peterd51
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Hi,
I've got my old caravan chassis that I'm looking to turn into a hovercraft trailer. It's been stripped down to bare metal and I'm going to refit the old wooden floor, but before I do that I need to lower the wheel arch tops by 4 - 6 inches to allow the hover to slide past them without damaging them or it.
The other day I bought some 4" square x 8' long fence posts and these will sit across the trailer chassis and the front to rear wooden supports. So now I need to drop the tops of the wheel arches by a couple of inches...pictures show initial marking up and then cut with the plasma and cleaned up with a flap-disk ready to weld.
The lower black line it a little above where the tyre comes to. The new curve allows for the suspension to drop a couple of inches if I carry a heavy load, but it's unlikely to move much as the weight of the caravan was probably more than I'll ever need to carry.
It's odd metal, some sort of alloy, non-magnetic and thin, only 0.75mm... welding is going to be fun! I'm not too bothered what they look like so I'm using standard MIG wire and co2, I can treat with Kurust later. My idea is to weld the flaps to the rear 'wall' on the old joint line as it's slightly thicker there being two sheets of metal folded together. Then to overlap the 'open' ends of the flaps at the top and weld inside and out. I want to make this more rigid than the current trailer where if you accidentally lean on a wheel-arch it deforms down to the tyre.
Originally I though I'd get away with grinding these welds off a bit and then applying some filler and painting, but the welds are too 'blobby' for that. I had to weld 1/2 second tacks on minimum settings to avoid burning through. So now I plan to glass-fibre over the top of the weld seams as this will tidy up the appearance and also maybe add a little more strength.
Looking at the outer rim, I want to add some strengtheners there too and I now have a choice. I have some 10 x 3mm flat and I can bend it flat or on an edge, like this:
If I use the flat one I can fold the upright face down and tack it on, it'll be relatively neat but not as strong and I loose the chance to re-attach the old outer glass-fibre arch flares.
On the other hand, if I use the 'edge on', upright curve and leave that outer face vertical, is it a safety hazard...if it was a car it'd probably fail an MOT on something like that (construction and uses act or something?)
What do you reckon, folded over flat or upright?
Regards
Peter
I've got my old caravan chassis that I'm looking to turn into a hovercraft trailer. It's been stripped down to bare metal and I'm going to refit the old wooden floor, but before I do that I need to lower the wheel arch tops by 4 - 6 inches to allow the hover to slide past them without damaging them or it.
The other day I bought some 4" square x 8' long fence posts and these will sit across the trailer chassis and the front to rear wooden supports. So now I need to drop the tops of the wheel arches by a couple of inches...pictures show initial marking up and then cut with the plasma and cleaned up with a flap-disk ready to weld.
The lower black line it a little above where the tyre comes to. The new curve allows for the suspension to drop a couple of inches if I carry a heavy load, but it's unlikely to move much as the weight of the caravan was probably more than I'll ever need to carry.
It's odd metal, some sort of alloy, non-magnetic and thin, only 0.75mm... welding is going to be fun! I'm not too bothered what they look like so I'm using standard MIG wire and co2, I can treat with Kurust later. My idea is to weld the flaps to the rear 'wall' on the old joint line as it's slightly thicker there being two sheets of metal folded together. Then to overlap the 'open' ends of the flaps at the top and weld inside and out. I want to make this more rigid than the current trailer where if you accidentally lean on a wheel-arch it deforms down to the tyre.
Originally I though I'd get away with grinding these welds off a bit and then applying some filler and painting, but the welds are too 'blobby' for that. I had to weld 1/2 second tacks on minimum settings to avoid burning through. So now I plan to glass-fibre over the top of the weld seams as this will tidy up the appearance and also maybe add a little more strength.
Looking at the outer rim, I want to add some strengtheners there too and I now have a choice. I have some 10 x 3mm flat and I can bend it flat or on an edge, like this:
If I use the flat one I can fold the upright face down and tack it on, it'll be relatively neat but not as strong and I loose the chance to re-attach the old outer glass-fibre arch flares.
On the other hand, if I use the 'edge on', upright curve and leave that outer face vertical, is it a safety hazard...if it was a car it'd probably fail an MOT on something like that (construction and uses act or something?)
What do you reckon, folded over flat or upright?
Regards
Peter