Building a custom rigidity test rig. This took me waaay too long

[00:00:00]I'm building my dream Sabaro and I want data. Real data. And with that data, I want to answer a question. Do aftermarket chassis braces actually work or are they just a placebo? I assume companies like Cusco who make these do their research or do they sell them because they look good? So with that in mind, I spent the next 5 weeks going from pen to paper to learning CAD and then having to learn how to reweld all over again. But I did build this and it turns out to be a very good way of testing aftermarket braces. It's called a torsional or rigidity test rig and it's designed so we can twist the car and we can very accurately tell how far it's bent out of shape. All four springs have been replaced with solid struts and the rear solidly bolts to the ground via a beam and these pedestals. The front that's similar with the big beam, but it has a big pivot point. With all that set up, we manually jack this end of the bar up and we use the 12 gauges to see how much it's moved. It's easily repeatable and highly accurate, giving us the ability to prove beyond doubt if these Cusco chassis braces actually do anything, and if so, by how much. I've also got a few of my own designs to throw into the mix to see if they are an improvement. If you've got a specific design or crazy idea, comment below because I want your input. You and I, I want to be a team. Craig, who's on Facebook, has already suggested a seat belt bar between the B-pillars. They'll take a while for me to make, but I will get them done. Now you know what this is. The rest of this video is on how I made it. As a weekend warrior, my design phase always starts with copious amounts of pretty [ __ ] drawings. From those [ __ ] drawings, I tend to pick the least [ __ ] and work on it until it's well, hopefully not [ __ ] Trying to cut all of this out by hand would have been a nightmare. So, I spent a few days learning CAD and turned my shitty ass hand drawings into this. Check out what I made. That's so cool. I have just dropped off my designs for the torsion test rig. I'm hoping that it's all going to be good. We will see. I will let you know how it turns out. 7 days later and I'm back. That was so much quicker than a grinder. Designed up on CAD on Fusion 360 and that's the first thing I've ever designed on there. A lot of the holes are a little bit too small. So, I need to drill these out. What I'm going to use is my brand new bench drill. And then that way I can be a little bit more precise. I'm just going to set it up on this horrible rickety ass table. There's one heavy batch. She's a big boy. I'm going to lose all me bench space. Half the time you can do it without instructions. The other half you wish that you bred them. Got the bench drilled together. Although currently it is a floor drill. It was just way too heavy to leave up on there. Let's get all the stuff drilled by that thing.

[00:02:26]>> 1 2 All the plates have been redrilled. I've got one of two things that I can do now.

[00:02:40]I'm going to stick to the easy one cuz I haven't welded in a long time. We're just putting these four bits together. I find big welding is easy welding. It's the small stuff that's difficult.

[00:02:59]Done all the shamfering. Let me just show you what this is. I'll see if I can put it together. So, this is going to be a bracket to hold the wheel. I only made one up because I needed to make sure that it was going to be fine. I'm going to tack it all together and then weld it. And you can see that I've taken shamefers so I can weld all these areas in here. And I've done that for all the joints. I'll get this pack tacked together. We'll weld it and see how good my skills are.

[00:03:27]That has had to go on hold because I'm having an issue with my welder. There is a liner inside of the main hose and I think that it's all rusted. I got to get a new one of those tomorrow. I've been to the welding supply shop, got a new liner, which is awesome. Now we're going to have a go at welding this.

[00:03:44]How did that go? Very averagely. First one not too bad. Second one, terrible.

[00:03:48]For anyone interested in welding, from my experience, when you tack things together, they actually pull towards the weld. This here has slightly pulled away from 90°. So, the next step is to tack this into place down here. Bend that over. Tack it up there.

[00:04:04]That's one side all tacked up. It's really tempting to just go and put multiple tacks in, but the idea is that if you have to ever remove anything, you can cut this off or even break it off.

[00:04:12]Clearly, I've done much better welds than this, but I haven't welded like 2 years. This is probably going to be pretty average. And I'm just going to fully weld uh these outside edges.

