It’s been a while, as I’ve been in Dallas both for work and family matters. I’ve also taken some time to help out with other goings on locally; Mark Witt is still working on his Ranger battery pack conversion which is facing some unfortunate setbacks, and Erik Bigelow recently led an “EV Intro” session which was well received by some new AustinEV members. Rob’s RAV4 conversion is proceeding rapidly as well, and next weekend if everything works out, I’ll be over there again helping with a welding intro for those who want to try it out.

On my own project, I have some good news. The previous problems with the incorrectly-formed side pieces led me to sit down and scrutinize the whole situation, and between myself, Aaron Choate and Erik Bigelow we determined that the error would be easier to work around than I’d feared; the most correct way of fixing the problem was also the easiest — simply remove some material from the top edge. I measured and drew new lines, and once again Erik volunteered to go make the cuts on his bandsaw.

With that figured out, I was able to move on to the next step, which was to cut the strips that will form the top and bottom of each frame section, 4 strips total. These strips are two inches wide, and needed to be cut fairly precisely to make the seams easy to weld. I didn’t want to bother Erik again unless I absolutely had to, so I decided to see how well I could do the job with the plasma cutter. After fitting the torch head with guide wheels, I clamped a straightedge to the scrap of steel plate left over from cutting the side pieces, and proceeded to slice off the strips of steel. As it turns out, they needed only a little grinding and wirebrushing to clean up the small amount of slag on the bottom surface of the cut, which is produced mostly because it is nearly impossible to maintain a consistent travel speed by hand. The results are not perfect (as if I’d had them cut with a hydraulic shear), but they’re pretty close to what I would have gotten from the bandsaw.

Pictures are under Frame Modifications, starting on page 2.