OK, it’s been a bit long since the last post. Sorry about that but things were rather thrown off-kilter by rushing into hospital with Anthea in an ambulance; blue flashing lights and everything. Don’t worry, things are fine but it does make you think that when a surgeon says some procedure is minor, no problem at all, improve the quality of life no end, then you ought to think that he’s the bloke with the sharp dangerous looking knife and he would say that, wouldn’t he?
Consequently, not much has happened here really; apart from the fact that the season is rushing up on us with alacrity, Colonel Raeburn*. So much alacrity that Colin and I attended the first of this season’s Race Technical Committee meetings yesterday.
The new car is a very tight fit on the trailer, as you can see in the photo above. This is because the front track is wider than the Fury was and because the wheelbase is longer, although the car is actually shorter. That photo was taken before we set off for Snetterton in the recent monsoon.
I’ve been actually doing a couple of minor things, both really influenced by paranoia. The first was that I was concerned about the little connector that I made to connect the gear change cable to the gearbox lever. I made this out of aluminium; it’s got a left hand M6 thread in one end to connect to the gearbox and a right hand M5 on other to connect to the cable. For some reason I became concerned that I might strip the threads out of it so I remade it in steel. You can just about see it in the photo here.
Next, as I mentioned, I’ve become more concerned about the spherical bearing in the wishbones. Not really because the bearing is bad but because it’s held in by a circlip which essentially takes the accelerative loads. All the calculations I did say that it’s fine, but I couldn’t stop fretting about it.
The photo on the right is one of the wishbones, with the spherical bearing being inside the housing at the top where that long bolt is. I used this to make an accurate drawing, on that piece of paper, so that I could make a jg for making some new ones, as I did in times of yore for the Fury, using rod-ends for all the attachments. In fact, the more I think about it the more I think I’m going to progress to the other parts of the car as well.
The only issue with this wishbone is that I wondered for a very long time about why the 
forward leg is made out of that rectangularish section steel. I can’t see that that makes any fundamental difference to the required strength. It does, though, make a nice flat place to weld the spring hanger.
So, I decided to remake the parts using the same 7/8″ CFS tubing I’d used for the Fury suspension and made the requisite jig as in the photo. I then spent a happy few hours chopping up steel and welding it together until I’d got the parts I needed.
That gave me these.
Then I cut the spring hangers off as I’d welded them on the wrong side and put them where they ought to have been in the first place. Doooh…
I’ve now got these on the car so I’ll have to re-align the rear suspension. Oh good, that means re-installing Fake Tim which is a bit of a pain. After that I need to find some way of testing the wretched thing…
I do keep worrying about that round rather than oval tube though. I wonder if it’s going to fall to pieces? What I will do, in the meantime, is to modify the old wishbones so that they will still fit. (The old ones used M12 mounting bolts. As the new ones use rod ends they’re now 1/2″ bolts so I had to drill out the mountings in the chassis. I’ll have to machine the mountings on the bearings on the old parts out to 1/2″ so that they’ll fit with the old bolts. OK, I know I could put an M12 bolt through a 1/2″ hole but I don’t think it’s really kosher…
*No prizes, although kudos, for the commenter who recognises the quote without the benefit of Google.