[00:04:20]Hopefully the welds do not come in through here because I have not got the right footwear on. Let's hit this up.

[00:04:25]We'll see what I can do.

[00:04:31]And here it is. Not pretty. I'm wondering if I like just grind it out and try and make it look nice. In fact, let's do it now. Let's clean this up and then see what it looks like.

[00:04:43]And it's just totally highlighted how bad my welds are. Look at the gaps all the top. Ouch. I have cleaned that up.

[00:04:51]And apologies to any welders out there.

[00:04:53]And I guess that's paracity. Is that lack of gas? If you know what I'm doing wrong, let me know. While the welder is set up, I'm going to get through some of this stuff. I'd like to get rid of all this as soon as I can. So, I'm going to be using these these and then probably those two legs. Part of the next step that I want to do is create a captive nut. I want this bolt to go into this hole. And ideally, I would have liked to have this plate to have been threaded.

[00:05:17]Problem is that these holes, they've sort of come out the wrong size. And what I'm going to do, one weld every second flat is the best way. And it creates less warpage of the nut, if that's a word. Also, to do this, what I need to do is grind off the plating. And then we'll weld it together and see if it has warped. We'll put a tap through it.

[00:05:39]This is how I've held the nut in place.

[00:05:40]I'm welding it using every second flat and clearly looking like an idiot having fun. I've actually just decided to go ahead and weld the whole thing together.

[00:05:47]And I'm curious on how my welding skills are going to hold up. Yay. Is the first time I've ever got to the overheating light that's come on. I think it's called duty cycle. So, it can go for a certain amount of time before it needs a rest. This being a home hobbyist one needs a bit more rest than the than the commercial ones. My welds are kind of getting better. like not great. I think it's just too much wire, not enough power. Who can tell me what I'm doing wrong? Once I'd wound down the wire speed, I feel like it's getting a little bit better, but still like pretty terrible. I also set fire to the bench a couple of times, but that's what you get for having a wooden bench. Thought while we're waiting for that welder to cool down, we would retap these holes. And this thing is still mega hot. So, she's even smoking from the oil.

[00:06:29]Look, Mom. I made a thing. I made three things. Welding. quite terrible. We're here. We're learning. That's what this is all about. Now, with the rear half mostly done, we're moving on to the pivot point for the front end. There we have two holes. I know what you're thinking. Steve, you've made a silly mistake. It's not in the center, but it's designed to be that way. First, I've got to weld a couple of bosses onto there, and then I can assemble this whole thing. Bearings press into the bosses that I'm welding on. This whole design of the pivot point is something I'm really proud of. There's me welding.

[00:07:02]Not the best. Bosses are welded on it and I've actually just gone and done pretty much the whole thing. So, this is the torsion test rig. That's the back of the car. This is going to be the front.

[00:07:11]You can see I've got one wheel stand created, but I still got three more to go with the idea I'll put the suspension in there. And then the car is going to get bolted to this. The back is going to get bolted to the ground so it cannot move. And then the front with this little pivot point, little seesaw. At this end, I've got a crane scale. With that there, I'll be able to put the exact same weight on it every time. I'll be able to measure the twist in the car and where it's twisting. First up, I need to put the suspension in that so I can bolt it to this. Problem with putting in the suspension, you'll notice obviously that every fork on has got a spring. And when I try and twist it, that spring's just going to take up a huge amount of the movement. So, what I need to do is create a McFersonen strut that is solid. But first off, let's get all the suspension in the car and then we'll figure out how we're going to make a solid McFersonen strut without a spring. Oh gosh. You're going to have to excuse those legs. They have not seen the sun in a while. Always use new grease when you are putting brand new nuts and and things like this cuz these are super dry at the moment. I made that mistake on a very expensive custom hub that I made up for the race car. I was like, I'm just going to do it up, you know, temporarily. I'll put grease on it later on and it bound up and I almost destroyed a $600 custom hub. And always, always put the cap back on because if you get stuff in here and then you put that into like a wheel bearing, that wheel bearing will fail very shortly into its life. Use the grease, put the cap on. Done. Now that we've been good, boys and girls, and we've greased up our nuts up, we'll grease up our bolts, we can now put them in.

