SS100 "replica" Kit Kar

[Ulu]

Today was quite lovely, and I took my bicycle out for the first ride in a couple weeks. Shortly after I screwed up my left knee, I stubbed my middle right toe badly, so I’ve mostly been limping. I just had not felt up to riding until today, but it went pretty well and I made 3 miles without hurting myself.

I removed the transaxle forward isolator, and continued cleaning the trans.

The isolator disassembled. I scrubbed this all down in the sink with washing soda before I did anything else.

The steel cup was Very rusty and so I gave it in an electrolytic rust bath. This knocked off the worst of the lumpy rust, but I did have to chip in a little bit with the scraper to get some flakes off. Evidently this thing caught a good bit of water.

After burnishing everything, I primed it with Smart Seal (acid wash) and gave it a good coat of self etching black paint.

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SS100 kit kar
1600cc DP

[Ulu]

I stood this beast up on the table and started stripping down the scaly underbelly.

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SS100 kit kar
1600cc DP

[Ulu]

After two days with too much wind and humidity, it finally dried up and calmed down today, and I got my transmission painted.

I had to do the last little bit of cleanup on the bench and then I put it on the hoist. I washed the whole thing down with acetone, and blew it off.

There it is with several coats of self etching black paint.

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SS100 kit kar
1600cc DP

[oprn]

Without a doubt this car is going to be show quality!
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We had the stone age, the bronze age, the industrial age and now we are in the age of mass deception and mind control for corporate profit. (The mass media age)

[Ulu]

Thanks again.

It was almost good enough to show when I took it apart. Hardly perfect, but still quite lovely.

It wasn’t good enough to drive, which is the real goal here.
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SS100 kit kar
1600cc DP

[Ulu]

I finally got back to the car.. Rumor has it that the weather is going to start changing so I made a big effort to get some paint on the bare steel.

We had a lot of dirt and leaves blow in, so before I could paint I had to clean up the boat yard with a broom and a vacuum and an air hose.

Then I finished up cleaning the last little corners of the rear suspension, by hand, with a wire brush. It was not possible to burnish every bit of metal affected but it’s all clean enough.

I had oiled all the bare steel to prevent rust, so I stripped that off with acetone. Then I acid etched it all again, washed it with water 3 times, blew it dry, rubbed it off, and degreased it one more time.

I buffed it off by hand again, and shot it with a self etching black paint. I rolled the chassis up so I could paint both sides.

I did not paint the parts of the chassis I will have to weld on, but everything that is painted will not need welding.

Next I need to get the end of that tunnel cleaned up in the front and weld an additional patch inside of it to correspond with the external patch.

Then, I must do some repairs for the runningboard sub frame, welding up the unnecessary & miss-located holes, and then I need to get it cleaned up and painted. This will support additional sub framing under the car so it has to go back on before that proceeds.
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SS100 kit kar
1600cc DP

[oprn]

Looking good!
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We had the stone age, the bronze age, the industrial age and now we are in the age of mass deception and mind control for corporate profit. (The mass media age)

[Ulu]

This is the frame which under-girdles the floorboards and connects them to the running boards, fender tips, seatbelts, and seat frame risers.

I decided I should weld up all the unnecessary holes in this thing before I weld it up under the chassis. At least a dozen holes got relocated and there were about 30 holes in this that needed welding. There are a lot of corresponding holes in the floor boards that need to be welded up as well.

I did this, again, by first clamping an aluminum chiller block underneath the work and then flipping it over to weld the backside. I find it if I leave the aluminum chiller on until the weld cools considerably, I don’t have any corrosion problem on the back of the weld, and they come out clean.

I got about 3/4 through before I ran out of Argon and had to head for the welding shop. I will finish this up tomorrow and sand it and put some paint on it. Then I will put it away until it’s time to fit it on the chassis.
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SS100 kit kar
1600cc DP

[Ulu]

I bought some new paint for the frame today. Then I went over the frame one more time and finished my sanding.

I gave it all a good acid wash, And I rinsed it off three times and wiped it down. This time I diluted the acid wash quite a bit, where before I had used it right out of the bottle. That’s not necessary at all and it just makes for extra washing later.

This time I used about 1 part to 5 parts of water.

I decided that the Smart Seal degreased it well enough without additional acetone washing, and after it was dry I wiped it down and I shot it black.

You can see I didn’t sand the hot-rolled steel dead flat. I burnished off the scale, but it still has roller marks.

Nobody’s ever going to see this unless they put it up on the lift. This car is too low to crawl under.
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SS100 kit kar
1600cc DP

[Ulu]

I initially had a very difficult time getting all the bumpers and fenders to line up right on this car, so that it looked straight. When I got it, everything was misaligned, and head-on from a distance the whole car looked crooked.

