Boot / crumple zone

 Given that the body has a built in boot, I did want to make use of it. I also wanted it to be a crumple zone of sorts, at least sturdy enough to slow down whatever imbecile of a driver might decide six inches is enough of a braking distance. 

First thing was the rear bar, made in the same way as the other bent bars on the car. This time it follows the back of the bodywork, where it will attach via 5 bolts with big washers. I did check with a strategically placed clamp, they are quite difficult to see so just having colour coded covers will make them effectively disappear.

As posted before, I then braced that rear bar to the diff cage;

At this point I realised something was amiss. While the body had got lined up as best as possible, the centre line (spirit level!) was no longer in the centre of the body. That means the body is twisted somehow.

So I need to enforce the centre line, and let the body sort itself out. The centre section was to be a 'V', to make the whole thing an upside down 'W'. Instead of just cutting and filing to fit, I made the V section away from the car;

With a centre line at the peak of the V, and the two lengths being identical, I could be fairly confident that this would give me an accurate centre. And it did... for the metalwork;

You can see here that the centre line on the V does line with the centre mark of the metal, but not the centre mark of the body. This is where the twist has come in. So from this point forth I decided to ignore the body, and just make a perfectly aligned frame. A few cuts of metal later, and I had a fully triangulated rear frame;

OK, it's not perfectly triangulated, the V section is welded a little in from the fixed points. I could say something clever like 'its designed like that so in a crash it collapses gracefully', but to be honest I just couldn't get a weld into that tight corner. A good weld is going to be worth more than getting it right into the corner, so there you go.

So next job it's back off with the body, full weld this frame (as you can imagine all this needs welding from underneath and from the sides hidden by the body). While the body is off I will add the required captive nuts for the rear end, yet more M6 nuts! I might try something clever to get the nuts in place but then I might just cut some holes and weld them in! They don't need to be mega strong like seat belts or similar.