Building a Special Body

[Ian Williams]

Hi Matt,
On the Joss Cambell car as you note there were very few modifications other that converting to Austin spec sports suspension, for a fast road and occasional hill climb car I have found this to be completely adequate, and perhaps more importantly it is totally period correct so no raised eyebrows or issues with eligibility. My own car has developed and evolved over 35 years of hard use both road and track, in its original form it had a completely unboxed chassis and served me well for a while. As I went faster I started to have issues, the most annoying was jacking the inside rear wheel loosing drive round quick tight corners, this was solved by boxing the chassis, improving dampers and playing with spring rates. This time I have evolved the chassis further, improving the boxing and adding members to attach the undertray and floor, I have tried to keep the construction reasonably period authentic and not add undue weight hence the use of hot riveted construction and copying the style of the existing central stiffer. I hope that is of help.

[Ian Williams]

Another reasonably productive day today and the revamped rolling chassis is back together, with this done I can at long last get back to finishing off the body.  

       

[goodwoodweirdo]

Hi Ian,
Yes answers my question perfectly :-)

thanks a million and please keep the posts coming...

Many thanks Matthew

[Chris KC]

Just catching up on this thread as I missed it the first time around (preoccupied with trying to get an engine together).

Ian, your work on the body is nothing short of inspiring! Still a little beyond my talents I fear but you've got me thinking...

[Ian Williams]

Thanks Chris, perhaps no as far beyond you capability as you may think, I am purely an amateur armed with a little knowledge and a willingness to try things. I have made loads of mistakes as I have learnt and been extremely lucky to have been shown tips and tricks by those more skilled than I am. I hope that by sharing some of those techniques through this thread it may inspire a few others to give things a go, none of it is that hard once you understand the basics

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Update time, with the chassis finished and back together I have once again been able to push ahead with the body which has until now been held together with temporary fasteners. The main superstructure was incomplete, particularly the area behind the seat and this is where most of my recent efforts have been concentrated. 
I have busied myself with details like body mounting brackets
   
Making the battery box 
       
Forming a space for the fuel tank to sit, and locking the whole thing together with aircraft rivets 
           

[Howard Wright]

Hi Ian

As inspiring as ever!

What material are all the rivets holding the bodywork together. I'm assuming annealed aluminium as there are no heat marks!

Cheers

Howard

[Ian Williams]

They are AN470 aircraft rivets Howard, they come in a number of grades depending on the material you are riveting, I use soft grade rivets as I mostly use 5005 sheet for panel work. If you try to use the harder grade rivets with reasonably soft sheet you will mark the material surface when trying to set them, and unlike steel rivets which you set red hot, Aluminium rivets are set cold. I did show some details of the tools and rivet gun I use in another post earlier on in this thread.

[Ian Williams]

Bored with drilling lots and lots of rivet holes I needed a distraction so made the brackets for clamping down the battery, these are inspired by Nippy items. 

   

[Ian Williams]

Been hard at it since last post and his is where I am up to today, the floor pan superstructure is now finally more or less complete, just a few more rivets to set, finish the etch priming and I am there. 

           

[Duncan Grimmond]

That is an extremely fine piece of work!