Sunday 28 October 2012

Wheel caps!

This weekend has been all about wheelcaps!

It took me all weekend to modify the wheelcaps as supplied from this

 To this! Howard turned down the dome in the centre so instead of looking like a wide brimmed bowler hat it now looks like a little flying saucer! I then removed the cast bolt heads, drilled and tapped holes for proper bolts and then made up the tab washers from 5mm strip. Because the bolt positions are not that accurate, I made each tab washer up individualy by drilling the first hole, bolting it onto the cap then marking and drilling the second hole before fitting the second bolt. Very labour intensive but quite effective I think you'll agree. I timed myself fitting the four tab washers and bolts took 13 minutes for each cap, with sixteen caps thats a lot of minutes :-(
 Just to prove I have done all sixteen!
While I've been busy making the wheelcaps, Howards been modifying the tubes which the wheels fit onto and house the wheel bearings. He's also started making the stub axles for the swing arms as well. Here's a couple of pictures of the wheels on one of the chassis longtitudinals. Its starting to look like a tank again :-)

Check out all those lovely nuts and bolts!!!

Not sure what the plan is next weekend but hopefully we'll be starting to put the chassis together soon!!!

Sunday 21 October 2012

More Wheels :-(

Finished all the wheels today (Sunday). We made some steel rings up to represent the step in the back of the wheels, seen on this real wheel,
unfortunately, the way that the wheels have been made, the flat section towards the rim is wider than it should be as in this picture,
so we made the disc wider than it should be otherwise it would have looked silly the correct width, if you see what I mean! Anyway, below is a picture of a ring inset in the wheel,
and below with all the nuts and bolts fitted and the centre reprofiled and bolts fitted.
Once its got some paint on it, it should look about right. There are some limits with all this re-manufacturing and compromises to be made but hopefully the whole effect will be alright!
Next we've got the wheel caps to modify with seperate bolt heads so we can fit tab washers behind them and to flatten the domed centre which on the supplied caps is to prominent. Watch this space.




Thursday 18 October 2012

Bolts (sigh!)

Got the nuts and bolts and fitted them into four wheels before I nearly lost my sanity!!! They look about right but unfortunately the bolts are a smidge too long. Call for the Dremel! And no, I'm not fitting those funny tab washer thingies behind the bolt head, I flatly refuse :-)


I'll grind the bolts down a smidge and bung a bit of paint on them to see what they look like.

Monday 15 October 2012

Wheels This Weekend!

Very boring work this weekend! For some reason only known to themselves, the Russians didnt cast the roadwheels with sixteen bolts (ie the earlier version) or 24 bolts (the later version), no, they put 18 bolts!!! Where they got that from I dont know but the fact remains that it aint right. So.....poor Howard spent all day last Saturday knocking the cast bolt heads off on the lathe, then he made a template to sit in the wheel inside the rim for me to drill the new holes and that took all day as well :-( We have 700 nuts and bolts on order so guess who's got the job of fitting all them? :-/

 Howard making the template on the mill using a rotary table to get the even steps between the holes.
 The template clamped inside a roadwheel...
...and 24 nice little 2.5mm holes drilled in one of the wheels. Multiply this by 24 wheels (we didnt bother with the inside of the double wheels as you wont see them) explains why it took all day and why I needed a beer by the evening :-)