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 :-)