A thing I’ve been concerned about for a while is whether the seat belt mountings are OK for use with the HANS device, which requires that the angle of dangle of the belts between the HANS and the mountings is within 20° of horizontal. So, I installed a seat (that is, the old blanket that I use for such things) and took a video of myself sitting down in the seat in various ways. The photo on the right is an image capture from this video, which I made with the video camera I inherited off my Dad.
Tag: J15
Now I come to think about it
In the cold, hard, light of day there’s another possibility for the brakes. I could tap the caliper mounts in the uprights, as shown here, for say, M12x1.5 and I could then fasten the caliper mounting blocks directly into the upright without needing a bolt head on outside in the way of the disc. That way I could use the sort of discs that I’ve got on the back of the Fury and I’d be sure they’d fit under the wheels.
This is essentially how the front brakes on the Fury mount to the uprights (ex mk II Escort in that case) so it must be possible to make it work, especially with the addition of copious amounts of thread lock. Certainly seems a decent idea…
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.
Interference, shaft-wise
I’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.
Rolling and tumbling
I’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.
Weekending
I’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.
Sinew stiffening
Just 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.
1920–2009
That’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.)
Differenced engine
I’ve pressing on with the engine/gearbox mountings. Well, “pressing” is clearly a metaphor for something rather different. However, I have made some progress.
First of all, I’ve changed my mind how to do the diff mounting, as I realised that the original idea wasn’t going to work very well when it came to changing the sprockets and chain. Continue reading “Differenced engine”
14 steps forward, 52 back
I’ve been pressing on with the engine mounts and, after a minor false start, got the rear side of the engine set up as in this photo. The false start can been seen if you look really hard at the bottom right of the photo where you can see the first set of mountings for this transverse assembly. This is at a slightly jaunty angle. This all worked fine but it dawned on me that it was going to be impossible to actually fit the engine like that as it couldn’t move around the top mounts without requiring huge compliance of the rear mounts. It might have worked when I replaced the metal top hat washers with the eventual rubber bushes but I didn’t really want to risk it.