That home made sports car

Like Ferraris. I've been told by a Ferrari owner, at a concours, that his 275 GTB probably had 10 pounds of Bondo in it -- right from the factory. d8-)

If you read the Costin and Phipps book, you know that the closest thing to a true space frame was the Lotus 8. It was a failure. <g>

Look at the early MB 300 SLR to see what kind of hoops they had to go through to make a true space frame. Or look at the frame on a Maserati Tipo 61, which was known as the "Birdcage."

A Lotus 7, Locost, etc. has no lateral stiffness (no triangulation) above the floor, in the passenger bay. To race them, they cheat like hell with the roll bar triangulation to get some stiffness in there. Otherwise, they're a Flexible Flyer.

If they had doors they would only close ONCE.

A bit like the early Dart Swinger 340. If you dropped the clutch with the door unlatched, good luck!!! The Duster/demon was moderately stiffer.

Yeh Ed, I have been thinking about buying the frame. I can weld it, I do have the proper equipment, experience, and skill. But it may be easier to register the thing if I use an already made frame. I can always mod the fram if need be. But I really want to make the body and bolt all the stuff on. Eric

Once again, Eric, I wish you success. I'd love to see the completed project. Are you determined to make the body from aluminum? If so, allow yourself plenty of time to learn. One book I mentioned, _Sports Car Bodywork_, talks through making a body with just a leather sandbag and hammers. I tried it once, just to see what it was like, using a hollowed log and some 3003 aluminum. Banging out the hollows wasn't hard, but I would have needed more practice or some instruction to shrink out the edges.

I think that time and patience go a long way on these projects, until you get good at it.

-------------------------------------

How did you try to shrink the metal?

I used a home-made leather-faced slapper and a dolly. It was the same dolly I used over 50 years ago on steel.

I didn't anneal, but the aluminum was already pretty soft. I have used the old trick with plain acetylene to leave a layer of soot, and then burning it off with the torch. That anneals aluminum very well, but I wasn't getting the buckles out with the method I tried. It's supposed to work.

Making a paper pattern over the buck, cutting the aluminum to the patern, forming it over the buck allowing overlaps if required, then trimming and welding to achieve the basic shape makes the job a lot easier than working from a flat sheet and attempting to do all the shaping by stretching and shrinking. There is a limit to what you can do with an english wheel, plannishing hammer, and shrinking dies - muchless with a paddle and leather bag.

That's how we formed the nose-bowl for the Pegazair project. I "carved" a form out of pink foam, then we made the patterns, formed the aluminum with the hammer and bag, welded the panels together, and wheeled and plannished it to final shape, theun using shtinking dies put the lip around the edge (simplified version - but basically correct), We DID have to anneal the material several times, and for filler tig welding the panels together we used strips sheared off of the metal we were working. The seams dissapeared completely on the finished product.

Do weld seams behave differently when reshaped?

I'm more concerned with steel MIG welds than aluminum.

"modern jeep" aka Fiat?

Congrats on your pending retirement, Eric.

If not a wheel, maybe enjoy its noisier cousin?

A 55gal swear drum would suit me.

I wonder if that comment might explain a mates situation when he had to replace a diff in his Jeep here in the UK. Apparently no way to know whether it was a US made diff or a Italian one from the VIN number you just had to remove it and measure the fasteners. The US one used inch still but the Italian one used metric, fortunately for him it was the Italian one as they were £350 each whereas the US made one was £700 with shipping, customs, and VAT.

AKA a Plannishing hammer

Still inch, even after Daimler owned them?

My 1991 Ford, made in Kentucky, is all metric. I had to buy 18mm wrenches and sockets to work on it because they aren't included in sets.

I'm good at hammer forming copper and silver and have also done aluminum. Shrinking soft metals isn't that hard, plus you can buy shrinker/stretchers that really make it easy to shrink. EWric

I worked at a racing company in the early 1990s and they had the low end US made shrinker/stretchers and I was told they were acceptable on steel but they found the surface damage to soft metal such as aluminium too great so avoided their use. I mentioned to the workshop foreman that I had a UK made shrinking jaw set and brought them in and we did a back to back test and the results were like chalk and cheese, both worked but the surface damage was far less with my set, I expect they're equivalent to the high end US made ones mentioned in Fournier's book or the Swiss Eckold ones.  There's some information in the dropbox at