The upper and lower rails on Car9 are positioned for chassis strength as they wrap around the rear of the chassis. This also accommodates more streamlined bodywork like Kinetic’s Lalo design. However, since I’m going with a riff on a more traditional locost body, some additional tubes were needed aft of the cockpit to hang the aluminum panels forming the boot.
In keeping with my round-tube theme, thin-wall 1” EMT electrical conduit was used to keep weight down for these non-structural tubes. This also allowed use of a standard conduit bender to form the 8” outside radius bends needed for the boot “corners.”
Since EMT tubing is galvanized, it was soaked in vinegar to remove the zinc coating. Discussed here
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The 8” bends in the EMT needed to match-up with the projection of the corner bends in the upper and lower chassis rails. The conduit bender got close, but a lot of finessing (pie-cuts and such) was required to match the projected corner curves. Glad the zinc was removed ‘cause a bunch of welding and re-welding was needed to get the curves right.
After a few days of fiddling and fettling here’s the result:
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] The 1.5" o.d. structural chassis rails provide good protection for the fuel cell while the thin-wall 1" tubes provide the body line.
The cardboard template shows the approximate fender profile. Note the addition of the wheel arch tubes mentioned in the previous post.
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Turns out the rear panel height (17”) is the same as the Haynes design. The top of the boot slopes aft at 7* and the sides taper in at about 10*.
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Do you think the 8” bends make my boot look to big?