Whee ..success ... sorta
LOTS OF PICTURES
Got the steering finished today. For now, it's a stopgap setup until i can get a rack in this thing. My track ended up at 53 inches up front, so I had to make new steering rods. Drilled out the ends of some rod stock and cut off and welded in the threaded sections from the originals. Used my old wasted Yerf spindle with an extension as the steering arm ---reallllllllllllllllllllly bad case of Ackerman with this arrangement! Also the steering effort is pretty heavy, which i expected given the length of the extension.
Just gonna live with it for now. A lot of the ackerman is due to the angle i put the "steering column" at. More offset than a lamborghini! I really can see turning this into a single seater and buying the little one her own.
It took 7 variations (tack, test, cut it all off and start again) on the shock mount bar to finally get it somewhere that i'm happy with. Also discovered that a couple of the rock hits it took apparently have twisted the nose a bit. figures i welded up that massive bracing system before finding that out.
After dinner it's tear down and finish weld time-- maybe even some paint. About the only items i need to address are to maybe take 2 degrees of incline out of the spindle brackets and add the underside bash guard.