Working on De-Dion Axle
/Working on the rear de-dion axle for the last couple of nights. Got one side rolling last night and the other side tonight. Had to weld the large black metal tubes onto the de-dion "ears" which needed very precise setting up before hand. I ended up with a jig consisting of two parallel bars on the flat (checked) building surface. The two axle tubes were set on these parallel bars and the de-dion axle with ears set on top. I was then able to space the tubes out to the track width I was looking for and ensure it was central. I then used hacksaw blades to act as spacers to create a small amount of toe-in. This is important for stability to void the back end sliding too much. It will slide quite enough due to the V8 without having toe-out to add to it further. I also positioned my caliper mounts by rotating the axle tubes to the desired angle before welding. I don't have any calipers yet so I am taking a chance here but I hope it will be okay.
Anyway, here are a few pics of the car as it stands tonight:
Wagon's rollin' All I need now is a horse!
I have roughly measured the resulting camber and toe and it seems pretty close to ideal. I have about 2mm of negative camber and 1 or 2 mm of toe-in equally spread across both wheels which is close to ideal.
Side view showing axle detail. Note that I will need to chop the ends off the black axle tube so that it doesn't foul on tubes RU1 and RU2 but I want to leave as much as possible intact to allow me to weld a brace between the axle tube and de-dion tube. I intend to have this assembly welded professionally because I want it to be as strong as possible for obvious reasons. My welder just doesn't have the amps I'm afraid. If anyone in the Glasgow/Kilmarnock area is reading this and fancies welding it for me then drop me an email and give me a price. I'll be looking for someone shortly to do just that.
If you have a keen eye then you might notice that I've cut the left hand end off tube O1. This is because I am half way through modifying the left hand side to match the right hand side which you may recall I had to change to avoid tube O1 fouling the inboard trailing arms.
I've got some shock absorber substitutes to make up out of 1" tube with holes drilled at each end to mount to my shock absorber mountings (oh yes I'd better fit those too). I'll use these until I can afford the £250 for the real shockers and springs. I can then start working on the front of the chassis and get the suspension mounts fitted. I might get this thing rolling before the end of June after all!!