fabricate | LudemannEngineering

Next up: mount the steering column in the chassis. Nothing magical here, just lots of little steps. The steel bearing cup insert did work well at preventing distortion during welding. To get a proper press fit for the rear support bearing I decided to use my new internal bore gauge. At first it didn’t work at all (made in China, of course), so I had to disassemble it completely, figure out how it was supposed to work, unstick the rusted shaft, replace the dead battery, and reassemble it. All in a day’s work out here on the frontier. So now I can measure both holes and shafts to a few microns and press fits are much easier to make.

: Front bushing; sheet metal cut on bandsaw and with die grinder

: Front bushing support bent to shape

: Front bushing support cap, ready to weld

: Finished front bushing support

: Turning steering column rear bearing cup

: Finished rear bearing cup

: Finished rear column support parts

: Steel insert bushing to prevent distortion of the bearing cup during welding

: Rear support, ready for welding. Note steel insert to prevent distortion.

: Test fit; fit was perfect first try.

: Rear support welded

: Ready to tack weld in place

: Tack welded

: Quality Control Inspector gives her approval.

We’re using Honda Civic wheel hubs, wheel bearings, CV joints and axle halfshafts. They’re available everywhere, cheap, and light, and by using them we avoid having to cut matching pairs of splines. The wheel hubs are drilled for lightness and tapped to accept the wheel drive pins, then the two outermost pieces from two scrap CV joints are cut down to use as bearing retainers for the front wheels. Rear axle halfshafts are used in stock form, but extenders from the halfshafts to the differential will have to be fabricated later.

When cutting the CV joints I found that the contact faces are hardened some way into the joint, making cutting almost impossible (by which I mean “impossible”) beyond a certain point, even with carbide cutting tools. If they are heat-treated, maybe there’s some way to reverse the hardening? It’s probably something more exotic than that, though, as the hardening was highly location-specific.