[00:08:51]Let's get the hub installed. Suspension in at least on one side. Then we'll figure out how we're going to make a solid suspension.

[00:09:00]Let's grab the correct one. I don't think that matters if that goes on the right or the left.

[00:09:07]And one thing, oh, what did I grab a rare again? What am I doing? Yep, I grabbed two rares. Ah, this is the one you need.

[00:09:20]This is going to fit. I would like to know if these PCDs does it fit this way cuz it will help with my design. Okay, so these are not offset.

[00:09:33]Two, three, two. That'll do for now. Let's get this hub on. Brand new ball joints. More grease. Oh, look at that. Someone put the lid on.

[00:09:48]Little bit of grease.

[00:09:51]Beautiful.

[00:09:53]Beautiful. Cap on away. Now this is the right. That's more of a question than a statement. It should go on easily enough. Why is it not?

[00:10:07]You know what? I wonder if it's going to be easier doing it the other way around.

[00:10:15]I think this is going to require slightly different tactics.

[00:10:24]I want to pry that apart. How am I going to do that?

[00:10:27]Let's try Let's try this. That bad boy definitely fought me. I thought it was going to be literally a 10-second install. Took me about half an hour. I had to use all these tools. I ended up having to use my Dremel to bore it out a little bit. I think it's been whacked by a hammer and out of round or something.

[00:10:44]I I just I just couldn't get it in. I'm going to try with this one. Definitely easier to put this in out of the car.

[00:10:50]First things first, I had to use my beautiful Snap-On screwdriver, which I do not condone doing.

[00:10:57]See if this one's any different. Oh, maybe.

[00:11:04]Put a little bit of grease in there. Lid back on. I also don't condone hitting a ball joint in this direction.

[00:11:14]All right. Hear that noise change? It means that it's solid. That's coming out. Bolt going in. Yeah. Stuff trying to do that on the car. I mean, I've done plenty of them on the car before, but I don't know why this one was so difficult. In fact, this one was a lot easier than the other one. That little marker point, that's so I know that it's done up and I don't have to come back to it.

[00:11:37]This is the top one.

[00:11:45]So, from here, I have suspension. Still got to do everything up. I need to design something that's going to replace this with a solid bar. What I think I'm going to do is get some steel plates, cut them down here, drill two holes, and then weld them to a bit of something that I can put up to here. And then I'm going to have to cut out a top hat plate that's going to bolt to the actual body of the car. And then I can weld the two together. I've got to figure out what the ride height is. Pull it up to the right place. And then I can measure the bar that I need to cut. Let's do that.

[00:12:16]Let's lower this down. Let's figure out what the ride height's supposed to be.

[00:12:19]And then figuring out a way to replicate that top hat.

[00:12:26]Cool. I got my ride height. All I did was use my cell phone with its leveling function and I put it against the arm and it's -4°. So, I've done the same here. Negative4°. What I'm going to do to cut these out, I'm going to use my fancy CAD knowledge and I'll design something up on CAD and then send it away to go get these cut. I will also design the top plate for that to get cut. In the meantime, while I'm waiting for those, I will go find a bit of steel tube and then I I can cut that to size.

[00:12:52]If I'm smart enough, I can actually design this whole thing up in CAD as opposed to just one piece, one piece.

[00:12:57]Maybe I'll put all the three pieces together.

[00:13:00]Here we are in Fusion 360. This is what I've created for my solid suspension.

[00:13:05]I've molded it off this. You'll see that this is the front top hat. This is the rear top hat. And ignore the fact that the beam is not in the center. I just haven't figured out how to pull them over. But I will get two for the rear cutout, two for the front cutout. And then these brackets here, I need eight of those. 40x40 box section. I'll actually trim that to length. And then I can weld everything together. This has probably taken me about an hour and a half to do. So, I'm very slow, but that would have taken me way longer to cut all this out. I think what I need to give the water jet cutters is a DXF file, send them off, and be done. While we're waiting for those parts to be cut out, I will move on to the rear suspension. This means installing the rear crossmember. I've got the trailing arms here and then the four lateral arms. You'll notice that I've got pink SDI arms and I've also got trailing arms in here. I'm actually not sure if they're going to fit, so this will be a good test fit to see if they work.

