Project Igor- Europa Content

Here is your challenge, finish yours before I finish mine!

You have a head-start, but mine is staying "original".

RichardSIA said:

Here is your challenge, finish yours before I finish mine!

You have a head-start, but mine is staying "original".

The only head start I have is in time. Certainly not approach.

More progress please! Need more Europa content.

Melting some metal

Big fan of this new toy

MMM.. more metal melted

Tied the front of the my subframe together to the chassis with a couple pieces of square tube.  Guessets for everyone this weekend!

Never thought I would see the day that I would be unhappy to be working on one wild ride rather than another!

But the Europa IS a bit special for me. Going to try to at least get the engine done this year, as I fear Renault TS parts may dry up sooner than some of my other makes and models.

Igor is getting his cavities filled.

On second thought, that doesn't sound right. Make of it what you'd like. Igor is a bit of a freak.

Sonofa... I didn't have the rear support triangle installed when welding up the driver side patch and the back frame rail pulled in 1/4". Dang it.

The frame horn only functions to support the body. I think I'll leave it as is and see how badly the body doesn't bolt up. I expect to have to cut the horn, bend it back into place and reweld. There's a chance both have moved, but luckily it's a quick fix that I can do when the body is on the chassis.

Put some heat into the outside of the rail and cool it quickly and it'll straighten up again.

Or bottle jack and 4x4 and leverage off the triangulated side.  

I doubt it would take much to get it to move back.  

Progress looks great!

I was able to get the bolt in with some wrangling, before. I flipped it over and welded the bottom seams.  It might be ok now. If not, cold working is probably where I'll go once I can drop the body on and see exactly where.it needs to be.

Edit: my garage is a disaster.

Igor has a problem. We will work though this together. With some corrective surgery and rehab, he'll be better than new.

Front chassis Tee?

I believe this is an area that was changed for the TC's and is often reinforced during rebuilding of earlier cars.

Have not seen mine yet, ex Hill-Climb and Auto-X car.

Yup, it's only welded on 3 sides for the S2.  Quick surgery.

Cracks ground out and welded. Gussets added and unwelded seam fixed.  I think the surgery was a success!

In reply to Brotus7 :

Welds look good.  Remind me what wire diameter and welder you're using ?

Thanks. It's a mix of mig and Tig.  This was TIG, trying to get used to it again, using 1/16" for both the tungsten and wire, burned with a Miller Diversion 180.  I used a small WP9 flex head torch since the position was awkward, but I generally use the a bigger torch and 1/8 lanthinated tungsten since it's easier to hold when grinding.

For the MIG, I use .030" wire and a Millermatic 180.

I think I'm almost done with the chassis.  I want to box in some of the control arm mounts, then clean up the bulkhead at the tail end of the chassis backbone. After that, sand blast?

It's 4 degrees outside.  We'll see if I can get the garage warm enough to work tonight so I can start working gussets and fixing the hacked bulkhead at the rear of the backbone.  In the mean time, ordered up the goods to build my fuse/relay panel.

Next step is to finish filling out the harness, lay out the additional sensors (oil temp, pressure, intake air temp prior to intercooler), PIdash.  Probably forgetting other stuff, but I want this to be as modular as possible - I know I'll want to add/revise circuits.

EDIT: can't get a decent resolution upload for the wiring diagram I'm working on in TinyCAD.  Sorry for PotatoVision2021

Managed to get a couple hours in the garage, even got to balmy 60 degrees despite being like 12F outside!

I started the day by hooking up my cool new gas lens and Pyrex cups to my small TIG torch, and what better way to break it in than welding a couple gussets.  Hooked up the new gas bottle I've had and off I went, except it just wasn't welding right.  Played with the cups, seals, tungsten, re-cleaned everything... no matter what, I was getting contamination.  Until I remember the gas bottle.... Last year, I swapped out my empty small argon bottle for a MIG mix since I wasn't TIGing much at the time.  Welp, that'll do it.  Don't try TIG welding with a CO2-Argon mix.

Wasted half an hour figuring that out, then switched to the MIG.  Zapped in a bunch more gussets, then decided to stare at the rear bulkhead.  When trying to fit the shift cables, I had to hack away at it.  Slide in the water pipes, shifter cables and bracket... I think I to install the engine to figure out where the cables want to sit before I commit to making anything out of metal.

My daughter's birthday was yesterday, and this guy turns 2 in a couple weeks!

Not dead. Work got busy, found a rut and fell in. Then started biking outside as we got the spring thaw.

Decided to put the engine back in to check clearance before I fab the rest of the gussets.

Edit: I cleared everything before uploading the pictures. Do they show correctly?

Pictures look correct. 

Back at it this week! Zapped in some gussets this morning and finishing the rear backbone bulkhead this afternoon.  Maybe I can drag it outside this week for a final wire wheeling?

Also... Why do I need to relearn welding lessons? 

Don't weld dirty metal. Don't weld dirty metal if you're in a hurry, takes way longer to grind out crappy welds and fix... 

It's been a busy week of cleaning, but I'm making progress. Welded in some gussets then started stripping to prep for paint. I picked up an extra long die grinder from HF and some knotted wire wheels from Amazon a while ago - both have been fantastic for this. Slow, but effective.

I dragged the chassis to a local fab shop yesterday to see about sandblasting, but its a bit thinner than what the dump trucks they typically do and I was pretty far along... So kept plugging away.

As I was cleaning, I found another crack that needs welding, and some rust holes under where the battery once lived. Quick patch panel to the rescue.

Honorable mention also goes out to the scotch Brite-esque pass for my angle grinders. Those things strip like magic! I feel like there's a joke to be made about how well the strip, but I'll leave that alone.

I also got to use my newish sand blaster gun to clean up what I couldn't otherwise reach. I've only used it to clean the valves in my VW, and it did well even with walnut media. Tomorrow I'll finish cleaning, make sure I'm happy enough with the welds then hit it with some rust converter to clean up the various pits that I may not been able to clean. Paint this weekend hopefully!

In reply to Brotus7 :

Great progress! I've been casually looking for another Europa, but I doubt I'll buy anything until prices settle back down a bit. I kinda need to sell a car or 2 to make room first too.