Making parts for a Fiat

Patrick said:

In reply to TurnerX19 :

They're also extremely good for cooking food

Seems kind of weird, but we at GRM can do anything with a tool, I guess

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

Replying to both P & P, I never quote the primary purpose for a tool, too obvious, and all the hammer forming Trent is doing, how did he pass them up?

Time to remake the front upper control arms. Starting with a jig. I reamed to hole for the ball joint taper and located my inner pivot block to set the length. 

Let's make a block to hold the ball joint. 

I really need a proper 4 jaw with a DI6 back plate.

Press fit, augmented with the snap rings

On the plate!

Next step, have send cut send laser out some eccentric washers

And then modify some 8mm SHCS

Next step, on to the adjuster ends......

1X0.75 steel bar, turned to a spigot on one end.

Roughed out on the band saw

You see where I am going here? A total of 6mm of adjustment via the eccentric cam.

And then connect the dots with some 3/4" 4140 

Complete arm is 904 grams. The alloy arm was 1340 grams 

One more item checked off the list.

Next step, revisit the lower arms.

I was wondering why you had SCS make parts that one could easily buy off the shelf, but now I see the scale.  Fascinating!

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

Yeah. 20mm OD eccentric stuff didn't seem to exist. 

Excellent work!

Wow, brilliant work. I love the image of the 3 jaw holding th 4 jaw. What kind of interference did you aim for on the ball joint press fit?

I'll have to double check my notes, but the ball joint was knurled and measured something like 38.04mm so I went to 38.00 and it pressed in like one would expect with an arbor press.

It is amazing how you can read a designer's mind with calipers or a tape measure.  

On old Austin Healeys the entire chassis is laid out in .250" increments.  Similar metric based symmetry can be found on old Italian stuff. 

Chucks holding chucks is too easy for a fast setup. You can spend half an hour making an arbor to hold the inside of a small bore or just grab a smaller chuck in the larger and get stuff done.

One of my techs calls it "Trent's wedding cake"

Love your workmanship on this thing!  Keep it up, and keep sharing.  The 3 jaw/4 jaw wedding cake is awesome.

Today was a big day.

I took the body off the cart.

This way I can get to where I need to be to build the rear rails or subframe or whatever I end up with back there. I think my jigs to hold all the important pieces in situ are showing their worth at this point. 

But while the body is off, it is taking a field trip

Heading to Metalworks

For the chemical dipping process.

As reluctant as I am to crack open the wallet to pay for this, I don't have the patience to do this work any other way. When the car comes back it will be the only 100% rust free 850 berlina on the north american continent. 

Metalworks does amazing work. We have been using them since the beginning of Vintage Underground and the quality keeps getting better.

Farewell friend. See you in a matter of weeks.

Metalworks is awesome. I had them dip and strip the heater parts from a 914 project a few years ago. From caked with goo from oil leaks (yet still rusty in some spots) with lots of oil inside the tubes to perfectly clean and rust free inside and out. Priceless!

Ok I'm waiting to see this once it's out of the dip. Been looking at this process as well. This is the closest to me so sometime in the future I'll be traveling down to Eugene with a car on a trailer. Going down for the Olympic trials in June so will set up a time to check it out.

Beautiful work every step of the way! Love this stuff.

I am loving this.

And thank you, GRM, for posting about this, so it catches my attention again, and now I post in it so I can find it again easily.

You, sir, are inspiring me for when I tackle my Super 7 number 2.

Cheers!

This is amazing!

Well heck, while this is back up on top of the page, lets talk about suspension joints!

When I installed the new suspension on this car I ran into issues because it was just so dang lightweight.

On the light end of a 1300lb car the spring rates were only 150 in/lbs. The friction in the poly bushes in the upper and lower arms made it so you could lift up the front 2 inches and it would stay there, you could push it back down and it would stay there as well. The alignment shop had a heck of a time doing their job because of this.  By making custom sleeves for the bushings I was able to work around it,

What else to use? Heim joints? I find they wear out within months on a street car. I had them on the trailing arms and steering joints on the Fiat before and had to replace each of them about 3 times each. Plus, they are harsh.

I thought for sure that the Currie Johnny Joints were the answer until I bought the smallest they had and it is absurdly massive

So I am currently playing with these lil' dudes.

These are the rear suspension joints for most Toyota products. They are the same thing as the Johnny joints, just not rebuildable and much, MUCH smaller.

So anyway, I am now in the planning stage of making these little Toyota pieces into "rod end" type things so I can have the rear wishbones adjustable for toe in the simplest way possible.

More of an update soon

Looking forward to your experience with those bushings, it seems you are a couple steps ahead of me. My johnny joints arrive this weekend haha. If you find something good I am interested in part numbers.

What about Del-A-Lum style using nyliner bushings?

Awesome fab skills, thank you for sharing and explaining your thought processes behind your decisions. I'm starting my build on my 1971 850 Berlina currently. Subscribed.

Trent said:

So I am currently playing with these lil' dudes.

These are the rear suspension joints for most Toyota products. They are the same thing as the Johnny joints, just not rebuildable and much, MUCH smaller.

So anyway, I am now in the planning stage of making these little Toyota pieces into "rod end" type things so I can have the rear wishbones adjustable for toe in the simplest way possible.

 

More of an update soon

 

Alfa 105 series cars use something very similar (but I guess bigger) in the lower control arms (and performance oriented types swap them into the upper control arms - they're conveniently the same size as the stock upper arm rubber bushing).

What size are the Toyota joints?

Gammaboy said:

What size are the Toyota joints?

At least this one. They come in a ton of sizes

Wow. How did I miss this? Fantastic craftsmanship. 

Hmmmm. Off the top of my head, that's roughly the same size as the Alfa joint.

New space, who dis?

I have decided to move to a different position at work. Less day to day personnel stuff and more on the technical side. In doing so I have also moved to a different building. It is a smaller space, hopefully I can fit enough in to be able to do what I need. 

So I lost a month to moving, setting up the new lift, setting up the machine shop and then spent another month catching up on the work I missed during the move. Weekends were spent maintaining the dailys. 

It is a functional space but quite a mess while I try to decide on a storage method for everything (Metro racks are NOT working here)

The Eight and a half does have a space. The body is still at the dippers. I am beginning to regret saying "take your time. I have things to do"

But this week marks the official "I started working on the Fiat again" point in the move. I am starting to feel normal again.

So I made some

Not much, but some progress. These are the front lower ball joint and suspension pushrod mounts.

The lower arms will be multi piece like the uppers. I need to finalize the front arms so I can move on to the rears. Really looking forward to those

I did score a brand new Magnaflow off marketplace. It was exactly the unit I wanted to replicate the Abarth exhaust look.

Anyway. I hope updates start happening more regularly now.