Builds Blender, My LX450/FZJ80 + FJ45esk + GM + Land Rover crazy concoction

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TIG welding is good at teaching patience!



I was able to get a decent amount of welding done on the B-pillar body mounts. I still need to add a brace in the middle or something. I am still thinking on that one. I have to go around a flange on the body I may just elect to just weld this entire bracket to the bottom of the tub in the end. If I spray the bottom of the body in bedliner it would be nice not to have to deal with a change in the dimensions of the mating surface.

Anyhow.

I also have been giving this 'passive' welding helmet a try when TIG welding.



I like the MUCH larger window and the consistent shade. For lower amp TIG work I might even give a #9 lens a try. The only real downside for me is starting in the 'dark', but it doesn't seem to be a huge issue. It just takes some getting use to.

My auto-dark helmet was having some 'flash' issues when my hands would block the sensors when doing detail TIG work.
 
Small steps forward....















I finished the rough mock-in of the B-pillar frame side mounts. These brackets will also function as the outriggers for the rock sliders.

I decided to use some frame pads for the mounts to attach to. This should allow me to pull the rocker assemblies and weld them completely on the table. Then I will weld the pads to the frame. ( note: the A-pillar will be similar but has to also weld to the radius arm mount )

I made some aluminum setup bushings to keep everything aligned while I was tack welding. These aluminum bushings will be replaced with poly units during final assembly. The aluminum units let me bolt everything together with JUST a little bit of extra space in the assembly. I find building them about .030-.060" wider than the part allows for a little movement in the welding process.

Beyond that it was just head scratching, cardboard templates, some pencil transfer of the mounting holes, transfer to metal, a little trimming, and bingo bango I had some mounts. The only real tricky things were the small bend in the frame bad to deal with the frame bend and keeping the slope of the brackets 'in-plane'. A finger style press brake would have been handy for the complicated bend, but I ended up using the corner of the welding table and a large crescent wrench to make that 1" flange bend. Keeping the slope of the brackets 'in-plane' will make boxing the brackets much easier and cleaner in the future.

Both rear B-pillar mounts are fully tack welded onto the frame pads. I will be boxing and plating the mounts once I pull the rocker sub-assembly for final welding.

Now onto more head scratching and trying to figure out the much more complicated A-pillar mounts. I am going to need more poster board....
 
This A-pillar body mount tie in area is giving me fits....



The front of the factory body mount outrigger was fairly easy to make a body mount for. After removing the factory sandwich style mount in this area, I wanted to convert to a regular universal bushing assembly. That bushing will provide the body mount isolation, as well at the tie into the 'cage' structure of the body.



The other side is where things get complicated. There is a large multi-thickness flange with a rather complex shape. The outer part of the flange is a different level/thickness than the rest. This is where come of the outer factory door/dash/cowl structure ties into the body.

The hole in the floor is the factory drain plug.



This was my 1st try at a bracket for that area. I had to use a spacer under it and it just fit like crap....





I decided the first thing to do was to 'flatten' the drain plug area. That gets rid of one of the 'levels' that the new bracket will need to conform to. I made a tool to mash the surfaces together using a bolt to apply the pressure. that actually worked better than I thought it would on a feature that deep. I did have to do a little hammer/dolly work to clean things up. The area doesn't have to be perfect.



This is what I came up with. I was able to use my press and some scrap material to build a laminated tool to form the 3d shape I needed to conform to the floor.



The bracket now confirms to the floor much better. I will have to build the bracket in two parts. I will add a vertical part that will connect to the bushing tube. I don't think I could have formed it in one part without a very complex die. For one part I don't think it was worth chasing.



I decided to add a 4th fastener to the pad slightly behind where the A-pillar tube will be for the cage. The only place for this fastener was 'up' on one of the ribs on the floor right at the inside of the door panel.

That spacer will be tig welded to the bracket. I will probably be welding all these brackets into the body eventually also to tie everything together.



This is basically the configuration of the fasteners on the top side along with where I want to stick the A-pillar down tube. The fasteners are upside down right now for a little more clearance on the underside. I will be making a 'top' pad for the this part of the mount also. I am also going to try and tie into the factory vertical door pillar structure to spread out the load between the front and rear portion of the mounts. That still is still a little bit out, but on the horizon maybe. I try and plan as many moves ahead as I can....
 
I am going....slow.....



















That finishes up the 'pre-pull' work for the outriggers on the rocker guards for the passenger side. This took way longer than I though it would. I haven't been doing any marathons in the shop, but I try and get at least a hour a day.

