And stitching her back together again…

As good as my word, I fixed the central tub back together again. The photo here is of one side of the re-attached bodywork. Anthea commented that it actually looks quite good, and it could even be left like this. I don’t actually think that’s the case as when I paint the rest of the bodywork it’s bound to degrade.

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And for my next trick…

… I will saw this attractive young woman in half. Well, I will in a minute but I need to explain why first.

The thing is, I wanted to check the steering rather more carefully, and perhaps change the routing of the column a soupçon. In order to do that, I needed to check how it fitted under the bodywork. The problem is, I had to do lots of faffing around to get the central portion to fit over the cage; for example to allow the front hoops of the cage to stick through the bodywork, and also to allow the steering column to poke through the front of the central bodywork section. You can see both of these in the photo on the right.

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It’s a topsy-turvy world

Of course, with it being Christmas and all, it’d be nice to think that I could make some good progress on the car. Admittedly, I do have some work to do, not the least trying to get some shape into what’s going to be in my PhD thesis which I’m supposed to write next year. I wonder what I’ll write about?

In between worrying about that, I did manage to get something done. Starting with the driveshafts I bought some skinnier tubing for sleeving the shafts and, coupled with moving the diff slightly, it does seem as though I might be alright at avoiding the chassis. Of course, the proper driveshafts should be skinnier again than these ones. So, I’ll press on at the moment.

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Interference, shaft-wise

cageI’ve got the cage completed now, after a welding frenzy last week. Here’s a photo of the completed thing. It isn’t pretty, but from past experience it will look less awful with the bodywork on, as the bodywork goes rather higher than the raw chassis. I must admit that I’ve had a couple of ideas how to make it look a bit better, but they involve a degree of measuring and drawing that just isn’t feasible at the moment. As it is, though, it’s a all a bit of a maze of tubes.

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Rolling and tumbling

cage_tubingI’ve finally managed to get the roll cage tubing, as seen in the picture. Astonshingly, it’s taken me about three months to get this. I went to the suppliers that Jeremy recommended, Tube Engineers of Market Rasen in Lincolnshire, as that seemed sensible. Since then I’ve had a long stream of excuses and woffle including “he’s in France”, “we’re setting the machines up for 38mm next week”, “oh, I’d forgotten about you”, “I’ve lost your email” and “we’re notching the tubing”. The last is special because I didn’t ask them to do this. In fact, a selection of the tubes arrived notched in a useless manner (how could they know what angle I needed them notched at?), what’s more, the front hoop (the only difficult bit because that’s the only bent tube) arrived a different length from what my drawing and my email specified.

However, I’ve been waiting so long I decided to just work around the problem which I think I can. I certainly shan’t be putting any business their way in the future though.

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Weekending

diff_trial_positioningI’ve managed to spend a bit of time on the car this weekend. First of all, I wanted to be really sure that the diff was going to fit properly. So, I cut out some supports for it, following the CAD model that I showed you a short while ago. However, in an advance on the normal materials technology I used hardboard rather than aluminium for the diff support plates. It’s much easier to cut out, so it’s bound to be a better choice.

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Sinew stiffening

patched_chassis_02Just a short post this time, so you realise I’m still here.

Here’s the rear of the chassis with the ends of the tubes blocked up. To be honest, there’s still a bit of welding to be done on the bottom of these bits. But, I’ve learnt my lesson about welding on the bottom of things—I’ve got the scars to prove it—and I’ll leave it until I can turn the chassis upside down again.

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1920–2009

reverser_mounted_01That’s an even odder title than usual, but it’s a hat-tip, as they say in blogging circles, to my Dad who died last week after a long illness. In many ways I got my start in mechanical things from him as I grew up in a house where it was normal for people to do mechanical things for themselves. He also built a car once too, a JAP engined Morgan three-wheeler that was assembled from a box full of bits shortly after WWII.

He liked to tell other people a story about a 17-year old me disassembling the gearbox of my car. This was a Morris Minor, and the gearbox had failed in such a manner that you got 3rd gear in addition to whatever other gear you’d selected. I was performing the delicate disassembly in the middle of the back garden and Dad thought the gearbox was clearly going to be toast but was surprised to see it running fine a few days later. If you’re wondering what the problem was, a baulk ring had shattered into umpteen pieces, doubtless pulled to bits by the mighty torque from the 803cc A-series engine. (0-60 in 52.5 seconds, I’ll have you know.)

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