Work has recommenced, and we’ve done quite well. D fitted the poly-bushes to all the relevant bits on the wishbones – 22 of them. This is a bit of a fiddly job, and considering it involves grease, it is not exactly clean either. The process involved putting “Red Rubber Grease” on the inner and outer part of both halves of the plastic bush. Then putting some more grease (just in case) on the surface where it fits into the wishbone. The greasy bushes were then inserted into the wishbone, and the steel tube in the center inserted last (while trying hard to prevent it pushing the bush out the other side. Easy job when you’ve just go to do one. Bit more of a mission when there are 22. A rubber mallet and vice were called in to assist where necessary.
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I set to using the shiny electrolysis cell for the first time. We’d got the front uprights and rear hubs back from being machined, and now the uprights were ready to be cleaned and painted.
The cell will use caustic soda as the alkaline salt – nasty stuff. I initially used about 2 tablespoons in 30l, but then upped it to about 6 tablespoons. I honestly don’t think it makes much difference, and the uprights don’t really need to be too beautiful anyway. Suspending them such that they were completely covered, but avoiding submerging the charger crocodile clip was quite challenging. Eventually a wheel bolt and nut were used, with a piece of plastic hose used as a spacer. I managed to fit both in at the same time, which was great.
The battery charger was set to 6V – a check after increasing the NaOH concentration indicated that each upright was drawing 1A. This seems a bit high, but they a much greater surface area than a bolt, and it drew 250mA during my test runs.
The intention is to run the cell for 3 days – to make sure all the rust is loosened. They will then be scrubbed, and painted using Durum NS5 (etch primer) and NS8 (topcoat). The exciting colour we have chosen is… black.
We have also bought some new bits – very exciting. We have a pedal box, brake and clutch cylinders (they go with the pedals), shock absorbers and associated connectors. This means we have a lot of things that we can do before spending any more money, and when we are done we should have an almost rolling chassis (without wheels).
Oh, we are missing bolts. We don’t have any – seems that may limit what we can do. Saturday is bolt-buying day – we have placed our order and are holding thumbs that we can fetch it tomorrow.
I also found out something interesting today, from the Oracle. RivNuts – these are cool. I have yet to see one in real life, but it seems they’re kinda like rivets, but result in a threaded nut attached to whatever panel you affixed them to. Very useful for bodywork. We’re gonna get us some RivNuts!
B