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Agreed. But in the same way as we subcontract the frames locally here to a time served welder, those who elect to go by plans need not do it themselves but have a local engineer fabricate it. This way the builder would benefit in two ways. Firstly by saving carriage weight to their part of the country and secondly (and more importantly) in having the final say in where bracketry, tank mounts etc. should go. They would also have complete control over the finished article's quality. Of course we would always remain an option in that you would order your kit 'with frame'
Andy has already stated that the option to self build would not replace the option to buy a factory frame, im happy with my welding and have crash tested it on the race car on a couple of occassions with no visits to hospital :-), horses for courses i think.
Ouch! You obviously are an experienced operator! Tell us about your race car?
My concern is for those who chose to learn to weld for the purpose of building say this frame. Good idea to reduce postal costs, but it should fit inside the body shell?
My 2p is that given the already relatively minimal cost for purchasing the frame I cant see this as a major money saver, but there are always going to be people who want to do it themselves, so why not?
When I heard about the Sammio in September 2009, the talk from Gary was very much to 'make your own frame'. I understood from him that this was common for special builders in the 50's. Problem was, there were no plans or even a rough sketch to follow. Absolutely nothing at all. We ordered a body and frame together because I wasn't confident about creating the design - not because of worries about building it. After all, plenty of us have rebuilt the Herald chassis by learning the hard way.
If plans had been available I for one would have gone that route. In fact if you factor in all the mods we made to our frame to make it line up with our chassis, we practically re-built it anyway. One issue would be the mounting plates though, How about selling a set of plans with a material specification sheet, and a pre-drilled set of mounting plates to be welded on?
Finally, the original spirit of the Sammio was a low entry cost product. offering frame plans allows people to buy into the idea initially & get started on the donor whilst saving up for the body package.
As a self taught novice using a cheap mma stick welder I've chopped, changed and fabricated so many parts of my frame that I'm confident I could've made it from plans myself and acheived a better fit.
However, eighteen months ago I'd never tried welding and probably never would have if my chassis hadn't been so rotten. To be honest, if the only option had been to fabricate my own frame it would have put me off buying the kit as I would've felt that it was beyond my abilities, and finding a reliable machine shop to do stuff these days is getting pretty hard.
I'd offer both options - an 'off the shelf' frame for those who want the convenience, and a set of plans for those who want to do it themselves. After all, I guess you have the plans available and own the copyright?
One issue would be the mounting plates though, How about selling a set of plans with a material specification sheet, and a pre-drilled set of mounting plates to be welded on.
When I bought my body (with no frame) from Gary he sold me a set of pre-drilled mounting plates for £20.
One thought regarding the separate hump that has been prompted by my plan to cut-off mine and to centre it on the seat........
You could strengthen it and make some discrete mountings and have it as a removable item. It would not be difficult to make it look neat with some sealing trim.
Then, some days you could have a car with one or two humps, and on other days a humpless beast.
Not sure whether I shall make mine removable but I have a fair bit of time to decide.
Our thinking exactly! The hump we cut off the latest Navigator body might make a reappearance as a clip on item with space in it for gloves, goggles, first aid box and gaviscon
Liking the idea of separate humps as I want twin humps on mine but was always not happy at the way they were offset, at least being separate I can "play" with them to get them where I want them.
We mentioned a move some time ago but it's taken longer than we had hoped with one offer falling down and another taking its place. We collected the keys for our new home today and will be moving in over the next week (or so) and starting production very soon afterwards (Many thanks for your patience, those who have been waiting on this).
Vastly bigger than the (now 3) units we are currently in and having a door that will accommodate bigger cars with 'wriggle room' will make things easier for us. The new address is:
UNIT D1, LEYLAND BUSINESS PARK, CENTURION WAY
LEYLAND, LANCASHIRE PR25 3GR
With a new phone number following soon.
To give you an idea of the size of the place, here's a couple of photos taken today before anything gets moved in:
The office is heated but we're looking at space heaters to take the chill off the main workshop. Great lighting though as there are lots of window areas in the ceiling which can be aided by the rows of fluorescents.
Wow that is some unit! Good luck with the move.
I would keep the 'Ribble' name tho as 'Leyland' just doesn't suit the car and its history is not that good either.
Andy, recently did a lot of research on heating my workshop and have come to the conclusion that space heaters aren't a good idea, if your talking about the tubular kerosene or gas fired ones they will make the place quite damp, you would probably be better off with some second hand industrial IR heaters, cheaper to run and only produce heat where you need it not the rest of the airspace.
Only trouble with infra red heaters in an engineering workshop is that they only heat people up, everything else stays cold. This results in a lot of condensation on metal and issues with extended drying times for resin, bonding paste and paint.
It might be an idea to knock at your neighbours units and ask what heating they use. You'll probably get some useful advice together with free cups of tea and potentially useful new business contacts.
That's just my two new pence worth and I hope you find a suitable solution.
You can use ir on fibreglass etc, body shops use them for drying paint on patch repairs. In an ideal world a unit with an existing oil fired dry air system would be the answer but it would still cost a lot to heat that. Andy a mate of mine has a Worksop that size and he got hold of some old curtain side material and used it to separate it into a smaller heated area and a much bigger unheated area, alternatively maybe a workshop within a workshop made of stud timber and heat that?