[00:13:53]Everything connects to the two hubs.

[00:13:54]Once that's done, I'll look at installing the rear McFersonen strut, or at least getting it ready to install my solid one. So, I realized I made a mistake with this when I went to go get it powder coated. I didn't mask off these areas here, not thinking about it.

[00:14:06]Powder coat is actually quite thick.

[00:14:07]Now, this hole is about a millimeter too small for the bush. So, what I'm going to do is use me little Dremel with this little attachment. I'll take off the powder coating on this and then hopefully this will fit. I actually don't know how I'm going to press it in yet because it was difficult to get out.

[00:14:21]I'll cross that bridge once I know that it's ready to fit in there.

[00:14:33]I've just checked the internet thanks to typer.com cuz I wasn't sure which orientation these go cuz they have an arrow up and down. I thought the arrow would point up but apparently it points down. At least I know the orientation.

[00:14:44]I'm going to try and use the vice to squeeze these in. I don't know. We'll see how it goes. I'm about an hour and a half into the future. That Dremel worked really well with the powder coating. And then to get it in, I used the press. And I actually created my own little spacer.

[00:14:57]I ended up tack welding everything together just because it was going to be a nightmare when I'm by myself to try and manhandle this inside the press and then get all these sorted. So, that's actually the first time I've ever done that. And it worked a treat. If I ever want to separate them, because I will likely want to do that in the future, I'll just cut these little tack welds and they'll be sweet. Next step, let's get this in the car. We'll get those lateral arms on. We'll get those trailing arms on. And I think we're going to avoid putting the diff in cuz I don't think we need it. But let's get this into the car now.

[00:15:28]Sounding like an old man. Almost am.

[00:15:30]Depending on who you ask.

[00:15:35]Oneh.

[00:15:37]Two. Three. God, I love working on new shiny stuff. I'm going to be so happy when this car's like done. I might be a bit scared to drive it. I don't want that, though. I want this to be like a usable car where I'm not worried about it.

[00:15:54]Right, that's that. And I am a sucker for doing things up by hand.

[00:16:01]One, two, three, four. These are me brand new rear trailing arms. That is the part number. I think the issues that I'm going to be having is with the lateral arms.

[00:16:14]Now, these arms do not come with a bolt.

[00:16:16]So, that's just something that I've pre-ordered and put in here so I don't lose them. And I think they are the same from right to left. Right hand side is going to be the standard Sabara suspension side. And the left hand side is going to be the more exciting STI side.

[00:16:37]Rear suspension is in. That's the boring side. This is the more exciting side. I had a couple of issues with these rear trailing arms up the front here. This bush is actually 5 mil skinnier than the other side. And they actually give you washers to put them. One on that side, one on that side. I didn't read the instructions cuz they're all in Japanese. But with Google Translate, that's not really an issue these days. I should have read them. I was a typical bloke. And then the same with this. The other side doesn't have the sway bar mount as you can see there. That's the sway bar link on the standard side.

[00:17:05]That's the sway bar link on the STI side because this is an extra added bit. When I put the nut on, I wasn't getting enough gaugement on the threads for the locking part. Reading the instructions and removing the washer from this side and then it's fine. I should have thought about that, but I didn't. Really happy with those. They are so far a direct replacement. I have ordered a new STI sway bar, so we'll see if we can mount that. I just not sure about the bushes if it comes with bushes or I have to order them. But I'll wait till I get the bar and then I'll figure that part out. Not sure if I've showed you these wheels before, but they are awesome.

