The Big Stick-Up

Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing.
Helen Keller

Big day today, we are welding the chassis beams into place and attempting to make one out of two!

Helpful as ever, Dino spent the day here today and we started off by clamping the beams into their final positions beneath Marigold.

Here are the beams in place on Marigold. We were reluctant to actually weld them into their final positions at this time, just in case our measurements were off. They are firmly clamped and ready for the fitting of Kombi 2.

We raised the front of Kombi 2 with a trolley-jack and removed the wheels to give us a range of height adjustment. Then we simply slid the whole thing backwards onto the beams.

It was a bit tighter than we thought and the two halves didn't slide together as easily as we'd hoped. We set up a couple of sash clamps and wound the two halves together, one turn at a time.

 Almost together, if we wind the clamps on both sides together then it's quite easy.

Together at last! The top of Kombi 2 seems to be slightly out of line but the floors line up perfectly. Kombi 2 is rather flimsy without her back end but we'll easily get it all lined up once the lower section has been permanently fixed.

The beams beneath line up perfectly in their respective channels! They shall be firmly re-clamped and welded permanently into place.

We drilled a few 15mm holes through the channel side-walls and have blobbed in some lovely spot welds to hold them in place. They'll get a top and bottom line of weld on the reverse side which will make them pretty permanent. We're out of time and the sun is setting so I'll continue with the preparation during the coming week and then we'll finish the basic structural welding.


Thanks for stopping by
CooP

Balancing Beams

Once in a while it really hits people that they don't have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.
Alan Keightley

We were rained out last Saturday so are working twice as hard today. I've welded up the beams from the 32mm steel tubing. The channels beneath the two halves still have a few lumps and bumps to be removed. I have clamped the beams in their approximate final positions just to double-check all of my middle-aged measurements.

Thanks for stopping by
CooP

Cleaning Channels

He who strays discovers new paths.
Nils Kjar

Cowboy, as usual, is proving to be a great help and is busy preparing and cleaning the underside channels ready to take the new strengthening beams.

Cowboy busily cleaning out Marigold's channels. Ooer. We found that it was much easier to work underneath when the halves were tipped up like this. Pretty obvious really, so why on Earth didn't we think of this a month ago?!

I loaded all of the steel for the channels onto to the bike, my daily driver until the project is finished. Turning right became almost unavoidable while turning left was really hard work. Lesson learned - balance the load!

Thanks for stopping by
CooP