As this project progressed I realized there were some areas that were going to carry most of the weight of the car. The bracket that holds the body to the chassis, and the front axle needed to be much stronger than anything I could have built from wood. In this case, I decided to use steel tubing for strength, and to keep a somewhat scale appearance.
I built the front axle from wood as a mockup to give me some kind of idea what it would take to build it with the necessary structural integrity. After some trial and error, I settled on 3/4" steel tubing. Instead of trying to bend the tubing, it was much easier to cut all the pieces and then simply weld them together. All the welding on these parts was done by my buddy Bob, who, when he's not "shuckin' corn" is one of the best fabricators that I know.....
The rear bracket was made from 1/4" brake line and was much more complicated. I built several jigs for theses parts because of the number of pieces that were required. The two side pieces were made first by laying all the parts in a jig and tack welding everything together. The finished pieces were then placed in another jig to add all of the cross bracing. Once I had a good solid structure, all the welds were ground and finished with bondo to achieve a very slick looking bracket with plenty of strength. After a few test fittings everything was primed and painted to match the chassis........
As this project progressed I realized there were some areas that were going to carry most of the weight of the car. The bracket that holds the body to the chassis, and the front axle needed to be much stronger than anything I could have built from wood. In this case, I decided to use steel tubing for strength, and to keep a somewhat scale appearance.
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