[00:17:35]18-in wheels. They're a direct copy or replacement of the original ones that ran on the car. So, I want to see how well they fit. The reason why I want to check if the wheels fit is because this area up here in the original WRC car, they actually cut here and tub this. So, you lose that area there. I'm not sure if I'll get enough clearance with this.

[00:17:54]Problem being, I also need to wait until I get wheel studs. In the meantime, I can take that spring out so that way when I put the wheel on, I can actually jack it up. Maybe we'll do it on the other side. Let's pull the spring out on the other side, get it all ready, and then once the wheel studs come in and just sort of see what sort of ride height I can get, how much clearance it's got, and see if that's going to be an issue. Spring has been removed from the strut, struts in the car, and the tire is ready and waiting to go. In the meantime, I've got a torsion test rig, which is doing my heading cuz it's all greasy and horrible unpainted. So, I'm going to put a drop sheet down and then hit it with some paint.

[00:18:34]Everything's looking very good. Workshop blue. Hold on. What's What's that? Has this fat bastard got Uber Eats butter chicken? [ __ ] Yeah, he's got Uber Eats butter chicken. Not too bad. What's that? More GC8 media. Cheers, mate. Good entertainment. Butter chicken done and dusted. Now, while we wait for those items to dry, I've got my metal babies.

[00:18:55]These are the bits I designed for the solid suspension and the other three hub adapters. They were cut via a local water jet company. Let's put them together.

[00:19:08]Four-wheel stands done. The welding difference between the first two and then the last two are like night and day. The reason for that was that bad boy. I just couldn't see what I was doing. So having a new helmet is that's been amazing. That's been a game changer. Next thing I need to do is get my new wheel size. These are 60 mil in length. The original ones are 41. That is going to suit the new wheels with the bigger, thicker hubs. So we need to bang those onto the car and then we're going to attach those and then we're going to make some solid suspension. Hopefully we'll see the torsion test rig done by tonight.

[00:19:49]The torsion test rig's together. Next, I have to slide it under the car and mount the wheel adapters to the hubs while ensuring it stays at ride height. Once it's all set up, I can make that solid suspension using the steel plates I got back from the water cutters. You can see on this side, I've made a steel plate. I can weld to that. On the hub side, I've got these two brackets that I've made up. There's going to be a steel bar that's welded onto this. It's going to go straight up there. I need to figure out exactly where that hub needs to sit.

[00:20:15]And then when I've done that, I can actually get in there and tack weld that big bar in there and then pull it off and weld it up completely.

[00:20:21]It's heavy.

[00:20:24]Hub's going in. That's one.

[00:20:34]So, I've got the wheel bracket bolted up to the hub. I'm going to use this and I'm going to hold it in place. tack weld it up here and tack weld it to that. And then I'll take everything off, get it solidly welded. And then that's one side done. And we will repeat the same process on the other side.

[00:20:57]That's the left front solid suspension in. My welds are getting heaps better.

[00:21:01]Happy with that. The new helmet's looking amazing. Let's go do the other side. And here's the other side.

[00:21:05]Magically done. Let's start on the rear.

[00:21:08]Doing the rear is just a repeat from what I did on the front. I've got to pull out the shock absorber. I've got to bolt in this solid top hat, these brackets to the hub. And then this is the bar I'm going to weld between them.

[00:21:18]I've just got to cut that down to length. Let's pull that out. Get these both onto the car. And then we'll figure out how long this has to be. Rear solid suspension is done. I get to the point where like, oh yeah, my welding's definitely getting better. And then I do that. Last thing to do is just paint these. I'm going to use just a primer flat gray. Also, I've got to paint the last three of these wheel hub adapters, which I never actually did. Everything on the torsion test rig is now painted, and the solid suspension is in the car.

[00:21:44]The car is really solid, and it's not moving anywhere. These are the other things I've been working on. This is what I'm going to call the sill bar.

