Manky's Pop.

[Manky Monkey]

The German helmet makes the piercing in his nose look like a Hitler moustache!
Yup, that's the Beezer. A little Bantam. Not sure what size but it don't matter cos it's buggered.
He & PD can't decide what to do with it. PD's also got a modern trailie which they blat up & down the yard on -hence the helmet.
The bottoms of my Pop doors consist almost entirely of filler & fibreglass so the repair panels will give us 6 inches of fresh steel in there.

[Manky Monkey]

Woo hoo! My new chassis' almost done!
I know it doesn't look much but this is the skeleton on which the whole car will hang, so it's a pretty big deal really. We haven't got the facilities, or the floor space, to build this ourselves & get it totally flat & square. Cost 500 quid, which everyone tells me is a good price. I'm happy.
This is the back end.

[BikerGran]

Very impressive!

What's the reason for one side being longer than the other?

[Manky Monkey]

The ends of the frame legs need cutting off to length & there's a spring perch to be added to the front & that's about it. The rest is down to us.
The engine will sit between the front kicked up rails, with the mounts bolted to the inside edge of the rail, rather than sitting on top of it.
The front kick up will start just inside the footwell of the cab & the back will do the same so that the rear rails come out about halfway up the back of the cab body.
There's a 12 inch kick up at the rear of the chassis & a bit less at the front, meaning the body should sit about 6 inches off the deck. This isn't the full width of the car. The chassis runs straight down the centre of the vehicle, tapering out slightly towards the back -we'll weld on outriggers to bolt the outer edges of the bodywork to. Tomorrow I'm heading back to Valley Gas Speed Shop to pay the bill, then one of their employees, Richard, who lives in Basingstoke, will deliver it for me on his way home from work in his Transit van.

[Manky Monkey]

Valley Gas is run by Jimmy & his good lady Elle. They're building her a replica '27 track T, (a fibreglass bodied 2 seater roadster). The chassis rails are built from channel that's been specially laser cut with Maltese crosses down it's entire length.

[Manky Monkey]

Lovely looking mark 4 Zephyr starting to take shape in the workshop. The guys are rushing to get 2 customers' cars ready for WheelsDay in 2 week's time.

[Manky Monkey]

I'll have one of these please. Don't bother wrapping it, I'll take it with me now.

[Manky Monkey]

Another Dodge Charger. Common as muck ain't they! 

[Manky Monkey]

.

[panthershaun]

meaning the body should sit about 6 inches off the deck.

And I thought you were going low

[tazet]

Well we all know what a blokes 6 inches is compared to a womans 

[Manky Monkey]

Right. The shiny new chassis was safely delivered to Lunatic's secret country lair, free of charge, thanks to Richard of Valley Gas & his trusty rusty Tranny van. Thanks mate. Unfortunately Loony's workshop was full so it had to sit out in the rain. I'll slap a temporary coat of red oxide on it all to keep the rust bugs at bay -it'll be shot-blasted off before the final powder-coat's applied.
So we had a bit of a measure up.

[Manky Monkey]

Richard just happens to have a Pop front axle that's been converted from having the spring mounted across the front of the beam, to being mounted directly over it. That shortens the front of the chassis set-up & means we can shoe-horn it all inside the original Pop body panels.
So we nicked it for a while.
When we came up with the chassis dimensions a lot of it was guesswork -we won't really know what we need till we start putting things together. The ride height's supposed to be around 6 inches to the underside of the rails but here it sits at more like 10.

[Manky Monkey]

Valley Gas tack-welded a spring perch on the front cross member for us, but we suspected it'd need moving so it wasn't fully welded. We weren't sure how much the spring would compress with the weight of a V8 Rover motor on it. No problem. Lunatic's got one of his own sat in the corner of the workshop.
So we nicked it for a while.
Maybe the mounts need a little work. 

[Manky Monkey]

Didn't make as much difference as we'd thought. The ride height dropped by around an inch. O.K, we'll lift the spring mount then, which'll drop the chassis. Sorted. Jimmy at Valley Gas set the perch at around 4 degrees, which is necessary for proper suspension movement. We're thinking maybe cut the cross member & Z it -lift it by the depth of the tube, so the bottom edge is level with the top edge of the chassis, then fill in the sides with angled tube pieces. Does that make sense? Anyway, that'll raise the spring mount by 80mm, (just over 3 inches), & drop the chassis by the same amount. Using a spring with the mounting eyes curling upwards instead of downwards, ("reversed eye"), will add another inch & bring us down to the 6 inch ride height we're after.