Putting on some flappy parts

This being only the 2nd step in the build (priming the chassis doesn't count), it shouldn't be a surprise that it will be different in nature from the previous step. We're moving on from my comfort zone of drilling holes and riveting aluminum into working with steel and bolts.

The parts we assembled will be the foundation of the front wheels. There are two components so far: there is a lower front control arm and an upper front control arm. These arms will hold the spindles. The spindles will eventually be what the front wheels will be attached to.

There are two axes of motion: they obviously will have to pivot left and right for steering, and only slightly less obvious is that they need to move up and down. That allows a smoother ride when a rough road is encountered. Most of the reaction to bumps will be softened by shock absorbers. 

Well, that's kind of misleading. What will eventually be installed are things called "coilovers." 

Coilovers are basically a marriage of springs and shock absorbers into a single unit.

These are the lower control arms. Note the silver "pucks" at the end of each arm. The black dot in the center of each is actually a small threaded hole.  Those holes will have a fitting screwed in that will provide access for a grease gun when it comes time to grease them up. 

The reason for the grease is that on the other side of the silver disk there is a threaded rod that needs to be able to move around as the flappy bits do their flapping.

The first task was to thread the little nipples that the grease gun will attach to into the pucks.

They were a little tricky to find. You can see one hiding inside the C-clip.

It was a bit scary threading them in because the threaded holes in the pucks  only have 2 or 3 threads - it would be very easy to cross thread them. As it is, they both look a bit crooked after threading them in. They're solidly seated, though, so it should work out okay. Time will tell.

With that done, we test fit the arms to the chassis. This was not easy. Or maybe it was. It depends on your point-of-view. When building the airplane, everything just fit right in without any need for physical coercion. Such is not the case with the car. 

These bolts did not want to just slide right it. It took a lot more pressure than I expected. To be fair, though, some of that resistance was due to the layer of primer on the chassis. 

A few light(ish) taps with a rubber mallet helped them along.

On to the upper arms.

Oddly, the grease fittings were already installed on them. That was just fine by me. I'm not a masochist.

All of that took a couple of hours and I felt like taking a walk for a break to recharge. I went down towards the woods where the Eagles live. They were out and about looking for a meal. They've gotten bigger since the last time I saw them, which was about two weeks ago.

You can probably guess what came next. 

These are the Upper Flappy Parts. Note the large open holes that look like they might have silver pucks and grease fittings just like the lower arms did. 

For some reason, installing the silver pucks was left to us this time around. Odd that they had already been installed on the lower arms but not on the uppers. Progress!

To do this, we were instructed to place the arm in a vice to hold it while screwing in the pucks. 

That was the easy part.

The screwing in was not anyway near as easy as you (well, me) would think. Part of the problem turned out to be burrs in the threads. That was rectified with a wire brush. The other problem was caused by the powder coating on the threads. That was cured with a bit of lubricant and a lot of elbow grease. 

Four-letter words were abundantly tossed around there for awhile. It helped.

The elbow grease was immensely aided by a rather long socket wrench and a special tool that fits around the faces on the puck. Grant, of course, had exactly the right tool in his toolbox.

I swear, I don't think I could have done this by myself. Expertise and Experience won the day.

The last task of the day was assembling and installing the spindles.

This went pretty well. It was simply a matter of slipping the spindles between the upper and lower arms. At this point we fell into a pattern of Grant working on his side and me mimicking him on my side.

Monkey see, monkey do. It’s a long established concept. 

The next job is to assemble the coilovers. I had enough time to get started on that, but I was getting a little overwhelmed with all of the new things and my back was sending me very clear messages regarding the crawling around on the floor. 

It was time to head home.

Next up: coilovers.

Work time for this step: 5 hours.

Total time of build: 8 hours.

 

The First Rivet(s)

 After a prolonged delay caused by numerous homeowner trials, tribulations, and yard work, I finally got around to doing some work on the car. It was nothing fancy, but that is to be expected. You have to start somewhere, and the clever folks at F5 did pretty much the same thing Van's did with the airplane: start with something simple.

Keep in mind that the concept of "simple" differs with each person that takes on a job like this. The fundamental skills required for the first step in the manual were all familiar to me: positioning a part, laying out the rivet pattern (that actually was new to me - the airplane was pre-drilled), match drilling through aluminum and steel, deburring the holes, and attaching the panels with "pop" rivets, AKA blind rivets.

For those that don't know what a blind rivet is I found this on the innerwebz:

Believe it or not, “pop rivet” is typically just another name for a blind rivet. It all started in 1934, when George Tucker Eyelet Company was approached by an aircraft manufacturer that needed help developing a fastener that could be set from just one side of the material.

The need for these types of rivets rather that solid, driven rivets arises when only one side of the rivet is accessible. The riveting I needed to do had exactly problem. There would be no way to put a bucking bar on a solid rivet because the end of the rivet is inside the steel tube chassis.

This is the very first step: find this tool:

The tool didn't work very well because of its length - it didn't fit where I needed it to. I created my own tool to measure the 3" spacing. What it lacks in sophistication it also lacks in precision:

Hey, we aren't making jewelry here. Close enough is... close enough. For now, anyway.

This is the extent of the directions for the first step - it's adequate:

I was still fully in Jeweler mode at this point, so I spent an inordinate amount of time futzing around to get it perfectly positioned. Once I was at least partially satisfied I clamped the first panel into place. I used by intricate 3" measurement tool to lay out precisely four of the nine rivet locations. This area was too constrained to actually support a higher amount of precision. 

Maybe I'll get a better chance to be precise later in the build. For now, this would do.

The drilling went fine. Drilling through the aluminum was trivial, and because I had learned how to drill into steel (slow speed, moderate pressure) while building the plane, that part went okay too. With the holes drilled, it was a simple job to temporarily hang both panels.

I do have to mention that Grant was not impressed by the 1/8" rivets included in the kit and suggested using larger and beefier rivets. We went with 3/8". That obviously required drilling bigger holes. I also knew that trying to go from 0" to 3/8" was not going to be easy, so I did drilled the 1/8" holes first, then re-drilled to 3/8".

I still wasn't ready to rivet the panels yet, though. I had to do this first:

Apply silicone to the panel or chassis (whichever is easier) in the areas where they will make contact.

I figured applying the silicone to the chassis would be more accurate. I still believe that to be true, but I didn't account for the thin viscosity of the silicone. It was a lot more runny than I expected.

Once the panels were siliconed and clecoed back in place, it only took a few minutes to rivet the panels in place.

Work time for this step: 3 hours.

Total time of build: 3 hours.