I pulled out the front and rear bumper brackets. They had some blobs of weld remaining from the original turn signal brackets which I had cut loose.

I was getting ready to grind those blobs off, and half convinced to just drop them off at the powder coaters & have them blasted & painted. Then I noticed this:

The front brackets do not match.

Someone stuck one (or both) in the brake at the wrong angle. They don’t match in this direction either of course. This little straight edge really shows you the difference.

That was causing the bumper to push out and tip down just slightly on the driver side.

This guy really missed the mark when he stuck this in the press. I’m afraid the difference was too much to just heat these up and hammer them without a forge handy.

I cut the left one in that photo, from both sides, along the bend. I left the tab in the appropriate place, and bent the leg into position with a crescent wrench.

I want them to come out the same so I set them both up in the vice with a steel pipe to represent the bumper. You can see there’s a fair gap to repair. I will have to fill from both directions and then grind everything to the proper profile.

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SS100 kit kar
1600cc DP

[Ulu]

Welding the bracket to the correct angle.

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SS100 kit kar
1600cc DP

[DeathBySnuSnu]

I have enjoyed watching you do your project.
Looking good, keep it up, and thanks for sharing.
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[Ulu]

I finally got those front bumper brackets ready for paint.

I was going to strip them with zip strip paint stripper, but I decided to try some generic caustic soda barbecue cleaner spray.

It didn’t work well on the 65F metal, so I got the brackets as hot as I could in the sink with hot water, and sprayed them again.

After the third application on the heated brackets, and some scrubbing with scotchbrite, they are finally looking pretty nice.

This is the first time I’ve tried stripping with caustic soda. It left a pretty nice finish compared to using Zip Strip or Jasco stripper. I wish I had put those brackets in the oven at 400° before I shot them with the caustic. It probably would’ve looked even better with only two applications.
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SS100 kit kar
1600cc DP

[Ulu]

I decided that I should paint the rear bumper brackets at the same time, and I didn’t like the open tubing which was visible from above. I made these little caps and welded them in place before I cleaned these up.

Here’s the whole bunch ready on the bench.

Finally hung and painted. It only took me 17 days.

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SS100 kit kar
1600cc DP

[Ulu]

Here I am re-welding all of the ugly MIG welds on this big patch, after grinding them out. I did the same for the big patch where the shifter used to be.

The pieces of the floor pan that I will retain have about 50 holes that needed to be welded up. Everything that was bolted to the floor pan before will now be welded to it.

The pan repairs continue, fitting patches…

This is some of the trickiest welding I’ve ever done. The metal must be at least half a millimeter thick.


Cleanup time.

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SS100 kit kar
1600cc DP

[Ulu]

This was the patch at the pedal assembly.
Check out the welding on that pedal stop.

After grinding and rewelding.

I still need to get inside the tunnel and clean this area up and put a patch there as well.
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SS100 kit kar
1600cc DP

[Ulu]

There were about 50 holes in the floor pan that I welded up. Some of them require little patches which I cut from other pieces of the floor pan. In looking at the bottom I can see that they nearly all need some touchup.

I spun the chassis up so I could look inside the tunnel and I started examining the other welding to see what needed to be redone. It all needs to be redone.

I put a bunch of extra legs on the chassis for stability while I work on it. I strung it up to the overhead just for good luck.

Here’s a good look inside the tunnel where I have to clean up ugly rust and put in a patch.

The tunnel was cut open and welded back together in two places, and they almost actually got some weld on it. but not a lot of fusion. I used chalk to mark all the places where you can see daylight coming through the welds.

I’ve circled a couple areas here where the bead missed the groove completely!

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SS100 kit kar
1600cc DP

[Ulu]

I ended up going over all of the accessible MIG welding with the TIG torch. You can see how lumpy and porous the old welds were, and how the argon blaster smoothed them right out.

This shifter hole patch was a lumpy mess too, and I went over the whole thing uncovering a lot of crap & contamination in the process.

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SS100 kit kar
1600cc DP

[Ulu]

I have been helping my wife, who had shoulder surgery, so very little work has been done on the car.

I did get into the tunnel with my fake sawzall, and trim up the remaining rusted out metal.

I used an offset carbide grit blade, and a small tube, clamped to the bottom as s guide.

I need to scrub out the rest of this rust, and then I can weld a patch inside the tunnel.

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SS100 kit kar
1600cc DP

[Ulu]

I picked up my new steel today. These channels will become a boxed perimeter frame, 0.104” x3.5” x1” legs. Two 8’ pieces were $256 with tax..

These will form a box and splice to the forward rails.

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SS100 kit kar
1600cc DP