Backstory:

Backstory:
>Be me
>27 years old, work full time desk job for soul-crush incorporated, plus part time job as a welder for boiler maker uncle
>Wife divorced me just before new years
"Oh well, one less mouth to feed"
>Lots more free time, she took the house with all debts, no payments, clean break from her
"Thank god, no kids"
>Living in uncles workshop
>Don't have a car anymore
>Have a 1jz Lexus v8 with 5 speed gearbox lying around from an old pickup that had a conversion done, pickup was in an accident, and chassis cracked, not worth fixing, it'll never be the same, engine just needs some work.
>Love the old 70s v8 muscle car appeal, and the 1jz has just the right sound to it too
>Can't afford one...
>See 5mm thick 7cm diameter mild steel tubing lying around the workshop, 6 meter lengths, untouched, unrusted
>Ask uncle about it
"It fell off a truck down the road, you can have it. I won't use it"
>Ideas brewing
>If I can't afford it, I'll make it
/Backstory

So that brings me to the present. I want to weld together my own chassis (pic related). Body panels, engine mountings, suspension mountings will all come later, once I have the engine working, or find/make a suitable suspension and drive train.

Any advice? Think the overall design for this chassis will work?

It's not impossible but I think you're better off starting with a decent chassis that already has it's geometry all worked out and simply reinforcing it with your own full cage.

Thing is, every car I can find with an engine bay big enough to fit the engine is well out of my budget. And if they're within budget, they're often junkyard rusted scraps, can't even be fixed.

I can get my hands on one of those bubble cars, like a Yaris or something, but it won't have the look and feel I want, even if I somehow replaced the back seat with the v8

How about you put your life back together before undertaking a massive project?

Real talk. Just trying to help.

My life is fine. The workshop living thing is temporary, I earn a fat salary from the soul-crushing desk job, and I effectively have no debt. I'll be getting an apartment or maybe even a new house soon enough.

That looks terribly not solid for a tool frame. You aren't an engineer, obviously.

OP im playing NFS PAYBACK on my ps4 right meow and read your story..
your life sounds like the beginning to a fucking cool racing movie or animu or something

One of these days I'm gonna make a fucking racing manga about you, or at the very least make you a character in one.

Clearly not. But then again, if I was, I wouldn't be on Veeky Forums asking for advice on the matter.

for grass roots it looks ok and doable. however, you're going to need door bars. you can make them strong as well as swing open and all on a budget. watch Jessie on extrem 4X4. he has great advice and knowledge if you can look past all the product placement

If you want to do this, I would start by making negative suspension jigs of a vehicle platform that suits your needs. Easy-ish mode would be to find a fox-chassis mustang 5.0 with a blown engine. Super simple rear suspension, front is a subframe.

Alternatively as you have the welding/fab skills, early 70s mustangs are cheap enough, patch up the rust and maybe just use one of them?

I'll check that out, thanks man.

You're probably right. But decent old cars with blown engines in this country are probably mostly going to be BMW e30s. Weren't many mustangs around here, and what's left are collectors items.

Building a car from the ground up is a huge undertaking and will test your resolve.

But, the best way to go about this is to use a frame from another car and design your chassis to work with it.

There are people that do this with a Volkswagen Beetle chassis, where the chassis panel/tub sits on top of a rollcage chassis with trophy truck suspension. Really neat stuff.

I suppose I could do that too, but can I then just use the suspension from an existing car, and convert it to use other body panels and engine mountings? Or should I just rather try to keep it as stock as possible? Cos the cars I can get for this project of mine are really... Not nice...

I would recommend watching at least 10 hours of youtube videos dedicated to this type of stuff.

Search roll cage builds, sand rail builds, how to weld roll cage, etc... you obviously don't know just how difficult this really is.

Also, your welds and structural geometry can mean the difference between life and death in a crash.

I don't mean to be rude, I just would hate to see some guy with a new spark for life get let down by not realizing how big of a learning curve is involved with something like this.