Tig welding parts takes much longer. It is just slow for me. When I pull the entire rocker assembly off I will likely MIG all the final seams. I don't really see TIG being a large advantage on those kinds of seams.

A few tips....

A drawing compass works well to transfer curves over to a template if you can offset things. This worked really well for making the template for the frame pad that has to go around the front suspension radius arm mount.

Making the outriggers a 'stock' size on the inside made it easy to use a short cut of material clamped in to keep everything parallel. That will come in handy later when I need to build the top and bottom panels for the outriggers.

What's next....

Now I need to do the same thing on the drivers side front. Overall, that should go faster right? I have templates for everything. We will see. I spent over an hour tonight prepping the drivers side by removing the temp body mount and that PIA bracket for the factory FJ40 front body mount. Aye.

The floor is a slightly different shape on the kick panel for the drivers side. I will need to figure out how to work with that.

Once the outriggers are roughed on both sides. I will pull one side at a time for final welding. I ordered up a set of dimple dies to play with for the bottom and top panels on the outriggers. I figure they will need big holes to allow them to drain properly. Sealing them is not an issue really with the design. I want to be able to wash them out too.

After the welding is done, I will heavily tack weld the pads to the frame. Then the body will be mounted! Yipee.

Looking longer out. After the body is mounted I can start to rough in the shape of the rear of the cab/tub. Finally!
 
Just duplicating the A-pillar rocker outrigger on the drivers side...





This is how I pressed the part that needed to form around the multiple steps on the rear of the mount. There are 3 levels in this. I was able to assemble a simple one off press brake die using scraps I had laying around. By stacking up different levels of material, then stacking a thick plate over everything, and squishing it in the 20 ton press, I was able to make the part I needed without investing a lot of time in a one off tool.

I have no idea how I come up with this stuff sometimes. I am REALLY surprised that worked as well as it did both times.



The body side of the mount is all fabricated. I need to tack everything on the vehicle and then spend a few hours TIG welding it up. Fun Fun.

The outrigger parts should be much the same as the passenger side. I already have templates for those so it will just be checking/changing the mounting hole locations which is bound to be slightly different.

I guess I will probably be waiting on my dimple die set....darn. I can still start to make the top and bottoms however. I think I would dimple die them just before welding.
 




I finished up roughing in the drivers side A-pillar body mount outrigger rocker support. It was pretty much identical to the passenger side. There was a few small differences in where the firewall brace structure was.

Now it's time to pull each side seperately for final boxing and welding....right after I make a pattern for the bottom plate where it will wrap around the radius arm mount......

I also got these in the mail.



In an effort to step up my fabrication game a little bit, I decided I should have a good set of dimple dies. I ordered the SPC/Light Racing 5-pc set. That set was very broad and fairly affordable. It included a 0.75, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, and 2.5 die. I would rather have a slightly larger size range rather than a die that was only 1/4" larger than the next.

I will be using these to fancy up the boxing plates for the outriggers. The 2.5" die is a little larger than I anticipated, so it looks like the 2.0" die will be my go to unit for these 4" wide outriggers.

My hope is that the dimple die holes will allow me to wash junk out of the outriggers. With the position of the body mount it didn't seam to feasible to box them in completely and make them water tight.

It will be nice to be able to fabricate and weld the boxing plates off the vehicle. Using the frame pads seems to be a very good idea for this kind of stuff.
 
Some more this evening...



I purchased a matching set of Blair Holcutter's to my dimple dies. These things are great! They cut fast, but require pretty high power. The 2" version will bog down my Bosch 3/8" drill. If you don't pay attention they can grab and throw you.....yes they can. You need to watch the pilot. I think just drilling the pilot would be a better way to go vs the center drill they give you. It is hard to break the pilot through without having the teeth grab. Once you get the cutter established and going, they HOG material. I am using the Blair wax also for lubricant. A 2" hole in 10 gauge cold roll takes less than 2 minutes with a hand drill. My little drill press didn't seem to have enough beans for the bigger units.

And a practice dimple die in the same material using my 20 ton press. I was happy that everything remained very flat without having to use all the press had.



A little trick with the frame pads. Attaching a small washer or this little rounded off drop of material to the frame gives you the 3rd reference point when sticking the frame plate back on the frame after welding/finishing. Once the frame plate is back in place and welded, you can grind the tack welds off to remove it.



