Tube Chassis Hemi Dart Project

Thanks Gerahead for the props. The first thing I did was buy several sheets of poster board and make templates of everything I wanted to make a panel from. A lot of scissor work and Sharpie use later I was able to have everything laid out in poster board. I ordered about 5 sheets of 4x8 aluminum from my local metal guy and basically laid all of the templates on them and traced and rough cut them out with new fine cut tinsnips about an inch from each border. Then I performed the final cut around the lines going very slow with the snips so as to not kink the edges of the aluminum. Then I used a small file to smooth all edges. Some of the larger pieces such as the wheel tubs I was able to cut the aluminum close to the edges using the metal sheer in my buddy's shop. He also has a bead roller so yes I stuck each piece in there and laid some conservative lines down (after alot of practicing on scrap!). The frame is all done from scratch. My chassis friend keeps a decent stock of chrome moly tubing in all sizes (1 5/8, 1 1/2, 1 1/4, 1"). Even though we never considered a kit from some mail order house we knew we wanted to do it ourselves so we could tuck all of the bars as close to inner body panels to avoid gaps in the overall look. Chrome moly must be tig welded so that is what we did. I ordered the chassis spec book from SFI which includes drawings of all certified chassis types and the diameter of the bars that must be used. We built it to 25.4 specs which certifies a 3200 lb car or less to run 7.50 seconds or slower in the quarter mile.

Cutting all that alum by hand (twice) and then filing it makes me wonder how you got it all done that quickly! I guess that I didn't catch in the earlier post that you were using chromoly tubing. It sure is a good thing to have well equipped friends isn't it? NO, that's not how I meant it, LOL. I will be watching this build. I love the look of the car and the stance. More than just about anything else, that is what caught my eye when I first saw the Comet that I now own. Beautiful work! L8r

Jim