Yeah, I plan to do so. Thanks :-D
I figured it can't be too different from boiler making. I mean, you have to get things perfect for that, or it'll throw off the pressures and might cause an explosion. And some cases, you have to weld a platform and cage capable of withstanding up to 3 tonnes of pressure in the event of an explosion (for those companies that need their boilers running at ludicrous temperatures for whatever reason)

Just buy an entry level nascar chassis

You are too retarded to pull it off

I don't mind a steep learning curve. I enjoy pouring my all into something, and I have nothing but time.

Sorry 'bout
it, tough
guy.

First of all look at your drawing OP, Its not even symmetrical, you WILL fuck it up

It will be easier to just buy a nascar chassis for 5k

First of all, I'm not OP. I'm just calling you a faggot.

Let all that anger out my friend

...

>wife
You got what you deserved, user.

Fine then OP! Ignore me!

Lol! Sorry that wasn't intentional :-P

First of all you went a bit haywire on the triangles. Looks like you're trying to build a 500 ft truss bridge, not a car frame. By the way your's will simply warp right where the passengers sit and you left a ginormous square hole.

Secondly it's a fatal mistake to try to engineer the engine and drivetrain into a complete frame instead of engineering a frame around the engine and drivetrain.

Lastly instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, there are plans available online for free or for little money that have been created by actual engineers, and they'll tell you what a tube frame is supposed to look like. I think your most fruitful keyword might be "Locost", which is a relatively popular type of DIY homebuilt copies of the Lotus Seven with plentiful resources on building it.

Oh, and by the way by the time you'll have built a complete tube frame car you might as well have sold the engine and gearbox and bought something that's fully functioning with a V8 in it. Even these Locosts still accummulate five to fifteen grand in tools, parts and materials.

Thanks man. I'll have a look at it.

But I'm kinda looking for a specific look about the car, and I have a boiler makers workshop to do stuff in, which includes a blacksmiths forge (hobby of my uncles, and it's pretty fun too) so I can probably make most non-power based tools.

This is just going to be something to keep me busy on weekends though, so as long as it has a running engine and the right look, I'll worry about saving up for an edelbrock V8 or something like that in time.

I have a buddy that built a fucking nuts go-kart from scratch with a KX250 engine in high school just from checking out books on chassis and suspension engineering from the local library. I think you'll be fine if you do your research before you start spending money OP, and build a pipe bender.

user, based on your original post it seems like you've just been given a clean slate. Wife left you, no kids, no debt, no house, no car, but you're educated and have a solid, well paying job which is your only responsibility. In other words, you've "reset" your adulthood in many ways.

Your desire to build this chassis from scratch sounds to me like an attempt to fill what you percieve (consciously or unconsciously) as a void in your life. It sounds to me like after being left by your wife and by working this soul sucking job you feel useless or unaccomplished. Maybe you think by building this car from essentially nothing you will prove to yourself that you're worth something. I disagree.

I think you've been given an incredible opportunity to reinvent yourself. You have few responsibilities, a solid salary, and clearly free time of some sort to pursue serious hobbies. So why not channel the energy and desire you have to make this car into other, more productive things? Go make new friends, date qts, develop new productive hobbies, expand your mind through academic pursuits.

user, use this incredible opportunity to build your life, not a car.

>Go make new friends, date qts, develop new productive hobbies, expand your mind through academic pursuits.

He's literally doing the last two. Those tend to help you find new friends.

>date qts
that's what got him into the former mess in the first place

All you're doing is arguing that he should pursue this project but simultaneously saying not to in favor of "greater pursuits"

do a lot of research building a car takes a lot of knowledge in mechanics, engineering, geometry, fabrication and I'm guessing if you are asking here you do not have the experience. also if you can't afford a shell, can't afford the material etc you can't afford to put together a car. maybe try something simple like a go kart or a simple buggy.

faggot

your blueprint is so fucking retarded

The bending moment will be highest in the center of the chassis, and you left a huge hole there.

Love you to bae ;)