My planning for the body mount outrigger rocker mounts seems to be working out well. I was able to lightly jack up the body on one of the old hat channels, pull the two body mount bolts, and remove the rocker sub assembly.

Because of the way the body mount bolts are orientated and inline with each other, you can jack one side of the body without binding anything.





I have been thinking about how I wanted to finish off the outrigger 'box' section since I started on this project. Because of the way the body mount bushing is down in the mount, you can't just stick a plate on each side.

On the bottom, I didn't want an exposed weld seam, to rock impacts, on the 90 degree bottom corners. I decide to fold a U-shape bottom cap that will move that weld up away from the corner about 1" with a double laminated section. I will be able to weld the inside seam and the outside seam. This should make that part of the structure very durable. The exposed corner will also be slightly rounded to help things slide a little better.

I had to make a few test bends to dial in on the proper fit that I wanted for that panel.







Once I had an idea what the bend measurements where, I could lay out the full bracket, cut, drill, clean it up, run it through the press brake, and then dimple die the two holes....

I built the bracket slightly longer than I needed so I can trim it do fit. That will probably take a bit tomorrow.

I will need to weld that panel in place on the INSIDE before I can add the 'top' boxing plate that will be under/around the body mount assembly. This is like chess sometimes!

The B-pillar mount will get the same treatment, but it is much more compact.

After all that is done, I can prep the frame for welding and stick this rocker assembly back on. Rinse, repeat on the other side....
 
I finally finished up the passenger side of the rocker protection outrigger body mount project extravaganza!



 
A little how-to tech tip....







Sometimes, when working with more complex shapes, I find it handy to use an 'additive' process for making templates rather than a subtraction method. In this case. I used making tape to make a skin over the area where I needed a boxing plate. I trimmed that masking tape template out of the steel and used it as a base for the poster board template which had the flanges I needed to fabricate.

Just a helpful tip I hope.
 
Just a few sneak peaks because all I did was stare at things for like an hour and measure stuff....



This is one of the square tube mandrel bends I will be using to form the rear of the tub. I will be using 4 total, 2 per side. One per side will be similar to this location but not exactly known yet. I will be connecting them with a straight section of matching 1.5"x.120 wall square tube with some internal sleeves at the joints. This structure will for the beltline/waistline of the rear of the tub. This tube should also be able to serve as the 3/4-point harness mount tube.

You can also get a rough idea of the total length of the tub. I believe this is about 3" longer than a stock FJ45 pickup tub. I don't know how much that matters since I have never sat in one, but it should be downright roomy compared to my flat fender!

I will be splitting the rear 'window' panel down the middle with another single C-pillar tube and it will have a 5th body mount bushing that will tie into the bed floor structure area.

The lower part of the tub will be sheetmetal. Basically a skin that wraps around the sides to the B-pillar tube with a flange at the top and bottom. It will hang on the cage basically.

I will also have to build a rear floor and spot weld the bottom seams together.

The bigger question is what to do with the cage top halo. I will write something about that later.
 
Lots of measuring and making stuff ( in the computer )







So this is basically that I am working with right now.

In the first picture you can see how setting a 'halo' on the top of the B-pillar will look. I tried to guess at the 'stock' position of the door opening in relationship to the stock windshield. Doing this from pictures is always fun!

In the 2nd picture you can see the four mounting holes on the back of the windshield frame. The two outer holes are where the stock door door surround attached. The inner two holes are for the sun visor. I am thinking that I will use all 4 holes for a mounting plate similar to how a YJ/TJ dead ends the cage structure into the back of the windshield frame. I don't really want to have to mess with the factory style windshield latches on the top of the dash. Using these holes for a mounting plate should allow me to eliminate those features. I can bolt the visor through the bracket. I don't really like folding down the windshield so if that takes a little time that is fine.

In the 3rd picture you can see this odd outboard mounting bolt flange. This is basically in the front upper corner of the door. The top of that feature, where it is flat, is where the roof panel flange is located. Once of the main features I wanted with this vehicle was a modular hard top system. In order to make that practical, I needed a framework that I will bolt those panels into. Since the cabin area is smaller on this truck, I figure that combining the need for top panel framework into a 'roll cage' type structure will save work in the end.

This is basically the direction I am going....



This isn't a complete rendering, but it gives you the idea. I have already built the B-pillar at the rear of the door. That is the larger 2x2 square tube structure which has a full side to side spreader at floor level. You can also see the rear cabin framework along with some rough A-pillar down tubes.

