Humble Beginnings - For Alu

[Husky]

Well hello there people (yes oh dear it's actually been more than a year wow). So I got caught up in renovating my house (still doing) and lots of life things. I've been wanting to get back to this for so long now and I can't resist staying away any longer. I've just got to figure out where I was!

So I loaded up my old CAD files and gave this thread a re-read to try and get back in the swing of it. I prodded CAD for a bit and had a nosey round my design.

What I can see is a heck of a lot of bolts... What do you guys think about them? My thoughts are that they are a prime point for the frame to slip out of alignment, perhaps I should really just put them all down as welds? I think my initial idea was that bolting them would give me the ability to fine tune the angles and alignments when built to get them spot on, but a fresh look is making me think twice about it.

Secondly, chopping up and tapping all those aluminium blocks is going to be such a big task i may as well take it somewhere to get it precisely welded anyway.

Here's a picture (because we all love pictures) of the design as it stands, I made it all rusty to represent the year of neglect

[EddyCurrent]

I think it's not so much the metalwork that needs lining up but rather the support rails upon that metalwork. This is where the epoxy method etc. comes in to play, obviously the metalwork needs to be rigid so welding might be a good idea for some of the parts anyway.
Maybe you should have a look at some build threads that have been posted in the last 12 months, you might get some other ideas.

[Blackrat]

weld without a doubt ...

those bolts if overtightened will crush the box section .... and even if they are torqued up right, with vibration the frame will flex causing the bolts to come loose (admittedly you can lock tight em in)

id weld it up slowly, then epoxy the face