As reminded by a nudge in the car show people article here is the first part of the tool-time series. This was not written by myself but a friend called Steve Valentine - we both own Tiger kit cars
http://www.tigerracing.com and have built them ourselves. Now obviously you need some tools for this purpose and over the course of a year Steve put together these articles - so here we go with part 1.
TIGER TOOLS
Over the next few months I will try to write about the tools that I found most useful during the build of my Tiger Cat E1.
A few of them were quite expensive, whilst many others were very cheap but invaluable and saved me much time & effort. It won't be an exhaustive list, so perhaps when I get to the end of my own list, in a few issues time, some of you might like to add a few more. The list will be in no particular order as I will try to mix the expensive with the cheap.
To start the list I suppose that I should name the two most well known of the Tiger Tools:-
Tiger Tool No.1:- A LARGE HAMMER.
Tiger Tool No.2:- AN ANGLE GRINDER.
And in my list:-
Tiger Tool No.3:- A VERY GOOD SET OF DRILL BITS.
During the build you will have to drill anything up to 2500 holes through alloy panels, fibreglass, steel brackets and chassis rails. It is important that these are drilled neatly and accurately, both in terms of positioning and in size.
The most frequently used drill bit size in a Tiger build will be a 3.2mm or 3.3mm for the alloy panel fixing rivets. I have heard tales of kit builders buying these ten or twenty at a time as they tend to break them so often. Not only is this wasteful and time consuming, it is also completely unnecessary. The cheap and nasty drill bits that you can buy at boot sales and the local hardware store are just not up to the job. They tend to be of low quality which blunt very quickly. They are also very brittle which means that they cannot put up with the bending forces that you tend to apply when encouraging a blunt drill bit to live up to its name i.e. DRILL a BIT!!!.
I learnt the importance of a good set of drills many years ago during the build of my first kit, and so one the first things that I bought for my Tiger build was a 29 piece set of DeWalt Extreme 2 drill bits.
Screwfix list the 29 piece set as £69.99, however, I purchased mine from a BOC Tradequip for about £41.00 + vat, which I know sounds expensive for a few drills but just about every size needed for drilling, tapping and riveting on a kit car is included. All the bits are titanium coated and they come in a strong and convenient case.
Each bit (above 3mm) has a centre drill type tip to it and therefore starts very accurately and easily without skidding across the work piece. Drills above 5mm have a three sided shank so that it fits securely into the chuck and does not slip or spin within it. Most impressively, the 3.3mm bit required for 3.2mm rivets has so far survived the drilling of at least 1000 holes (2 boxes of rivets) and shows no signs of giving up. They are not completely invincible as I did eventually manage to burn out the 8mm bit after drilling about ten holes through a piece of polished stainless steel in a vain attempt at making a new switch grid. I also managed to lose my 1mm bit just as I had found a use for it. So I have had to shelve plans for my garage based dental practice!!.
You may also find that a conventionally shaped drill bit is better on fibreglass as the breakthrough on the far side of the hole is more gradual with the more tapered drill and it is less likely to grab.
Some good hardware and engineering stores will sell individual drill bits, which is how I replaced my knackered 8mm bit.
I think a 3.3mm costs around £1.40 + vat, so if you canít justify a full set at least purchase the 3.3mm for all of your rivet holes.
Tiger Tool No.4:- ENGINEERS DIVIDERS.
These have many uses, but on the Tiger build they really come into their own on the alloy panels.
Once the panels had been accurately cut, the rivet holes need to be marked out. So with my dividers set at 12.5mm (half of the frame tube width) I ran them along the edge of the panels that were to be riveted. This left a clear & straight scribed line equidistant from all of the edges. Then adjust the dividers to your preferred rivet spacing, I used 50mm and cheated slightly by using a second set of dividers permanently set to this distance. Start at one corner and ëwalkí the dividers down your previously scribed line leaving a tiny arc mark at each 50mm point.
It's schoolboy technical drawing really, but the result is a very accurate and neat way of marking out the panels. Once riveted the straight and uniformly spaced rivets look almost too good to cover up.
Other uses: - to transpose measurements from the car to a fabrication or engineers rule, as a compass, use one arm as a scriber, use them to help you space the instruments and always useful for getting small boys out of horses hooves!.
