April 23, 2011

Time for another monthly update.  The tubes to which the side boxes on the car will be riveted – bolted are now all in place.

The first pic show what I had to do to give something to rivet to at the rear, again where I’d not put the cross brace in properly to the CAD model.

The next picture shows the strips to which the bulkheads in the boxes will bolt, with 4mm bolts, I’ve decided  to bolt where possible rather than use blind rivets everywhere.

Another view of the same thing.  More welding to be done, once the frame is stripped again.

Next is the shifter mechanism, its a cable design as any sort of solid rod mechanism looked impossible to fit.  It uses to 80 series Hi Lex cables sourced through Flexible Drive Agencies.  The aim was to eliminate as many levers and linkages as possible from the mechanism.  The drop to the cable on the floor was required due to space limitations but the fore – aft cable has none in at all, it simply loops around the passenger footwell to go to the back of the car.  All the levers and shafts rotate on miniature ball races, that kind found in RC model cars for example, which are nice, sealed and cheap.  The spherical bearings on the cable and rods are THK units.

At the gearbox end its kept as simple as possible too, the fore aft cable loops around again for a direct push on the selector shaft and the cross action cable acts onto a lever.  Its is possible for it to work directly like this as the cables have swivels built into them (under the boot near the fixed end).

The mechanism appears to work pretty well at a standstill hopefully it work when the car is moving.