Projects Haulin' ass in fiberglass

Wrong type of release

 

Not trying to be picky and also you mentioned you were not done but the placement of the seat belt anchor brackets appears to be too far forward. The lap belt should lay flat across your hip bones or pelvis to far forward and they pull down on legs too far back your pelvic bone slid under belt causing internal injuries. Most seat belt manufacturers have very specific directions for mounting. Went through all of this with tech inspector for sports car I built. If your going to have them they should provide as much safety as possible.

 

Good catch. That's v1.0 and I think I've changed the anchor design 3 or 4 times since then. To get the right angle on the lap belt I will wind up putting a gusset in where the forward hoop of the cage meets the floor to anchor the belt.

 

If you put in a cross bar (harness bar) in the hoop it should be no lower then two inches below the top of your shoulders when sitting in seat. Lower then that can cause compression of the spine in a roll over or front end impact. Higher then that and the belt may slide off your shoulder in a side impact. Again the manufacturer will have recommendations. No one plans on accidents and the real need fo seatbelts but the seatbelts can actually cause injuries if not installed properly.

 

There's actually an extensive write up on Pirate 4x4 on properly mounting harnesses and that's one of the points. One of the crossbars will be at shoulder level and tabbed (don't like the idea of looping). There'll a few things I'm doing that aren't "normal", but I'm over-engineering the cage just in case I get on my head.

 

The mock up was a large piece so I misted it with primer to block it out to fix the high and lows. Once it was smooth then I was happy with that. I waxed over bondo & all as it was a one shot deal. There were no issues with the formed glass. Worked good. You are using wood. An old carpenter showed me that he used bondo like plastic wood to fix damage on wood parts that was going to be painted. The bondo set quick and was easy to sand smooth to level the wood. I have used that a few times with good success. I think the wax is a good barrier and for a one off then I don't think paint is necessary unless you are sanding and looking for imperfections. If you are comfortable that you have the smooth shape then paint is not necessary.

 

The corvette pissed me off yesterday over replacing a simple rag joint, so today was doing something more redeeming (and cleaner).
Took a while to come to terms with just what reference the door hinges should swing from, but decided it had to be parallel to the top and bottom of the door. The hinges will be tabbed off the 2nd hoop of the roll cage, so first thing was put the upper and lower hinges swinging on the same plane with something I can mount adjust-ably.
Playing with the cutoff saw and mig is far more fun than crawling around under a 45 year old dirty, greasy car for 5 hours.

 

So, like so many other things on this car, I didn't like how little flexibility the 2x2 placement gave me, so went back to the drawing board. Same basic design, but moved the 2x2 toward the rear so I can move the pivot point closer to the door edge. Made a pillar with the other hinges and the centerline was ever so slightly off making the hinge arms swing off plane. Spent last night machining a fixture to mount the hinges for welding so I know the pivot centerlines are perfect. This is why you just tack these things together..... easier to cut spot weld than a finish weld.

 

This is about as high tech and precision as I get. The bottom blocks are within a few thou of each other and the back as well. Clamp the hinges in using the blocks and back of the angle to hold the centerline then tack it in. Done.

 

Man that big block Ford looks good in their.

 

Sometimes the little things get you over the hump and get you motivated again.
Got the B pillar done and the body cut out for the hinges to clear today. Kinda cool when it actually starts to look like a car (at least until I tear it apart again)

 

OK, so I know I haven't even started the fiberglass work yet, but the brain has gone off on a tangent and I need some help from the board. The window glass and channels need to be made from scratch and I've never done a fiberglass door. The glass is tapered but must be stable going up and down in the channels so I'm assuming the sides of the lower portion of the glass needs to be parallel.... question is how tall does the parallel section need to be ? With the tapered portion 13" tall, do I need 13" of parallel or how much less? Concerns are I can't go MORE than 13" because of the height of the door, and less glass means less weight.

