Tag: steering

Eeek!

Front floorIt’s getting awfully close to Rockingham now, but I think it’s going to be possible as long as I don’t strike any fundamental problems.

One of the things to do is to add a front and rear floor to the car. In the future, I’m doubtless going to want to be more sophisticated about this but I decided to do something simple for now. For the front floor, I haven’t sorted the rear one yet, I made a mould by bending a sheet of aluminium around some bits of wood and laid up a mixture of various bits of fabric using some polyester resin with some stiffening ribs made our of coremat embedded in the mix. Also embedded in the mix, as a consequence of the location, are 1 Red Admiral butterfly and various bits of honeysuckle.

Note the innovative use of three wheelie bins… Continue reading “Eeek!”

Slow progress

The chassis returnsSo, after a couple of weeks, I got the chassis back and put it up on stands in the garage although, as you can see, there’s rather of lot of junk in the garage as well.

The floor of the chassis has been bonded in, as well as riveted  with some rather natty flush rivets. Now, all I’ve got to do is to put it together. The only problem at the moment is that the grey semi-shiny finish seems to upset the camera I use and quite a lot of the photos look bizarre…

Continue reading “Slow progress”

Driver positioning

Pedal boxSo, it’s been a bit quiet hereabouts, but I have been getting on with things slowly. I’m now just about at the point where I need to get the chassis powder coated. So, this is a bit of a catch up post. One thing that is worth mentioning is that I’ve decided to skip this year’s Birkett race so as to get properly prepared for next year’s race season. I’m also in the process of losing my responsibilities as RGB formula rep which should mean I can concentrate on just racing for a change; which will be nice…

As a bit of catching up on a previous post, Nick at AB Performance managed to get the recalcitrant bearing cup out of my diff, with the aid of a 30 tonne press! I’m just hoping that the diff itself is OK.

Continue reading “Driver positioning”

Backwards to the future

You may remember that I’ve all sorts of problems bleeding the J15’s brakes. Well, I finally decided that the pedal box I was using was designed incredibly poorly and had no chance of ever working properly. The only way to bleed the brakes would have been to take the master cylinders out and somehow arrange for them to be horizontal. Of course, in that position you can’t really pump on the pedal to get the air out. Although, to be fair, other techniques such as reverse bleeding are possible. However, getting the master cylinders horizontal was always going to be the core issue.

Continue reading “Backwards to the future”

Brake, turn in and…

I’ve been pressing on, although I don’t seem to be making sufficient progress to make me feel comfortable. Still, some things are happening. I have, though, managed to completely finish the hydraulic side of the braking.

So, here’s a nice shiny picture of the final arrangement of the master cylinders, lurking at the bottom of the footwell.

Continue reading “Brake, turn in and…”

Well, that’s annoying…

I ordered a set of taps from RDG Tools and tapped one of the brake mounting blocks to M10x1.5 for the mounting bolts through the calipers. The end result is shown in the photo here. I’ll make some spacers of the proper size, and get the correct length bolts, rather than using stacks of washers. However, it seems to fit fine which is good.

Continue reading “Well, that’s annoying…”

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.

Continue reading “And stitching her back together again…”

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.

Continue reading “And for my next trick…”