What isn't shown. I will be adding a rolled/bent A-pillar spreader at the top of the windshield. The A-pillar will be welded to all the existing dash/cowl structure after I move a few things around. I will also be adding a small front to back overhead console' tube from the A-pillar to the rear of the halo. That console will be narrow but will provide some support of the middle of the future top panel, an interior light, etc. I will be adding a 5th body mount on the single c-pillar upright that will mount to some of the structure for the stepside bed I have planned. I may tie that C-pillar into the B-pillar floor spreader bar also.

I will also be building some sheetmetal upper door surrounds to provide a sealing surface for the door bulb seal along the top and upper rear. To allow the door to sit flush with the outside of the body, I had to offset the upper part of the halo to provide room. This actually come in handy because of where the A-pillar tube lands since it can only go so far outboard with the factory door sheetmetal.

There will also be some gussets that serve double duty at some of the tube joints while also providing a mounting tab for the rear window panels. My intent is to have a 'split' rear window panel where there will be a lift and right side. I will stick a window in each panel. Those panels, when I remove them to open up the cabin, will store in the lower part of the body. They won't take up a lot of space elsewhere, but should be rather protected. To make this possible. I will have to slightly raise the belt line of the tub about 2.5"



If you look close, you can see the white tick marks for the 'final' position of the belt-line tube structure. The only reference to the old height will be the seam at the top of the factory door opening. I will probably be able to eliminate that with a little work. I will also be adjusting the height of the future half doors to match that. I am going to try and make the doors basically horizontal on top vs how a typical jeep half door is done. I want to be able to have a large sliding glass upper assembly that is can be removed in nice weather.

The top panel is going to be the biggest challenge in all this I think. I want to recreate a stock looking top panel to fit this body. I will likely have to make that from scratch. I believe it will have to have about 3-3.5" of crown. I have never really made a panel like that, so that should be fun! It will also have a reverse flange around the perimeter to form the drip rail. I believe that panel will be about 40"x56".

That is all I have for now. I am off on vacation for a week. That will give me a bit more time to think over all the details I am missing.
 
I need a faster metal printer button....



I can't believe that took over 3 weeks, I swear it only took about an hour to model that in the computer! I did take a week of vacation and nursed an L5 back injury for about another week.

I re-learned a lot about how much fun it is to work with the remains of a stock body. Somewhere in the middle of building this body/cage structure I discovered that one of the door openings was 1/2" longer than the other. That had carried over through the construction of the B-pillar with the body mount and rocker system. I decided that I need to square the body back up during the cage construction prior to moving onto the bed construction. I would be nice if the bed could be square and all that.

Overall I had to do a lot of head scratching on how to move things to get the best overall fit. I generally have everything less than 1/8" square and 0.1 degree to level. That seems to be about as good as I can do with so many parts that can move. The overall body length is now square to the chassis by 1/8" now also. I ended up having to stretch one side the 1/2" to get things back to normal.

I ended up raising the waist line of the chassis about 2.5" from stock. That will allow me to have the rear window panels be the same height as the storage area in the bottom part of the body! That means I will be able to have the rear body panel be removable/replaceable AND store INSIDE the body when not in use! That was a huge design goal for me. I ended up not having to raise the waist line THAT much really to make it possible. I am very happy about that.

The top of the 'halo', where the roof panel will mount, is about 1" lower than stock. I did this to help even up the rear panel/storage difference along with make the vehicle look shorter. I also slightly reduced the overall height of the doors, but I am making those from scratch anyways.I offset the door bars on the halo so I can make angled door surrounds like the rest of the door frame.

I also am planning to reduce the overall crown in the roof panel to JUST match the shape of the windshield frame. This will help keep the overall height of the vehicle down. The seats will likely have to be slightly lower to make up for all this, but the visibility should still be good with the stock height windshield frame.

Here are some random detail pictures....













I still have lots more to do with this, but this was the hard part I think!
 
In an effort to show more about how and why I do things.....



One of the things I wanted to do on this build, and most future builds, was to make the dash removable for easier wiring. Unfortunately, I don't think I can make that happen on this body. After further investigation of the top seam of the dash I noticed that the top seam is much smaller than I had thought, and the top seam is also folded over to make that 3 layers thick. Ugh. I just don't think it is worth trying to completely redo the dash to make it removable.



