Say you had your chassis all tacked together and you called in a professional welder with a self contained welding truck or you delivered the table and frame to a welding shop.

How many hours do you think you it would take to completely finish the welding using a MIG setup?

if it was all tacked id guess about 2 hours
adam

[Edited on 31/5/07 by oadamo]

How long is a piece of string - if it's just the bare chassis - I would guess at 4 to 6 hours. A lot depends on how much care is taken to prevent distortion as shifting position contiuously takes time

If it's the complete chassis with absolutely everything (Brackets, plates etc, I would say closer to 8 -12 hours)

It all depends if you have welded in floor etc or riveted in floor etc

Hard to say really. If you were just to go at it hammer and tongs without stopping to check everything is staying nice and square I would say 6 hours absolute minimum.

If the chassis is fully tacked, I cannot see why it could not be done in less than an hour for a man on a mission, my whole chassis took less than 42 hours from uncut steel to complete frame.

Thanks for the responses.

Reason I asked is that there used to be a guy here in Toronto that was producing Lotus 7 clones. I went to see him shortly after the book was originally released - about ten years ago. He was a bit miffed as he was selling his chassis for quite a lot and people were balking at the price he was asking after reading the book.

He told me that he and a couple of friends would get together on the weekend and put together several chassis at a time. He had a good stack of them. Had had built himself a jig and they would form an assembly line and knockout the chassis in no time.

I think that a fabrication shop equipped with a full jig and CNC precut tubes, two man working each side of the chassis - could put out 3-4 chassis per day - buy could you sell that many?

Hello,
I saw an article on chassis building at one of the 7 clone manufacturers and it said it took there welder one man day to weld a tacked chassis completly, so with tea breaks, lunchtime, etc looks like it takes about 6 hours.


Cheers
David