Not much time this week on the car, I seemed to be hauled into doing other bits and bobs, nevermind. Anyway, I did make a start on the bodywork mounting. The first task as to make up some brackets to weld to the roll cage to hold on the rear of the spider. Below is a pic of one of them, is just a bit of 1.5mm (I think) thick steel, folded up.
I picked up the reverse parts from Jon today. I haven’t actually got round to doing anything with them but here are some pics anyway
I also received my sprockets this weekend. They were custom made by a company called ‘Special Sprocket Services’. They are very nice pieces of kit Imust say. I was somewhat concerned over whether or not to go for split sprockets. The advantages being quick ratio changes, although you can obviously change the front engine sprocket, but the split sprocket obviously being weaker.
On Friday afternoon I nipped over to LynxAE to pick up the last of the body. These are the new body panels for the LR1300 and new for this year. I also picked up the reverse mechanism, although I was much more excited about the body! However it must be said that the reverse mechanism is really very nice! Jon has made a special sprocket, It a little confusing to explain this, that replaces the original Hayabusa sprocket nut, that a starter motor drives. There is also a beautifully water cut bracket to mount it to that bolts to the engine itself, along with supporting adjustment pieces. Unfortunately I forgot my camera, I know this seems to be a regular occurrence, so I don’t have any pics of anything at the moment, but this will hopefully be rectified next week! (I normally remember to update the blog..honest!)
So, with a little more time on my hands I set to work on the car. I decided that I would bolt up all the bits onto the car in preparation for the bodywork, well all the bits that need to be bolted on. So back on with all the ally panels and alike, and the steering column. This was where to trouble started. When I tightened up the steering column bushes the steering was locked?! Not what you might call an ideal situation! On further inspection, including a lot of cursing and different spacers and bolt, it became apparent that the column was binding up in the bushes. When I looked a little more closely I realised that the bushes were supposed to have a gap between them to make a perfect circle for the column. However my solution was…..time consuming!
I decided to make my own bushes up myself. I thought I would make them up from some PTFE impregnated acetal, so I phoned up the supplier who laughed at me and said that it was mega rare now but he told me to use something else, not sure what now, so off I went a picked up a large lump!
Obviously he had chopped it to length using a ban saw so the first job was to face off both ends.
