Scroll through for the wide variety of work carried out at Artisan MetalCraft
Click the images below to expand
Alfa Romeo GTV6 Touring car Inlet
This was a modification to enhance the velocity of air taken in (venturi effect). This involved making a Jig, wooden buck, hammer forming, english wheeling, TIG welding, bead rolling and metal finishing.
The inlets start from 50mm i/d and taper down to the standard 34mm i/d, which were then going to be opened out by the engine builder to match the ports in the head. This all needed to be done to fit around the stock fuel rails, and once donelook relatively "stock".
The inlet plenum was also modified, this had previously been very poorly modified so needed to be heavily altered.
Sierra Build
This initially came into workshop for some restoration work on the rear of the sills, but as with most restoration work the extent of the corrosion was much worse than expected. The outer sills were in need of being replaced, the inner sill had rusted to the extent that it had separated from the floor pan. The panels were replaced using ones already available, or where necessary fully fabricated items were made and then TIG welded in place. The amount of restoration work else where on this is far too much to list on here, 100's of hours work.
All corrosion was removed from the underside ,in fact it was taken back to bare metal, any slight pitting was treated, sealed and had the full underside recoated.
From there the customer was to fit a ST170 engine, which needed a bespoke engine mount fabricating.
The engine was then to be turbo'd , which needed a stainless steel equal length manifold fabricating.
From the turbo - back, a full 70mm exhaust stainless system was fabricated. The exhaust hangers were reworked and relocated for a tidier system.
The customer had a lot of input with the build as he knew exactly what he wanted, and as with all restoration work it's fully photo documented.
VW Karmann Razer Type 34 Luggage Rack
The luggage rack was made from 304 stainless steel and fully mirror polished. The curves of the luggage rack follow the contours of the engine cover, and is full of little details. Although the rack is more for the aesthetics, its perfectly capable of holding luggage, it even has the mounting points for leather straps.
The rack was supplied "bare", as the customer wanted to make his own wooden slats, the frame was drilled and equally spaced holes were tapped to make it easy to fit the slats.
NetComm Rs500
Working along side a local motorsport company, I was asked to replicate various period correct items. This was done from old photo's and sketches.
Pictured on the left are some images of the oil catch tank and oil swerl pot, all these items were hand made using different techniques, hammer forming, pressing, TIG welding and metal finishing.
Mr Pritchard's Beetle Fuel Tank
This was a commissioned piece for a Historic Race Car (Beetle).
The standard Fuel Tank capacity wasn't enough, this caused the Beetle to pitstop more frequently during a race.
The replacement Fuel Tank needed to be able to hold as much fuel as possible... but still use the standard mounting position. A fuel tank was Fabricated from 2mm Aluminium, this was Bead Rolled for strength and aesthetics, the ends and base were hammer formed around a wooden buck to create the large radius similar to that found on the stock tank.
The Fuel Tank had internal baffles TIG welded in place before fully TIG welding all the fabricated panels/parts together.
The finished tank was wider, higher and deeper with a larger capacity. It had a brushed finish and polished bead roll inlays, a few weeks later it was mounted in the beetle and being raced around Goodwood Circuit and then the Spa 6 hour.
BMW E92 M3 Subframe -
S85 V10 Conversion Mounts
As some of you may know, a E92 M3 was a V8. BMW didn't make a V10 M3, and this is why Mr Powell contacted me.
With previous other non-production BMW builds, he knew exactly what he wanted.
Mr Powell arrived with, not a car but a mountain of parts and measurements.
From this a Jig/Fixture was built to position and level the V10 block into the subframe.
The mounting points needed to be relocated, fabricated and look as OEM as possible. As the Subframe is aluminium the mounting points were fabricated from aluminium and then fully TIG welded into there new position. The front Cross bar also needed notching for clearance of the sump and a infill welding in place.
With the customer already cutting a section of the sump away to clear another part of the subframe, the oil level sensor had to be relocated further back in the sump and a infill fabricating.
The sump was clamped down to a flat level surface to help prevent any heat distortion, then the infill was fully TIG welded in place.
