Dashing along

After musing for some considerable time, I decided that I was never going to like the other gearchange and I’d just have to make my own again. So I did, and here it is. It’s essentially a reworking of the one I made for the Fury, albeit reworked for 2010. Specifically as I’ve now got a lathe some bits are rather easier to do.

Most importantly, it articulates really well. Not quite as good as the one on the Fury as that’s really right next door to the gearchange lever on the engine. However, this one feels pretty good. And, it’s massively better than the one I started with. Yes, I know it looks like a load of bits of aluminium (it is, really) but it does have things like a sealed ball bearing in there to make the levers move smoothly. One problem I had with all this is that I had to weld a fairly chunky bit of steel to the chassis to support the gearchange lever, purely to make it sit in place when yanking on the levers. If I get a chance I make well drill a few holes in this to save a bit of weight.

The reason I started messing around with the gearchange was, oddly, because I wanted to finish the electrics. In particular, I wanted to do the dash and in order to do that I needed to know where the gearchange was going to be. In fact, I realised another advantage of doing the gearchange like this is that there isn’t anything above the column, meaning that I can put things there that I can look at, without having to stare past the gearchange lever.

So, first thing to do for the dash was to make some sort of plate to support things, and here it is in place. It’s just a plate of 1.6mm aluminium, although I must admit that I’m now wondering if I’ve got a bit of carbon fibre sitting around that I could use instead.

I think this plate is actually too big at the moment, but I can easily sort that when I try fitting the various instruments to it. Not that there’s going to be much. There will be a space for the Palm, a shift light, and a few warning lights for oil pressure, neutral, the engine management light and, a new one this, the low fuel warning that’s built into the Honda fuel pump.

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