maybe I'm being too critical.

Any road up, I then bolted it up:



I decided to push the boat out and buy the stainless bolts and washers. Individually, they are quite cheap, but when you need 100 bolts and 200 penny washers it suddenly becomes expensive! But, I hadn't bought anything for it for a while.

Instead of sealing the floor to the chassis with foam (which was brilliantly waterproof, but not in the way I'd intended - it kept in water wonderfully), I took the opposite approach this time, and set the floor up so that the water could get in, but could get out again! Let's face it, a car with no roof is never going to be waterproof, so I may as well accommodate the water rather than trying to fight it.

Each bolt has two penny washers on it, sandwiching the floor. The lower supports the floor and the upper spaces the floor away from the chassis tubes:



You can see that the bolts are not done up yet - the side panels need to be fitted and sandwiched between the floor and chassis.

And there's the problem - I can't put the side panels on as I need to disassemble the rear torsion housing to replace the spring plate bushings. Someone set the old ones on fire with a welding torch trying to get a stubborn bolt out! :rolleyes: And I can't take the spring plates and covers off with the panels in place. And somehow I can't drum up the enthusiasm for taking the back suspension apart - somehow disassembling stuff at this stage seems like a backward step...........

Anyway, it's raining again (our wonderful British summer) so it's back to the TV :(

I had a spare couple of hours and a moment of enthusiasm so I pulled the rear suspension apart on one side, and got the bushes out:



As you can see the outer is OK but the inner is a bit - er - melted. I'm glad I didn't ignore the problem now.

I had a slight moment of drama doing it - I jacked up the rear, then, mindful of safety, carefully put strong, stable supports under the rear torsion housing. But, I've got no suspension fitted at the front, have I? So it's really light, isn't it? And a dirty great engine at the back.

Those who paid attention in their first year physics class will know where I'm going at this point.

Anyway, I had an enormous sea-saw swinging about wildly in the garden 'till my wife sat on the front end and brought it under control again. :blink:

I didn't take a photo of that .........

Taking shape nicely! KUTGW :D

Top tip = Never measure, just do it by eye; fitting seat mounts
for example leaves you with plenty of unnessessary holes that
let the water out lovely. ;)

One side of the suspension is now re-assembled - and that means that I can put the side panels on one side:



I took the opportunity to lower the rear suspension a little - you can probably see that the frame is leaning over towards the camera in the photo. The spring plate is set to here now:



Wheras it was up here:



It's lost 2-3 inches of ride height - it's hard to say how much until both sides are done and it's moved around a bit so that the suspension can settle. I hope that I haven't overdone it!

It's taken away a lot of that 'mean off-road look' which is a shame but it's also taken away the ridiculous positive camber on the rear wheels. I'll jack it up again when I get around to IRSing the rear end (next year's project - assuming that I get the rebuild finished this year).

I tried to take a photo of the scores of bolts on the underside but I couldn't do them justice. This was my best effort:

Got the other side of the suspension sorted and the floor and side panels completely bolted up:



It's starting to look like a car now! Well aside from the fact that it's only got two wheels and no seats and no fuel system, brakes, electrics etc etc etc ;)

The bonnet is just laid in position - I could fix it down with little effort but it seems a bit pointless when it's on and off so often at the moment. The panels really need painted but there's too much mechanical stuff to get done at the moment. Maybe next year. In the mean time I'll just claim that it's a semi-rat look ;)

I'm a little worried that I have over-lowered the back. I think that the back itself's ok but I'm not sure that my adjustable front beam will adjust enough to match it. Oh, well - time will tell.

I think that things will slow down now as I'm pretty well finished the bolting back together stage and getting to stuff that I have to repair and re-fabricate.

The front beam is next ......

the back looks just about right to me B) - as long as you dont have too much negative camber on the back, it should handle and look OK.....mine is a swing axle and my driveshafts are near perfect horizontal.....pukka as Mr Oliver would say

Wow ! a lot of bolting - that must have been fun :unsure: Long arms ? Or perhaps you shoved the wife under? :unsure: So you drilled right through the frame...I hate doing that (as luck would have it those UVA boys pop-riveted it every few cm for me), however, at least yours possesses that beutiful quality - releasibility. :D

I agree with Knighty it looks fine for a mean street-racer and no 'Q' you lucky man.

Not actually right through the frame - I used things called 'Rivnuts' which are like captive nuts that you install into blind holes with a tool like a pop-rivet gun. So the holes only needed to be in the bottom of the frame. A couple had to be drilled out as they had siezed over the years but most screwed straight out.

