Chassis Painting Prep

Today I have mostly been preparing my chassis for painting.
I started off earlier in the week cleaning the chassis using various wire brushes attached to my drill.
A bit of a tedious task!
After a tip off from another building I got a couple of these angle grinder paint remover attachments from halfords:

They didn't last long, but made light work of most of the chassis, reserving the wire brushes for the bits I couldn't reach with the grinder.
This morning I decided to degrease the whole chassis using a can of 3-in-1 degreaser, followed by a good clean with a pressure washer.

Once I'd degreased I finished off with the grinder/drill (I was probably half way through cleaning up the chassis when I degreased), then applied a coat of kurust.  A 250mm bottle was just enough to do the whole chassis:

The Kurust stuff is some kind of rust converter and for some reason turns the chassis purple!

This evenning I started the painting, but that's another blog entry.

Brackets for Rear Rollbar Stays, and Rear Brake Pipes

Just a couple of pics of my rear roll bar stay mounts and rear brake pipe mounts.
I widened the rollbar mounts from the book and added two holes rather than one.  The reason being that one roadster failed the IVA for having just one bolt per bracket as per the book. (Note the front corners of my brackets still need rounding off in the pics).

The brake pipe mounts are in a completely different place to the book as the brake pipes enter the front of the calliper on the 5 rather than (presumably) the rear on the Sierra.  I positioned mine on the top diff cage rails between the seat back and the top front wishbone mount.

Handbrake Cable Guide Version 2

Originally my handbrake cable guide looked like this:

I wasn't happy with this for three reasons:

1. The angle of it meant that the handbrake cables were pushed hard against one of the seatback chassis rails as they exited the guide, which could have caused chaffing.
2. I want to bring my fuel and brake pipes down the top left of the transmission tunnel, and I'd have to route them around the cable guide, which would be messy and a pain to do.
3. The guide plate bowed significantly when the handbrake lever was applied.

My solution was to cut the guide plate out, remove half of it, and weld it back in at a better angle with some extra support plates.
It now looks like this:

Welding Complete!

Had a productive evening in the garage tonight.
I reworked my handbrake cable guide, and welded on the rear roll bar brackets and headlight mounts, which <fanfare please> means I've just finished all the welding on my chassis! :D

I can't find my camera, so here's a couple of poor quality pics from my phone:

Make a Wish

My wishbones arrived from Saturn Sports Cars yesterday :)

I spent the evening playing around and making sure they fit.  So far so good!

The only slight issue is that the Ford Transit drag link supplied by Saturn does not fit my front hubs.
The transit drag link is supposed to be used as the top ball joint on the front, but the taper on it is much wider than the holes in my uprights.
Saturn are on the case though, so hopefully they'll come up with something.

Having the wishbones means I can now fully weld my suspension brackets into place (which had only been tacked up until now), and finalise the handbrake routing and flexible brake line mount positions.  I'm getting tantalisingly close to completing the chassis now.