I was planning on getting the rear mount tidied up and painted, but I wanted to make a little more visible progress so I set to with the front mount. Having made the templates previously, this was mainly a job of transferring them to 2mm sheet. Due to the way I'm making these mounts, the first section is the one designed to feed the loads into the chassis rail. The other sections are there to both support the first one, as well as brace the suspension tower and the rails to each other. The first job was to weld the front mount itself in place:
This then lets me make the final adjustments to the steel sheet sections, one of which needed a small section welding to the back to close off the gap to the suspension tower.
These two bits were welded in so I could make sure the top section fitted. Whilst I could have re-made it to close the gap on the right hand side down a little, I didn't think it worth the bother.
As before, all the sections are seam welded on both sides.
I do still have the weld on the rear support to the chassis rail underneath the suspension tower to do to finish this mount off. But I was getting a crampy back from being curled up on the floor, so I left that weld for another day. To give me something else to do, I decided to cut the coil spring mount out. There was just too much rust showing so it had to come out. Just a shame it took me hours to do, as it's held in with a good few spot welds as well as some little seam welds which I couldn't get to to cut out with the grinder so it was a tedious process.
I am now seriously contemplating some form of brace to go in the box, as that tower will be taking the loads from both the coil over and the top suspension arm, so it can not flex. As it is, the box is just too big/too open for my liking. I my just put the cover plate back a little inside the tower and then brace forwards as it'll be easier to fabricate than trying to make a frame to go behind a cover plate.
