On Saturday evening my certified welder neighbor came over and reviewed my previous work and helped out with welding in the landing plates on the firewall. Luckily he said my welds looked pretty good, and that any failure would not be likely from my welding. That was reassuring. It was also nice that after he played with the welding and some scrap tubing he came to the same optimal settings on the welder that I did.
Sunday, I finished up the firewall tubes. Now I just have to mount the upper door bars, I am a little gun shy on doing so after cutting one of them too short on my first attempt. So I will use some caution, and take my time getting them cut and fitted. In reality after the door bars, I have one major piece to add to the cage then it is time for gusseting, finish welding, etc. I hope to have the roll cage done by December. I have definitely behind schedule on this one. At the same time, this was the one portion of the project I was most apprehensive, skeptical, or even fearful of.
So, what have a learned from the process thus far?
Practice your welding, if there is any question of its integrity, grind it out and address the problem. There are plenty of resources online to help you figure out what is going awry.
Tube fabrication is not equivalent to black magic. I found it very helpful to make some of your own tools. You will learn other tricks as you go. Remember, the location of the cut, the angle of the notch and the indexing of the tubing all have to be measured. There does not seem to be a single good way of doing all of these in any given circumstance.
Buy extra tubing, you will inevitably cut something short, at the wrong angle etc. If you are lucky it will be a straight piece of tubing that you can simply take the extra that you just bought and cut it to length. If you do not have to use it, you have the start of an excellent "cheater bar" for yourself and anyone who helped you along the way that needs one.
Do not skimp on tools. Cheap ones fail, good ones (and usually more expensive) do not. I have burned up a right angle die grinder, I have a cut off tool on its last legs. Both of these were cheap tools. I have several other tools that perform the same as they did out of the box. These cost about 2-3 times of the cheapo ones and have seen just as much use. I have also burned up 2 hand drills, both were old and probably undersized for the job. The right tool, a good tool, for the job will save you headaches and money in the long run.
I am sure there are still lessons to be learned and some that have not yet popped into my mind. As time clarifies the previous few months of work, I am sure more will come on this subject.