[00:21:50]These are going to have four DTI gauges per side. These are a really sensitive gauge. Every rotation of that needle is 1 mm. These will be bolted and then this will get pushed underneath the car, raised up to the sill, and then when the car twists, it's going to be able to measure the difference between the four different locations down the car. My first design of these leg stands wasn't really successful because it just moves around too much. And then I figured I actually don't need strength in this direction, but all it needs is strength in this direction. So, what I did for the second design was actually just get rid of those side stands. I actually put a kick up in here. It's giving me heaps of purchase cuz it's only resting on two points and it's way more solid. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to build two more of these and then modify the other one and then this side of things will be done.

[00:22:51]Better. I love this bench grinder with this attachment. It's so handy.

[00:23:00]I've managed to chop these two legs off, which is the ones that I don't need. And I have added a kick using my hydraulic press, which is my favorite tool. Tack this in place. Then I can fully weld it.

[00:23:09]And then that will be my last stand that I have to make. You're going to have to excuse the very messy workbench. I don't like it either. It's just part of making [ __ ] Things get dirty. Do not forget to turn the welding helmet on because I've done that plenty of times. I'm blinded myself. If they could figure out a way to make a welder without an earth lead, that would be amazing.

[00:23:35]Welding. I actually really enjoy this. I love making [ __ ] Welding is a really fun skill. If anyone wants to give it a go, MIG welding, honestly, it's really easy.

[00:23:46]Check that out. That's pretty good. I'm happy as with that. Before I get too excited about MIG welding, I spent 3 hours in A&E last night. I was welding and then one of the sparks got into my ear and I heard it sizzling and it was pretty painful at the time. I Googled it and it told me to go to A&E straight away, so I did. Luckily, they couldn't really find anything too bad. Yeah, that was quite scary. Get a really good helmet. This is a good helmet, but it just doesn't cover my ears. So, I'm going to have to do something about that in the long term. I don't want that to happen again. Let's set these stands up.

[00:24:16]Here is my sil stand. I have the same issue with it still wobbling around. I think the only way to solve it is to chop off a whole another one of these brackets. Either weld a point to it so it's on a triangle. It'll be one point, 2 point, 3 point. That would probably work. I think the next step is to try and set it along the sill and figure out where the DTI gauges and the brackets are going to go. Then I can weld them to this and then paint it. Sill stands are painted, assembled, and I've got my DTI gauges on there. I have discovered quite a large design flaw with this thing. The problem is when I try and lift it, the whole thing lifts off the ground and then it will want to rotate and spin around and then smack against the car. I can't have that. I'm going to dinobolt it to the ground and I won't have any issues. So hopefully that's the quick fix. Turn down the road and picked up this angle iron. What I'm going to do is chop it up to the correct size and then weld them to the base of this. So this will have one bolt, two bolt, threebolt, fourbolt. And then that whole pivot arm is going to be like locked into the ground.

[00:25:23]I think that is going to be a [ __ ] to get it back in. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to grind off my beautiful paint.

[00:25:28]I'm going to weld around here and I'll probably put some plug welds in. In my experience, you got to put a lot of power in plug welding and I'm not sure if my welder will do it, but I might as well give it a go.

[00:25:40]This shit's tough.

[00:25:43]This is the last of the paint that I've got left and I will be surprised if I can finish the whole lot with it. That is one modified bracket. Welded everything on. I have drilled out these holes. What I need to do next is drill a hole in the concrete.

[00:26:06]Center pivot is now bolted to the ground. And my torsion test rig is done, which has taken me three weeks to get to the stage. I'm really happy with how it's turned out. There is one issue. The issue is with my engine crane. The setup is engine crane lifting this side of the arm. That's going to twist the car. And then we can measure the gauges. I need to be able to measure all the way around and then come back. Problem is that this is losing pressure. When I've done my whole circuit, I've lost like 10 kgs, which is a massive difference on the gauges, believe it or not. If I lift this up and start cranking, you look at the gauges and how much they move. That will become a massive variation, which will become a problem.

[00:26:44]My thinking with this setup is replace the whole of the engine crane with a bottle jack, but I'll need a scale or something that can measure 0 to 500 kgs.

