Tim’s Car Pages

It’s another of those three steps forward, two back posts. Actually, I don’t know how many back it is really.

First, though, the forward bits. Most importantly, the chassis is now back home again. As you can see, I took the trailer off back up to Soham and collected it. To be honest it isn’t a fantastic job, but it’s good enough. It’s not quite the shade of grey that I was after either, but that’s no big deal. Mind you, I wonder if I want to make the roll cage a different colour from this? In which case, I wonder if it’s possible to paint on top of powder coating? Seems possible that it’s not.

Continue reading ‘Sprocket to me’ »

There’s still no chassis here, so I’ve been getting on with other things. i did phone up the powder coating company on Friday afternoon when it became apparent that I might be able to get over to Soham. However, there was no answer so I guess they’d gone home early. Either that or they’ve gone out of business taking my chassis with them…

Here’s something though, in that I’ve finally finished the rear brakes. The new taps I ordered arrived and I was able to properly  cut the threads. I did have an experiment using helicoils but, for some reason, I didn’t feel confident about it. All the same, I’ll keep the helicoiled part as a spare.

Continue reading ‘All on my ownsome…’ »

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.

Continue reading ‘It’s a topsy-turvy world’ »

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.

Continue reading ‘Interference, shaft-wise’ »

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.

Continue reading ‘Weekending’ »