This weekend!

Slow progress as there's a lot of headscratching with where we are now. I dont know how Howard would have managed without me (making the tea!!). Anyway, more progress of the idler adjustment arrangement with a small video showing it working. Whether it'll be man enough, we wont know until we put it all together but its strong enough when you try and grab hold of it to try and stop it! Because of this we're going to fit some limit switches at the end of each sides travel.

This picture will help it all make sense with an idler mounted on one of the shafts. Again, the slope of the plate towards the left represents the sloping rear panel and the motor will be hidden away inside the hull.

Below is how the idlers looked originaly, with the outer cap all part of the casting. This is because the original is glued on to the bearings and then these are glued on the shaft! Not on my model they're not!! So...Howard machined the cast cap off as in the pic above...

 ... made an insert to fix the new cap too and to retain the outer bearing...

 and made a new cap which fits a treat. The idler will be held on by circlips on the shaft, the inner accessable and the outer behind this cap so you can remove the idler easily. This modification to the idlers and making the caps took all of our Sunday and an hour or so yesterday afternoon, thats what I mean by time consuming :-/

More as and when.