However, this is where I need the A-pillar to be. I want the A-pillar to go completely to the floor ( and then to the frame ) on this car. When I designed the body outriggers and mounts I designed in a little extra space for the tube in this location. Basically it is shoved as far forward and outboard into the corner of the door hinge/cowl support and the inner door opening panel. Don't worry, I will be making a nice 10 gauge cold roll pad/mount for the tube, but this is the 'final' position of the tube. I don't want that tube to be any further inboard because of the already narrow foot area. I want it as far forward so it doesn't get in the way of your feet when getting in and out of the vehicle. If you look above this little short section of tube, you might spot a little problem....dang it...the corner of the dash is in the way.



Well, using that same section of tube, this is how far the tube can be inboard. Darn it. That vertical line below the tube is about where the OUTSIDE of the tube needs to go. I guess it looks like I will have to do some cutting on the dash anyways....

The basic plan is to remove about a 1.25" vertical section of the dash which will allow me to move the 'corner' of the dash inboard enough to clear the A-pillar tube. I will probably also add a dash pad in thicker material that will weld to the dash and cowl panel to provide some intermediate structure for the A-pillar near where the bend will be to match the angle of the windshield.



The glove box is sure nice and big! It even has an auto eject feature for small items if they can fit over the wall on the outside! It sure was nice of Toyota to stick a flange and spot weld RIGHT where I need to cut. I need to find a creative and clean way to chop off that flange.....

Stay tuned.
 
Ok....let's cut up some stuff!



This is basically where we I left off mentally, but I decided I should probably use some sharpie to illustrate what I needed to do. I basically need to remove a 1.25" section of the 'flat' part of the dash in order to move the 'corner' at the end of the dash inboard to clear the future A-pillar....



Removing the waste section of material was actually pretty easy. I did it all with a careful, read lucky, hand using a 4" angle grinder with one of the very 0.045 thick cut off wheels. I planned the outboard cut to be JUST inboard of the flange for the outer glovebox wall....



Here is the outer wall of the glovebox still attached to the corner. I thought about trying to find those spot welds and cut remove them from the outside, but could not locate them! I ended up removing the waste section to give me access to cut that flange off with the cut-off wheel.



All apart....



Here is the new position of the corner after everything was all cleaned up. I still have a lot of little things to do. I found a crack in the bottom corner that I need to drill out and weld up. I am planning making a 10 gauge plate that will fit in the new corner which will tie the bend area of A-pillar tube into the cowl structure. Since this cage is basically going to be welded into the body, that panel will be welded to the dash panel. All little details. I need to pick up a spool of .023 wire and a new tip for the sheet-metal work. I don't think I am good enough to TIG all this old metal, maybe some day.



....and that is the reason why. All that to be able to move the A-pillar location over about 1.25"
 
Nothing super special last night....just arts and crafts....



I made this little tool out of some foam board, a sharpie, and some hot glue. It's purpose was to do this....



So I could make this....



I needed a mostly accurate template of the profile of the windshield frame in relation to the door bars. That will allow me to input that information into the computer which will be handy. I will also be using this template eventually when I have to make some of the tooling for the construction of the top panel in the future....

In the short tern. I converted the data from the template into computer information.



That let me start laying out the A-pillar spreader bar. Unfortunately, that tube is going to have to be much more complex than I would have liked. My initial thought was that I could just roll it. I could I guess, but that will leave a few extra inches between the future top panel ( which will be very close in profile to the windshield frame ) and the tube. After a bit of layout time I think I came up with a way to roll AND bend that tube so that it fits much tighter to the profile of the cage. That should be a decent challenge!
 
Just a short evening tonight...



Crack repair in my dash corner. I drill out the root. Grind out the crack a little with a Dremel and small cut off wheel. I try to keep the gap as small as practical. If I can, I weld the back side 1st, then weld the front side....



After a little work with a flap wheel and file it will look like this....



Then I finally hit it with a stiff wire wheel brush to smooth out the finish to match the rest of the panel.



I needed to add a little support back into the outside wall of the glove box. I ended up making a little 1" flap out of the original wall. The root of the flap was drilled so it won't crack out. I bend it over with a little flat nose pliers love followed up with a little hammer and dolly work. Once it was trimmed to fit to the cowl/dash/door support, I welded it into place. This really stiffened up that wall.