[00:26:52]Because I'm a oneman band, I need to be able to set that and forget it. I think a bottle jack will be way more reliable than this. And then we can start measuring this bad boy. It's amazing to be out of those blue overalls back in workshop shorts and workshop t-shirt. I have had a big tidy up because it was looking pretty filthy with all those sparks. As I'm walking around in circles, I've realized that it's home time. I'm going to go home, try and figure out a set of scales, and then once I've got that, I'll actually be able to use this thing because it has literally been 3 weeks in the making of solid work. I'm not fast, but I enjoy what I'm doing. It is really cool to see something that I've made. You know, welding is not great, but it's something that I designed myself. I did it on CAD, which is the first project I've ever done. I welded it myself. I designed it myself. I did everything. I'm real happy to do those things. Like looking back on it, I designed this whole thing. And it work well. It should work when it's when it's finished. Yeah, man. I love it. I got some scales. Let's open that up. See if we can find an old scissor jack.

[00:27:49]Something that's not hydraulic that won't bleed any pressure. And then we'll see where we get.

[00:27:55]Hopefully she's all traveled perfectly and not got damaged.

[00:27:59]Whoa, they are way bigger than I expected. Honestly, I thought they would be like this size.

[00:28:05]Big ass display.

[00:28:09][ __ ] that's battery powered, too.

[00:28:12]I might have to read the instructions.

[00:28:15]First test. 278 kgs. Here we come.

[00:28:25]And it looks like she's holding. Sweet.

[00:28:27]Let's just get stuck into this thing.

[00:28:29]The first things I've got to do is wind that up to 278 kgs. I'm then bring it back down and then check all the gauges are set at zero. There's six gauges down the side here and then six down that side. So, let's lift it up, lower it back down, zero the gauges.

[00:28:49]Before we go any further, we are having issues. The problem is that this car is moving about 10 mm and I've only got 11 mm of movement within the gauge. What I need to do is set this at zero and it's really difficult to do because on the back of it is a solid mount. What I've come up with is this. This is a solution with a slide and then I should have enough movement within the gauge cuz I can set that at zero. Brackets have now been modified and that allows me to move the gauge 15 mm which will give me heaps of uh heaps of room to play with. The other thing I've done is modified this bar. I have actually added a little point right in the center. So, it's resting on three points of contact on the ground. So, it doesn't matter if the ground is a bit uneven. It was wobbling all over the place. I had to pack things underneath there to make it even. But now, it's way more solid. Now, let's get all these set up and we'll give this torsion test a go.

[00:29:39]This is a real cool place to be because I've been working on this thing for like a month and it's finally come to the end where I think all my teething issues are done. I've lifted up and put it down twice. All the gauges are reading back to zero. Let's give it a go. 7 4 1 0.

[00:29:57]Set a timer of four or five minutes and then come back and hopefully they're all set at zero.

[00:30:12]Is another day and I have had a haircut.

[00:30:14]So, I'm very happy about that. I have spent the whole day in this workshop perfecting how to do that torsion test.

[00:30:19]I have created a spreadsheet which is way easier. All the calculations are done automatically and it is crazy how accurate this test is. Every time I'm doing it, I'm getting maximum about 0 one of a millimeter difference between the five times that I've done it. And it's so cool to know that I've got a tester now that I've ironed out all the issues. It works well and I know that it's crazy accurate. Here is my spreadsheet that I have created. I fill in here when it's under load. All of this is calculated. In the end, I get something that looks like this. The rear of the car, the front of the car, and then this is by how many degrees that it's rotating. If it's lower, it's stronger. If it's higher, it's weaker.

[00:30:55]My aim with my project car when it's finished is it has to be below this line. It can be on the line or below. It just cannot be above. So, this is my baseline. And then I can also use my tablet and then I can fill it out while I'm actually doing the test on the car.

[00:31:09]On that note, we're going to end it here. Getting to this stage has been huge and I cannot wait to see how it works. Next up, I'll be making the braces that you guys want me to test.

[00:31:17]So, comment below and get your order in.

[00:31:19]With that, I hope you've enjoyed it. Go build something. It's really fun.