Phew! I have finished as much of the panelling that I’m doing at the moment, leaving the car looking like the photo here which, I’m sure you’ll agree is not one of my better photographic efforts. Still, it’s the best I could find without venturing back to the (bloody freezing) garage. All of the panels are there now, apart from the seat back and above the driver’s legs. The former’s not there because I want to retain easy access to the engine compartment and the latter because I need to finish the steering column first.
Archive for the ‘Engine’ Category
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.
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.)
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’ »
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.
