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!!!

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.

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.

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 :-)

Sprockets-Again!

Yet more work on the sprockets this weekend (well Friday!). Both inner rings have their bolts fitted and grooves needed to represent the two peices of the ring.

In hindsight, I think the bolt heads could have done with being a little smaller but they looked ok when we offered them up!

The outer rings have had the tab washer star shape made. I'm not sure if on the real things, they butt up against the centre cap or are clamped behind the cap but for the model its easier to make them all in one peice like this and then fit the cap over the top.

Here's a picture of Rex Cadmans Panther sprocket which has the centre cap missing which shows the individual locking tabs. The tabs at the 12 o'clock and 2 o'clock position look like they've been clamped as they have a different colour strip along the bottom which looks cleaner than the rest.

Besides which, the centre cap fits right up to the base of the base of the spokes, like this picture of the Bovington Panther, so it must overlap.

Anyway, here's a couple of pics of the tab washer spacer representation.

 The six bolts will have their heads sanded flat to get rid of the modern markings. Also, the holes for the nuts around the edge of the sprocket ring have been drilled out to accept the 3mm nylok nuts suitably cut with three slots to look like a castle nut! 

Here's the jig that Howard made up for sawing the bolts, all 64 of them with a junior hacksaw!!! Not a job I shall relish doing again :-/

There wont be much done now for a couple of weeks as Howard is working next weekend and we're both away the week after so dont look for any updates for a couple of weeks :-(

Last Weekend!

Last weekend was mainly about sprockets! H has made new spacers between the sprocket rings as I want to make a dummy cone shape to fit between the rings to represent the casting of the sprocket assembly. These new spacers are thick tubes so the bolts fit into threaded holes in the tube. As it has no flange, a dummy cone shape can be made out of nylon and slid over the tube. The inner ring has a split collar bolted to it which incorporates a keyway. The keyway stops it turning and the clamp bolt allows a little side to side adjustment!

 With a Coke can for scale, heres a finished sprocket showing the split collar arrangement with its keyway and below a close up.

 And the next three pictures show the two sprockets mounted on the gearbox assembly, again with the coke can for scale. You can start to see the size of the thing now!

Apart from the sprocket rings, chain and chain sprockets, Howards made all this from scratch! Worth his weight in curry's now (especialy as he's not so heavy now!).

We were looking at what nuts to use around the sprocket ring and have decided on three mm nylok nuts as they look the part. I have tried cutting them with slots to make them look like castle nuts which they should be but this wasnt very successful so plain old nuts they'll be, unless anybody's got any ideas???

More, as they say, as and when. Hopefully some work on the wheels next weekend :-)

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.