It's great to be able to take it apart! I'd never have been able to deal with the rust otherwise!

There's just short of 100 bolts on the underside and I did spend quite a while on my back underneath. My wife helped with a few that were into tabs and needed a spanner on the top but most I did myself - real sore arms at the end! :blink:

looking good keep at it!
It will all come together all of sudden I am sure

Bolted the front torsion bar tubes on last night:



Notice anything different about the beam? That's right it's 12" wider than stock. I made this a few years ago out of two standard ball joint beams. I bought a spare beam at a swap-meet a few years ago intending to simply cut one end off each beam and weld the two together. But, when I took the beam off the front of my Fug I realised that the towers were rotten. :blink: Ok - plan B. I bought 4 adjusters and cut my new beam in half. I then welded 2 adjusters to each half. From the rotton beam I cut two lengths of tube that were as long as I could make them. I then welded these tubes in the middle:



It came in about 12" wider than stock. As you can see I carefully calculated all of the lengths so that the steering box can still be fitted. ;) No, sorry - that was a total lie - I completely didn't think about it and it was just dumb luck that it will still fit to the right of the rightmost adjuster. :D This is it with the bonnet in place:



Why did I do it:

• To give more space between the wheels and the body
• Because a wider wheelbase is more stable
• For the hell of it
• Because I could

:lol:

Was 12" overkill? Yes probably. Hope I can still get it out of the garden gate!

Wild! I'm impressed - not only sorts the lock-lack but also exposes the grease imput thingies (didn't know if allowed to use the 'N' word), had to drill huge holes in the clamp plates to allow grease gun access. I bemoan the loss of strength.
Better perhaps for close tolerance-driving in that you can see, rather than having to allow an inch or two for the rear. Hope handles well! :)

That was actually what started me thinking about doing this. The next problem is that the tyres will hit the torsion arm ends. I have a scrap arm in the shed that I was thinking about cutting up to see if I can remove some excess metal from the corner without weakening it. But a better solution might be a wheel spacer or a wheel with less inset. I'll consider my options once the parts are together and the wheels are on.

Of course, a more pressing problem is that my steering tie rods are 6" too short .......

Woah!!!!!!!!!!! That's wide!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



:blink:

Well, this is the problem that I've been in denial about:



Exactly six inches too short; who'd have thought it?

Not really a big problem; it's just going to be a nuisance to sort. Extending tie rods isn't as much fun as sitting behind the wheel making engine noises!

I've been putting back some of the other components in preference to sorting out the tie-rods:



I believe that it's called a 'displacement activity'. ;) Anyway, with the seat and wheel in, I can do the noises.



You'll notice that my under-bonnet area and dashboard are a lot more 'minimalist' than some, eh, Fugepilot ;) No criticism there - it'd be a boring world if we were all the same.

Getting behind the wheel again made me remember the problems of fit:



There's not a lot of room there, is there? Having the thing apart gives you the opportunity to re-think things. If I remove the sliders under the seat then I'll get an extra inch of space between the wheel and my thighs. And for adjustment, I have this slider that I bought a while back and never fitted - you can see it under my pedals:





It gives about four inches of adjustment to the pedal cluster, which is about the same as what is available at the seat. The slider brings it's own problems, though - it needs to be spaced away from the floor to slide properly. Which raises the pedals an inch all told. It all fits, but the pedals are starting to get awfully tall, even for my size 9s.

And will an extra inch under the wheel really help that much? Oh, well - I suppose that I can sleep on it and hope that I get some sort of inspiration by the time the rain lets up. And if not then I'll have to find another displacement activity.

Hey Hey! :blink: ...I thought myself the hardcore minnimalist-king of function over form. B) But yeah... I just let it happen in an organic manner: Biologist see. The 10 mm steel bukhead doesn't help - but does help my brakes work and strenghtens front end, a weakness alluded to by Knighty elsewhere. Maybe, it is just that I'm more suceptable to displacement activity. <_<
dvd8n impressive machine kutgw and keep the pics coming. :D

:o

10mm steel?

A few rough calculations give me a weight of 16 kilos for that!

:blink:

That's two and a half stone, man! Oh well, at least it'll be bullet-proof ;)

Nice one dvd8n, 16 kg mm! often wondered how much it was, and yes bullet- proof from the front at least. :)

After a period of indolence, I have got back to work. After discussions with various people (thanks Flat4freak et al) and lots of reading and amalgamating ideas I now have a short tie-rod:



and a long tie-rod:



I made the short tie-rod by cutting the long rod down to the correct length (6" longer than stock) and re-tapping the end (M14 x 1.5).

