Volvo Amazon 1965 (Volvo 13134)

[mattthemuppet2]

that's really cool! Any chance you could post some pics too? I'm not all that into videos, however well they're made.

 

[MrCrankyface]

Sure thing!
A few of the "overview" photos are towards the end of this post: Post 9

Here's some more indepth on how the press fixture works.
I milled out a scrap piece of steel, which turned out too deep so I added a shim from sheet metal along the bottom.
I also drilled and press-fit two rods to act as linear guids.



You place a flat piece of sheet between the rods, add the black plastic piece ontop.
The plastic piece is 3D-printed which allows for easy adjustment of the geometry to get that perfect fit.


Finally put it into the hydraulic press(could possibly work in a heavy duty vice) and both parts slide together and shape the sheet.
The extra holes between the guide rods don't have a function, they're just there because it's made from scrap.


Once I had the geometry figured out to accurately fit 1 of the "valleys" it was just a matter of figuring out the distance to the next bend.
It's trickier than it might seem at first because it's hard to tell just how much the bends will cause things to move when you press down.
But basically place the valleys in the car and try to mark where you think the next one needs to start.
Further difficulties were that the car sheet was so mangled that it was hard to get things to sit flat and square.


Then in between each measurement, align everything with a machinist square in the press and hope your aim is good.
The alignment is to make sure each press is parallel to the one before it, using the back of the fixture and side of the sheet perpendicular to eachother.


Once the entire sheet fits you gotta find that happy medium of where to cut.
Most of the rectangle shape was cut into the body but I cut my repair piece at the lower right to not ruin that shape.
Then it's just a matter of carefully stitchwelding everything and with even more care, grind the welds back down to flat.

 

[mattthemuppet2]

wowzas, that's some impressive sheet metal work!

 

[MrCrankyface]

Thank you!

I've made some more video content on this project when I was supposed to study for tuesdays exam. Yeah, uh, priorities...

Part4: Indepth look on the sheet metal press, trying some other dies etc.

Part 5: Trying to fit the new turbomotor and finding a gigaton of rust.

 

[brino]

@MrCrankyface

Great video, thanks for sharing!

I never would have thought about 3D printed die inserts.
Apparently a great idea!

And the quote:
"....and now that I barely have a firewall at all, placing the engine is suddenly much easier."
made me laugh!

Thanks Again!
-brino

 

[MrCrankyface]

Thanks! I didn't even mention how it now should be classed a luxury car due to the increased leg room.

 

[MrCrankyface]

Still absolutely zero time to work on the actual car but managed to find about 7 hours, over a few days, where I could edit this together.
Goes over various things like:
-new rear axle
-new wheels
-modifying wheel hubs
-widening the fenders
-rebuilding the baggage area
And a couple of other things.

 

[MrCrankyface]

FINALLY had the motivation AND time to work on the actual car.
I think I left it in april or something with having placed this angle as a base for the hinge joint.


A bit of milling, welding, lathing and various other fun stuff and we have these.
Reshaped the angles quite a lot, drilled 4 deep holes so I can through-weld at those places, it will also be welded along several sides.
The rods are just standard "garbage steel" that I made into temporary bolts, this is both to clamp everything together for welding and holding things together for long enough so I can test the articulation.
As these are incredibly low grade compared to proper bolts, it will never be driven with these.
If the solution ends up not being good, I don't wanna dish out a lot of money for high-grade bolts I won't use in the end.


Everything clamped together and tacked, just enough so I can test things but still remove it if something is wrong.
That pretty much completes the lower links to some kind of "testing stage", still need to do upper link and panhard or watts linkage.


Since I had completely forgotten what kind of suspension numbers I had "way back then" and any info I could find seemed wrong, I had to spend quite a few hours redoing everything.
Finally took the time to draw things up in CAD as well.
The orange parts will be added for the upper link mount.
The green part is the original beam in the car(didn't model in the driveshaft tunnel thing)
And the grey parts are the 80x40mm tubes I've welded in to replace the old rotten frame/floor.
In the setup of the render, the links are parallel to eachother and the ground at "neutral" stance, this is what they recommend for getting the car through the "modified car certification" stuff we got over here.
What took so much time was calculating all the extra holes, so I can use them to mess with anti-squat and instant center, preferably without having to adjust the length of my links between every little change.



Hopefully I can keep this going and start fabricating this weekend.

 

[FOMOGO]

Don't forget the three inch roof chop. Mike

 

[MrCrankyface]

Don't forget the three inch roof chop. Mike

Extremely tempting, but what a pain in the rear.
And I figure trying to fit my 6'4" body and a roll cage will be even harder with a dropped roof.