Since all the details where taken care of, it was time to finally fit and weld the corner panel pack in place. This took a little time. I spent a bit trying to keep the inside seam as flat as possible during the weld process. It was nice that I could get to the inside with a hammer or dolly. I typically tack every 2". Hammer and dolly everything flat again. Tack every 1". Follow that with another round of Hammer and dolly to keep it flat. Then split the difference and make a tack weld every 1/2". That is where I am now pretty much. It is good not to rush if possible. If you can't stick your bare hands on the panel your welding too fast. I will continue to split the difference and move around as I completely weld the panel seam.

I will take my time and weld the panel up over the next few evenings to keep the heat input at one time down. It isn't going anywhere now...
 
Nothing amazing this weekend, I got sucked into fixing the misses car, which didn't really need fixing. Did you know that having some sound deadening material de-laminate off the door of an Audi and get trapped behind the window sounds JUST like the regulator is broken....



I did get the dash seam welded up completely and sanded flat. It isn't perfect, but I am pretty happy with it! I still need to sand down the high points on the other seam, but those are going to be covered with a plate that will tie the A-pillar tube into the dash/cowl structure for a little extra insurance...



Something like that I hope. I should be able to slot the intersection where the tube touches that plate and weld it from the back side before installation. That should make it look very clean. The perimeter of that plate will be welded to the sheetmetal of the dash.



I also made the templates for the structure that will connect the A-pillar to the floor. This ties in directly to the body mount system and to the frame through the rocker outrigger. I also have to go in and weld all the seams under that new structure where I pie cut the floor and door.

Hopefully I will be able to actually bend a tube this week!
 
Just a little bit tonight. Turning cardboard to metal always takes longer than I would like....



That one panel took the majority of the evening season to make and fit. It has at least 2 bends plus a step-up flange on the outside rear to match the blister in the floor. There was a lot of filing and fitting also. Overall I can't complain though, I didn't scrap the part and got all the features to work together on the 1st try.

A few tricks for the night....



I like using magnets for holding templates down instead of tape these days. Even if the edges are not completely down, the template won't move around if the magnets are strong enough. I just press the edges down and use a sharpie to trace the edges. This also works great if you have to mark holes and stuff. Use more magnets rather than less.



I am also going to try something to help keep the position of the A-pillar on the pad consistent for the cope/trim. I cut a short section of 1.25" tube which will fit inside the 1.5"x.120 wall tubing I am using. The same could be done for other sides. You just tack the INSIDE of the little spud tube in place once you know the location where you need the tube to hit the pad. Now, every time you take that tube in and out during the fitting process, it will be in the same spot. I just hate it when things are trying to move around in too many places at once.

I will hopefully be pulling the entire A-pillar sub assembly, including the floor pad, out for welding after fitting and tack welding. It might take a little tap-tap with a dead blow to get everything in and out however. We will see.

And....



My tubing bender works. I had to 'waste' a bit of tubing to figure out where the Start Of Bend is on the die along with about how much spring back this material has. I think spring back is about 3-4 degrees.

Tomorrow I should be able to bend up the A-pillar and start fitting it. Yipee, but man this stuff seems to go slow sometimes.
 
One part at a time....



I was able to get the A-pillar tube bent up and fitted to the body and existing structure. It took a little time and patience to get the tube joint like I wanted. This tube 'falls off' the inside of the horizontal door bar of the halo by about 1/2". This isn't really anything fancy, but rather just a little bit of thinking ahead that came together...



Here is the position of the A-pillar compared to the dash and cowl support. I think I lost less than 1/4" of space to the inside. I tucked the tube as close to the forward outside corner as I could. You can see how close the tube is to the corner of the dash that I had previously moved inboard.



Close-up of how the A-pillar fits with the relocated dash corner....



This is how much the tube hangs off the inside of the door bar tube of the halo. This has been left long so that it can be trimmed to fit the future spreader bar at the top of the windshield. That will the odd rolled and bent part I talked about a few posts back.



I cheated and used Solidworks to make and print a template for the cope I needed. It was actually pretty close, but I did leave things about 1/8" long and trimmed it to fit....slowly......mostly with just a file.



If you haven't guessed. I make a lot of stuff. Here was my improvised 'Plane of Bend' clamp. I had to sneak in a little 1-2 degree bend in plane with the major bend to help this tube fit close to the dash. This little device helped me keep the tube perfectly in plane between bends.

Now to repeat everything I did on the drivers side. I probably won't post much along the way since all the tech is the same......cutting the dash, floor plate, fitting the a-pillar, etc. I hope it doesn't take too long, I really want to make that spreader tube which will need to be rolled and welded. That should be a nice challenge along with the last complex tube in the cage for a bit....
 
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