The long tie-rod was harder. After failing to find an M14 x 1.5 left hand tap (you should have seen the blank looks in Machine Mart :lol: ) I made a long tie rod from the left hand end of the short rod and the right hand end of the long rod, and the centre section of an old anti-roll bar.

OK, before you start thinking that I've lost it completely, let me explain. If you look in Jeff Hibbard's book you can see an item called the 'Crown Beef-A-Steer'. The idea is that the long tie-rod is the bit of your steering system that bends when you get into trouble. Always. (And I can back this up from experience - I've trashed a few). OK - given that, what do you do? If you beef it up then the next weakest thing goes (rod end maybe?) and you end up reinforcing everything and building a tank. So, why not let it bend? That's the idea of the spring steel section - it's stiff but if it bends it should spring back into shape.

Now I have to admit that I'm not sure that this will work and I am prepared to junk this if it oscillates during normal driving - but I think that it's worth trying.

One other design decision that I made was to leave on the steering damper tie-rod end. It's a known weak spot but after following discussions on 'TheSamba' I decided to leave it as without the steering damper you can get vicious kickback through the steering. More people spoke up for the damper than against it so it stayed.

My only problem is that I couldn't find four decent tie-rod ends in the shed. I found two OK ones and six shagged ones - I can't believe that the parts that I took off would have been in such a bad state! I just hope that I either damaged them taking them off, or there's a cache of parts somewhere that I took off and stored really carefully :rolleyes: There must be more parts somewhere - I found three long tie-rods but only one short one :huh: Anyway, two new ends will be £20 - four will be £35 - do I save money and just get two or splash out on four? I know what I should do but it's £15 extra ...........

I've not been slacking recently; it's just that nothing photogenic has happened recently. However, here's a picture of the chaos that is my braking system at the moment:



I decided that as it was such a pain to bleed before, it is going to be simplified. So I've got a load of bits left over. :o

DVD

I am confused why do you have two levers ;) I take these must be brake levers for each wheel ?

What have you lined the inner sides with ? sorry just being nosey

Bob

The two levers are called 'fiddle brakes', 'turning brakes' or 'cutting brakes'. One lever is plumbed into the brake circuit of each back wheel. On rough surfaces you can use them to steer with, a bit like a tank. You can also use them as a 'poor man's limited slip differential' - if one back wheel loses grip and starts to spin, losing you all traction, you can brake it and restore drive to the other side.

The linings are just vinyl with 1/4" of foam behind - just enough to pad the tubes a little.

Aw hell!

Just realised that the shift rod has to go in before the fiddle brakes!!!!

:angry: :angry: :angry:

DVD

at least you know where you going at the moment I have so many bits to do!!

I never get enough time on it.

Dvd8n

I have a couple of quetions

What size bolt did use to bolt the floor to the frame.

What power does your engine make ?
was it dear the supercharger ?

got a cost on 3mm aluminuim for the floor 90 plus VAt for 8' by 4'

The stuff on there is way to thin.

6mm every 6" or so.

A lot (don't actually know).

Yes, and I'm not going to tell you how dear in case my wife reads this.

Dvd8n

Now you have had your birthday about time we had a progress report me thinks. :P

are we resting on our laurels

;-)


:D

what's this all about talk about Nanny state

:ph43r: :blink:

That'll be right. We've got a week's worth of horrible snow approaching. And in two weeks time - three weeks' holiday in Australia :D :D

Wahay! :lol: :lol:

By then the weather should be warm enough for me to lie on the ground. I'm old and infirm now you know!

Dvd8n

what happen is it together now ? :huh:

did you make it back from Aus ? :(

you can't leave it here!!! :o


in suspense Cal :blink:

Not been to the forum for a while.

Not having a garage means no progress in the bad weather, which is pretty well nine months of the year in this country. I'm afraid this has meant less inclination to come to the forum. Sorry.

But looking out the window - the sun's shining - wahey!

I guess it's time to go and see what's happening under the tarpaulin - clear out the bird's nests and what-not.

Ok, I read the entire thread and here is the question,
floor mounting below the frame tubes? or above...

me I just welded tabs to the frame and bolted the floor on top of the frame with stainless bolts 3/8 buy 1" I did this so that the tubes take any ground abuse and no sheer points for the bolts.