Coyote- To answer your question about the chassis fixturing / assembly fixture....
Yes, the better the surface you have to work with, the better your chances of coming out on track when you complete the thing. There are many ways to do this, but the important thing is to have a surface that you know is flat and true in all 3 dimensions. You also need to be able to clamp your tubing / widgets in a way that they will stay in place while welding and cooling. This is especially important and I have seen a lot of times where people did not do this and regretted it later.
In our shop, we use a surface stone quite a bit for weld up operations. It is flat, solid and very resistant to flex. That may not be the ideal thing for your shop, but you can get the same results out of very heavy steel tubing. Maybe consider getting a shop who can weld that up for you and guarantee that it is "right" in 3D and get that into your shop to use as the frame fixture.
The next car I do will be here at our shop in ShenZhen. I plan to get a new stone just for that and do all the design work based on the widgets and hard points bolting on to machined, exact fit mounting locations which are tied to the stone. In essence, that gives me a manufacturing fixture so that we could make more chassis or replacement parts in case I crack the thing up. Who knows, maybe we will make pro touring chassis in China and ship them to the USA. How many will fit on a shipping container?
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