make em or buy em

[V8 Super Beetle]

Yeah, the chassis looks complete to me and ready for suspension. Well, minus the rails that the body bolts to. So are you able to carry the frame in and out of the garage?

[Roadrunna]

Not quite yet. Gotta cut off the rear half when the 4 link & frame rails come in. Typical that is. Found a UK supplier who were meant to have everything in stock, ordered it 2 weeks ago expecting it in a few days. They're still waiting for the frame rails to come in from the states cos it turned out they didn't have any in stock

Similar with the front setup. Waiting for JW Rod garage to get the shortened RHD steering rack in so that they can send the front end kit over.

The worst bit ..... trying to sort out all the rear axle etc. parts from 454bug on here. Sorted the deal out & just trying to work out getting them over to the UK. Waiting on a final "Ok" from my mate who's bringing a container over. It looks like it's gonna take upto 3 Months before they get to a port over here

Can't really even play at mounting the body until i've at least got the suspension on there and ideally the wheels

[lookatme]

when it comes to the parts that have to work right the first time everytime, i buy rather than build, especially suspension.

[lookatme]

hows the saying go? fast, cheap, reliable. pick two

[Roadrunna]

Yup, same here

If I were a proper engineer it may be different though.

[Mock1racer]

If you think about it though, we're engineers. We design, layout, and build our rides. If you can build a chassis, cage, mock-up an interior, or even rebuild a trans, certainly you can make motor mounts or trans mounts, ladder bars or even a 4-link, or in my case narrow a 9" ford.
The difference in us and an engineer is that we can do what we design, we can fab up what we think of, we can create in reality what an engineer only see's on a comp.( Don't get me wrong, there are some great engineers out there, but in my experience most don't have the feild experience to accomplish what it is we do.)
as for picking two, cheap & reliable are on top, fast will just get me in trouble!!

[Roadrunna]

True in ways ... but


I'm no engineer, i'm a learner and possibly on the lower end of the scale a fabricator. I've gained the knowledge I have essentially by failures and lucky breaks. I have no vast understandings of how i'm affecting the structure of metals i'm welding/heating etc.

Motor mounts & trans mounts I can't see a problem with. Chance are they'll be far more heavy duty than required down to me not knowing what actual stresses they need to handle etc. They might also not be perfectly straight (kinda like my chassis

My chassis has been built on an established design using the drawings as instrution. I trust the fact theat 'they' know it's upto the job. I trust my welding til it proves otherwise as well

This is my first go at such a large project i.e. actually building a car from virtually nothing. For that reason i'd prefer to buy certain aspects of it knowing they've been properly designed and built by people who've done this stuff before.

[Mock1racer]

By the looks of the way your ride is comin, looks like you know what you're doin.
The way I'm building mine I pretty much have to make 'em anyway cause I can't find it already made to my measurments. Plus I know nobody can have the same build as mine, so it'll be a little different. making control arms for the rear is a pain in the --- !! Geometry sux !

[Roadrunna]

One of my good skills....



.... the ability to 'look' convincing lol

It's getting there. I bought all the front end bits tho and just fitted them in place.