I have 3m of aero profile T45 tube it even still smells of the rolling mill still that brings back memories 
Aero profile T45
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Monthly Archives: January 2016
I’m pretty pleased with this welding
Pity I’m going to grind it flat though. Thanks Jules, for making me sweat every gramme. By the time it’s powder coated most of it won’t be visible anyway.
This is also welding 2mm onto 6mm, so it’s slightly trickier as well. Too much heat and it blows away the thinner steel – too little and it doesn’t penetrate well.
weight savings – trailing arms, or more T45 please vicar
On each corner, I have two lower links, and one trailing arm. They all weigh the same, at 555g including the threaded ends.
I got to thinking – can I save weight by going to t45 or even mild steel. The answer is a strong yes, for little machining/fabrication effort.
The table below shows the comparison between what I have now, moving to mild steel and T45
The summary is I will save 1.5 kg. Not only that but half of that is unsprung mass as well. All of it is suspension mass, so whenever the wheel moves, it has to. This is a bonus. More T45, Vicar. NOW.
Height Adjustable Suspension – Part 1
In the spirit of “if you’re going to change anything, change EVERYTHING”, I have almost finished the brackets for the height-adjustable suspension. As well as making the suspension height-adjustable, I’m junking the old wishbones for the following reasons:
- I’m going to t45 oval tubing for extra strength
- I’m going to spherical bearings rather than bushes (ugh – bushes)
- I want to make the suspension height adjustable so I can lower it when I need to
The welding rod here shows the line of force that actually happens, and the angles it has to go through. Firstly nearest you is the angle through the bottom ball-joint. That’s quite severe. the second is at the chassis bracket where it will have the bracket under torsional force.
In order to get the bracket just where I needed it, and at 90 degrees to the line of force I made a simple jig – one hole to locate against the ball joint, and one there the bracket bolt goes through. The jig was machined to be a tight 90 degree fit against the bracket so it would always be perpendicular to the line of force.
And here it is up close. The wishbone will have a 3/8ths spherical bearing that slots into the bracket there, and then the bracket can be height adjusted by moving it up the slots.
The bracket is then reinforced at the back and welded to the chassis.
Shocker bottom brackets are finished – part deux
So, Julian took a look at the brackets (from afar, through this site) and called “that’s a bit heavy looking”. I did a bit of thinking, and got the grinder out. The results are below:
I didn’t just chop into it. Oh no, I took some weights as well.
- Original Weight: 380g
- chopping 5mm from the outer face and changing the chamfered corner: 60g
- polishing out the welds: 20g
- chamfering the long edges: 10g.
So the end result is a reduction in weight of 24%. Worth the effort for a few minuets work. Now… to the personal diet.
Shocker bottom brackets are finished – part 1
here are the two brackets. Each is 6mm thick to give strong support to the bolt – it’s not rotating but being shoved backwards and forwards. If you don’t use a decent thickness of steel, the holes will oval in no time and the bracket will lose it’s precision and things will rattle about.
The shocker has a 1/2″ spherical bearing in there, and will be coming in at an angle of about 40 degrees from the vertical, hence providing some back gusseting support.
Also, the back plate was 2mm going onto 6mm steel, so needed a little careful welding. I made a mistake on the first one (which you can see above on the right – the fillet is too big). I was running 95A which is good for getting a good puddle up on 6mm steel with a 1.6mm rod. I forgot to take it down to 85A when putting the gusset in (2mm corner fillet). however, I spotted my mistake and this side here is the result.
Tomorrow, I pick up some more argon and then these will go on the car.