 

Pickup scissors or a razor blade, large piece of cardboard and start making patterns, that is what I do until I see what will work.

 

I get what you're saying but it's kind of a cart before the horse kinda thing. I would need to have the channels in to determine how long the parallel section must be to be stable, which tells me how long the channels have to be.

 

Do you have the window regulators in?
If so, that will give you a measurement as to how tall the window can be.
Once that has been determined, your pattern with the curved area is cut and the remainder is your straight section.
It should work out just fine.

 

Did some digging around and Hagan has a window kit with instructions that say the straight section of glass should be between 2-7". I'm leaning toward 5-7" to keep the glass from rocking in the channel. Now to get some u-channel and start fabbing up some mounting brackets I can rivet them to.

 

Haven't made up my mind yet on using a regulator or strap. The type of regulator I would use isn't HAMB friendly.

 

I use heavy cardboard for a rough-in pattern then transfer that to Masonite, I've had much better luck with Masonite over heavy cardboard for making glass patterns, it maintains its shape much better through the process, won't buckle and bind when testing in the channels.
I made a small opening in the Masonite for a handhold for raising and lowering during testing when I converted to one piece glass on my 66 Suburban, also used a universal power window unit from Specialty Power Windows, nicely engineered, though I'm sure they are not part of your plan for this car.

 

Actually I do have a SPW universal kit in mind for it. It's a bit of a concession to it being somewhat streetable. It HAS to have the ability to lower the windows.
You guys don't EVEN want to know what I'm doing for a rear view (non) mirror.......

 

I mix up epoxy and glue to channel directly to the fiberglass.

 

Been going back and forth with bolting or epoxying the channel brackets in place. Gonna be a lot of head scratching when that time comes.

 

Bought myself a Xmas present today. Was having trouble fitting the doors as the edges were still as cut from the mold. Bought a hand held belt sander and got the gaps pretty close. Handles and latches coming, so trying to figure where the outside handle should be mounted. Major case of the itches today too.......

 

look at it this way, by the time you are done, you will be acclimated to 'glass work and you can build that t bucket you've always wanted. hahaha

 

So here's how it starts. Happened on most every car I've ever built so I SHOULD know better. Since all the linkage parts of the handle and latch are custom I have to get a little creative. Needed a longer striker than the normal ones, so dug out a 3/8" bolt (only have stainless around), sourced a sleeve to match the latch and then made the handle backing plate that'll be epoxied to the inside of the door skin for strength. Waiting for the other materials I'm modifying for the handle arms, so started working on the striker. Cut the hex head down to size and figured it's stainless, so.....

 

Next piece of the puzzle. I'm using flexible weatherstrip channel so wanted a rigid mount for it. Sourced some aluminum C channel (would have preferred steel, but apparently there's no such thing in the lengths I need) that'll mount inside the doors and just rivet the weatherstrip to it in case I need to service it later. Should be a nice factory-ish looking install with little flex and no rattles.

 

Great idea! Thanks for sharing your progress!

 

A friend uses small box section for channel. Bends to shape, then plasma cuts the inside edge off. Easier to mig tabs to, bolt to inner structure and glassed in place. Sadly all my old photo's got lost when computer crashed.

 

Steel channel would have been nice, but wasn't a deal breaker. I heard a few guys glassed the brackets to the door and I might do that depending on how much gap there is between the channel and door. I want as much adjust-ability as I can get without complicating the hell out of this. I want the chrome bead of the weatherstrip to be nice and tight around the window opening, so we'll see when I start laying it out.

 

Got the fuzzies, but don't have much spare to play with. Bent the end of the stick just to see if it will turn that tight of a radius and does. It'll go around the sides and top of the window frame in one piece, so I want to make sure I don't F it up. Found a cool piece for the door handle/latch linkage and will post pics when that comes in (and I modify it of course).

 

Don't know what happened to my subscription to this great thread, but I'm back lurking and enjoying the hell outta this.