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Then the chassis came off the table and he spent more hours welding, grinding, and finishing the bare chassis. It was both light and rigid enough to move around on its side to get to all of the hard-to-reach places, to finish weld every joint without having to do overhead welding on your back (which is hard).
The main chassis was then weighed. I mean come on, its Vorshlag - you would expect this. We will show the merged body-chassis weight in the next forum update. Speaking of weights, I need to right a wrong...
FACT CHECKING MY POSTS - MEA CULPA!
I've been doing forum write-ups like this for 16+ years, and have been fanatic about keeping my posts as factual and honest as humanly possible. I have also been a freak about weighing automotive components for over 20 years, and had an extensive "weights page" on my first automotive website starting in 1996. This was full of weight data, pictures of parts on digital scales, etc. So much "bad tech" about weights gets thrown around on the interwebs that it makes me a little nuts about "fixing the internet" wrongs sometimes.
In my previous update to this thread I mentioned something that was "non-factual" about the replacement tubular steering arms. Ryan built these to replace the solid steel units that came on the car (which were heavier, had some sketchy welds, and incorrect bump steer geometry for the steering rack we chose). I felt them both in my hands, spit-balled a number, and actually wrote
"these new steering arms save 12 pounds." Oh boy, I'm now well on my way to becoming a politician.
Of course several of you sharp eyed readers called my bluff, and I had to go weigh these parts. Then eat some crow when proven wrong. I "eyeballed" the weights and threw out a number that was nonsense. I thought I remembered weighing these arms, but I "mis-remembered" that fact. These tubular steering arms saved all of 1.8 pounds for the pair, not 12 pounds. So this is me admitting my mistake, showing the proof, and promising to try to never making that kind of error again. I'm sorry folks! #NotFakeNews
UNIBODY THEN CHASSIS BLASTED, REPAIRED, PRIMED AND PARTIALLY PAINTED
Our crew reassembled the naked Camaro chassis with the drivetrain, wheels, and suspension for the next phase of work. It would also look more presentable for our 2016 Open House we had on Feb 27th. Lots of people came to this event to see the shop, eat the food, get their free SCCA annual tech.... but many said they came just to see the Camaro. It was "naked and afraid" but didn't disappoint.
Meanwhile I had delivered the unibody to our paint and body experts at Heritage in Sherman, Texas. I am usually delivering or picking up cars there a couple of times a month.
With the unibody sculpted down to the bare minimum needed there were now exposed areas that were pretty rusty. Some of these are normally not painted when the car was built, so that's to be expected. The underside of the roof was pretty nasty, with headliner residue and some light rust. Other sections were clearly rusted and needed replacement. Of course it was raining when we loaded the semi-bare metal tub into our trailer...
Sadly we never weighed the stripped unibody, but two people could move it easily. I took the pictures below at Heritage after the body had been bead blasted on all of the sections I asked them to (everything but the rear fenders), but before any primer or paint went back on. This car will be painted in 2 stages - some sections that the cage/frame cover up on the unibody needed final paint now.
They left the E-coat on the new rear fenders and tail panel, but everything else that was original steel was mostly in raw steel form, from work done by a previous shop who blasted some sections. Heritage concentrated heavier blasting around some areas on the tub that had a bit of "tin worm" or which had visible body filler - like on the front and rear window frames and A-pillars.
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