Mercules has been moving along nicely, we had to throw our camry rack in the bin and go for a larger VN rack as the engineer wouldn’t let us use a rack from a smaller car (camry weighs in at ~1200kgs and the mercedes is ~1400kgs).
This actually turned out to be a good thing in the end as the mounts were relatively simple to make. The tags used to mount the VN rack almost lined up perfectly with the bolts on the lower control arms (see pic above). For the engineer this is a plus as this is an point of *strength* or some such garble. He said that he would be happier if we always tried to mount brackets on existing / factory strong points - ie original engine mounts in the crossmember, original trans xmember etc…
Our brackets are very basic, couple of pieces of 5mm flat bar with tags welded on to line up with the VN powersteer brackets. We’re planning on welding our brackets to the front X member once we have everything sorted out. The tie rod ends look like they will need to be shortened and an adaptor will need to be made for the column to attach to the rack, but apart from that the rack is pretty much finished.
We’ve also been working on finishing off the primer on the doors and other panels. Two coats of primer have been applied and another two to go. Then it’ll be time to get everything to the panel shop for a brand spanking new coat of white and a bit of a celebration since there will be no more sanding for quite some time!
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