93 Marathon Project

Gonkulor

Firstly, moving current work to the design area. I'll highlight the electric EZGO thread as needed but most of my work is going to be heavily topic'd towards design.

Secondly, holy hanna did I bite off a lot! I'm chewing, and chewing, and chewing on all that I have set out to do. I'm not going to say I can't do what I want to do on this cart, but only how much time all of what I want takes to do.

Currently I have been kicking around how to gather all of the front lines into the front wheel fenders and grill. I'm going for a look similar to this.


I Drilled the welds off of the front cowl clip and fabricated a replacement upper skin. I got all of that tack welded and am now working to beat some 18gauge steel into place to form a curve to the upper skin which will provide me with the lines which to draw into the fenders and grill. I made the upper cowl skin 4 inches deeper and flattened the angle of the top about 20 degrees and raised it up 2 inches. This is all I got for now. Time for work.






More to come.
Shon

BGW

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1moretoy

woo doggy...me likes where you are going with this. Bringing back memories of my aircraft sheetmetal days. Keep the pix coming. nice job.

TheNewGuy

Nice work looks good!

Ron


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Gonkulor

Hah hah, Thanks guys. Glad to rekindle some memories 1moretoy, assuming they are good memories . I have never done anything like this and have always wanted to but never had the opportunity. Mostly because of that whole aviation "A.I.D.S." thing. That's "Aviation/Airline Induced Divorce Syndrome" for the non aviation folk. Just way to much moving around. Anyhow, been living here for 7 years and figured it was time to do a bucket list item. Not that this is a classic car, it still can be a heck of a lot of fun doing sheet metal work.

I'd get more done if I hadn't ran out of firewood, it's 26 degrees outside and my joints .... well.... most of you probably know. I tossed a kerosene and electric heater in the quonset in hopes to create a warm spot. Maybe I'll get a little more done today.

My tool collection will get bigger when some new stuff arrives next week, a shrinker/stretcher, shrinking hammers and a few other items that escape the mind right now. Some time has been spent of at the allmetalshrinking.com forum posting and lurking. I found some really great info and a thread by Terry Pinkerton for his art deco car fab which has almost all of the situations I'm dealing with. I kinda wish I had started the body Fab from aluminum, but I have never done steel work, I've done plenty of aluminum so I want something new.

I have gone thru a few sheets of 18 gauge steel which seems rather heavy. I have a sheet of 20 gauge that I will try to use on what would be the front engine hood and sides. My fear is the 20 gauge will be too thin and cause oil can popping when I drive the cart. What do you guys think? A lot of folks say they prefer 19 gauge if it can be found, ya I can't find it close either. I can always add small angle stiffeners if needed or put a small crown in any part that has a large surface area. Small crowns are hard though.

Shop has warmed up a few degrees, good thing. I just need to figure out how I'm going to attach cab sides. On the bottom I plan to cut in square holes and attach with lag bolts but I haven't figured out what to do up the side posts. The bottom lag bolts will be hidden by the running boards. I can cover the sides if I extend the wheel fenders that far aft but my mind thinks they will look funny. I could cut square holes into some small U clips and capture lag bolts on the inside by riveting the U clips to the side, but then I'll have alum rivets in steel. I do have some monel rivets but still that is dissimilar metal. I would like to weld the studs but after doing some tests, the welds break with little effort. If i go the route of capturing the lag bolts with clips I need to figure that out now while I'm forming the bends in the sides so I include the extra depth.

Still enjoying this project
Shon

Gonkulor

Had to stop for the night, it got to darn cold. I'm ready to start either the wheel fenders or nose cowl around the grill. I am glad I didn't go any further on my newest grill creation because the size seems just a little off. Next I will try to get going on some sort of pattern for the front or I will beat on the piece of fender I had already started. I like the suggestion to find some motorcycle fenders and fab them to fit, but I don't have any money budgeted for that right now after buying more tools. I kind of need the fenders to fab the front cowl but I need my wheels to fit the fenders. My idea is to get my wheels spacing where I plan them to be and then use the current wheels that I got as fender bucks? The wheels I have are 24" tall but I'll be going with a wheel height of 22" if I use these current rims. I can put some 2" spacers around the top of the tire to lay my fender on? Is a 3" space enough on a golf cart? Am I missing anything?

Planishing tools.... That's what else I have coming that I couldn't think of in my last post. I will try to planish as many hammer dents out as I can but I'm going to be realistic and plan to use Bondo. I just don't want to use kitty hair. A little Bondo to me is ok but if I need to put it on so thick that I need kitty hair then I have a problem elsewhere in my forming. Heck, I might use body solder but that gets spendy and needs to be done right, I've never used that stuff before either. I have plenty of hammer dollie work to do but I would like to wait till I get my new tools so I don't go too far on something. A shrinking disk would be great to have. I'll probably have to make one somehow.

Anywho, here is where I'm at today. Oh ya, one more thing. I had bought a cheapo HF arc welder for doing tack welds at home. It's a piece of junk. Some of the welds I look at I think "wow, I did that" and others are "&*^%$&^#@%^)*(" grr.... I blame it on the welder


The camera makes the dents look worse than they are.








The top corner is just extra metal I don't want to remove yet. I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to place the dash so I want the extra material just in case.

custom carts

Mad skills keep the pictures coming we look them

TheNewGuy

Sweet! keep it coming

Ron


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Gonkulor

I finally got my wheels installed. The Cragars look awesome, but as ScottyB has mentioned to me, they are heavy. I will have to get a set of disc brakes to stop this beast. I could tell of the weight difference from my test drive.

The paper design pictures are from the pre 22.5" wheels, they were 24.5". I can now finally start designing on the cart as it sits. Plans are now to get my shop all cleaned up and stuff put away from all the work up to now. I have aluminum tape and metal strips for flexible pattern layout. Will see how far I can get in the next couple days.















Shon

Gonkulor

Attempting to fab up some fender pieces today and got to a point I wasn't anticipating yet. How am I going to mount these suckers Gotta stop crafting fenders and work on that after a nap, maybe. I did decide to craft the fenders in a minimum of 3 pieces, that will cut down allot of hand shaping. The 3X rivet gun makes a world of difference with time spent but it's easy to go too far too fast. Once I reshape some of my flat sets I'll be able to do some planishing with it, I hope.

Attached Images

crude fender.jpg (112.1 KB, 16 views)

slonomo

WOW! Very impressive metal fab work! You must have been in the business. You just don't see that type of work here very often. I'm anxious to see how this will turn out. Keep the pics coming and good work!