Fitting 35’s with minimal trimming NOW ADDING LONG TRAVEL AND 934 CV’s

A lathe opens the door to so many possibilities. I will have one at some point.

 

1949 Logan Lathe....300 bucks...plus new motor,new belt and it works like a champ. Never knew what I was missing until it ended up in my garage. Just the ability to touch up a misalignment spacer so your UCA just slides into your coil bucket gussets like butter makes it worth it.


Other than drilling and tapping the holes on the ends I made these on it.

 

I'm still kicking myself for not grabbing one just like that for $1000 with 4 jaw and 3 jaw chucks and a pile of tooling.

 

Ya...this was a smokin deal. It came with a 4 jaw chuck also. Plus 3 other boxes of tooling and accessories.

 

Holy crap, if it had been that cheap I would've bought it and asked the wife after it was already in the garage

 

4 jaws are so last century. Don't look at the price

 

Why though, properly dialed in a 4 jaw is good enough. That just looks like running true with extra steps.

I wish I had a CNC Mill and a Manual Lathe in my garage.

 

I think the day I start my steering project is the day that will push me towards picking one up. I gotta cool it with the spending for a bit though. Things got a weeeee bit out of hand. In the last two months I’ve bought a new tube bender, dimple die set, hole knockouts, 40” press brake and a few other things.

 

Not when it's self centering. More surface are to hold for larger pieces. Can be more precise for run out. You get into the really big boys and you get things like this.

 

Ah okay, self-centering is nice if setup right.

 

No notcher?

 

I have a nice one I never use. I get better fit doing it by hand 100% of the time. Might just be me. But that’s how I do it.

 

I'll admit I'm terrible at free hand notching, but then again, I've only had one instance of doing it. As with anything Practice makes perfect. I had to notch for my front bumper hoops and ended up stacking welds to fill the gaps. Looks good from afar!

 

Personally, I mark out my notches on the tube then I’ll either use a cut off or the plasma to rough in and finish with a drum.

 

I need one of those pin gages (drawing a blank on the name of the tool) that finds the exact curvature for it.

 

They have their benefits. But for anything that we'd do it's not necessary one bit. I was was just talking smack.

 

It's fine, I like flexing my Machinist noodle. Been in the trade 7 years and still have plenty of stuff to learn.

 

Make one some rubber bands and a bunch of small round objects like dowel rods. Wrap around tube size you're using and then but to the tube you need to find the notch for at the correct angle. Slide dowels down to create the shape of the notch. boom and pretty much free.

 

good point. Wooden skewers would work.

 

I have a few of them for different size tube. They have their place but they don’t work everywhere. Simply holding the tube in place and marking out with a sharpie and doing a few tune ups will get near perfect fit. It’s time consuming, but that’s anything when you’re working with tube. Unless you do it every single day.