Two years ago, after taking a break from the fast paced environment that is the Australian performance/motor sports scene, I kinda went a bit nuts. I picked up my tape measure, one of my spare EJ20 blocks i had kicking around, and my trusty 4" grinder, and set about hacking up my unbelievably straight AE86 (what a bad 86 owner, I am
) I must admit at this point, I had very limited experience with fabrication, and could barely weld. But hey, gotta learn some how. After alot of swearing, stress, and oh my what have I dones, I managed to get the wide bugger in there, with what I thought at the time were decent rails.
After awhile, and a bit of mocking shit up, I stumbled across an article, which covered building chassis rails for hot rods, after reading I could see where I went wrong. I made a phone call to a good friend of mine, Beau Small (Beau is a top notch fabricator, and is building what will be one the best AE86's that will ever see the track) and asked him a few questions, and he confirmed what I had just learnt ( I did ask him prior to cutting anything, but was told not to even think about it lol, guess what i didn't listen
) So out came the grinder, and I cut it all out, in an attempt to improve it, I went through a couple designs, but by this time, funds were running dry, and I had to focus on some customers cars, to bring some money back in.
A couple months past, with out me touching the car, but i was still designing rails on paper, till I came up with what I have now. So once I had one rail finished, I called Beau again, and asked him to come have a look, he obliged (I'm sure he just wanted to come laugh at me) So later that evening, he came by, and had a good look over what I had done, and was, to my surprise impressed with what I had come up with. He then had another fabricator come by (the dude that actually taught beau the trade) he too was impressed that some bolt on boy, had managed to pull out of no where.
Work took over again, and for 6 months, the car sat untouched, with one awesome rail, and a really crappy one. On one of my trips down to Beau's workshop, to have a look at his 86, he offered me the front subframe and control arms he had made for his car, as he was changing from S15 hubs to GTR hubs, which required him to rework his set up. I also pinched his Hilux G series diff, as he had just started to put IRS into the rear of his car.
Following pics are of Beaus car with the suspension I bought from him.
This sparked a new wave of motivation ( i should mention at this point, I don't have a shed/garage, and was working on a patch of levelled out dirt, big motivation killer) so off I went home, with my new bits, that I paid F all for
and set about finishing off the other rail, I got the majority of it done, and left it, this was 6 months ago. A new job, trying to pick up a not so good workshop saw me working 80+hrs a week over those six months, and you guessed it the car sat in the weather, gathering dust, dirt and surface rust. Mid January came, and I had enough of working in such a disgusting workshop, and packed my stuff up, and went home. With the majority of the rails done, I set about moving the car on to the one patch of concrete I have, its not even flat, but it will do.
So thats the last 2 years pretty well summed up, I should be further along, but working on other peoples cars for 10+hrs a day, kinda kills any motivation I get. But I can proudly say now, that the car is on the right path, I have picked up a heap of new skills, and I have one of if not the rarest AE86 engine converion in the world, and I think that is pretty damn cool.
Please be kind, and keep in mind I am still learning the whole fabrication side of things, before you go off and tell me it's wrong, Thanks for reading guys
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