For some random reason, after finishing the engine, or at least as far as I could go anyway, I then decided to look at semi final fitting the column. Obviously everything needs to come off the chassis when I paint it, but the front ally work did not have any holes in it for the column to go through. So I attached the ally with a couple of cliquos (amazingly useful things), and drilled through the lower bush chassis mounts to mark the ally.
As I have mentioned before I am going to use flappy paddles on the back of the wheel to operate the gearbox. After doing the column, it was sort of progressive to sort out the steering wheel. My first issue were the paddles themselves. Well, that’s a bot mean to the paddles really, it was more that I have selected one of the smallest steering wheels available, so that fat bodgers like me can actually fit in the car, but this meant that when I held the paddle blocks on the back of the wheel I couldn’t fit my hands around the rim as the paddles were in the way. I contacted Neil and he said he could make me some smaller paddles to bolt on, as they are carbon bolt on bits you can have them any size you like, but that as a one off they might be quite expensive. I therefore decided to trim mine down and see if I could make them fit. If not I could always make ally ones myself.
So, after building up the basket and plates it was time to throw it into the engine. now, when I took the basket off, I undid the big nut with an airgun. That was all fine and worked a treat, but now I had to torque it up. And of course I don’t have the proper Suzuki tool for holding the basket, so i had to botch one up double snappy.So, after last weeks upsetting result of thinking I didn’t have the right spring plate, I got stuck in with the clutch. Not really too much to say as it pretty simple. The only slight difficulty was finding a method of holding the basket from turning when doing up the bolts. In the end I used 2 bits of steel in between the fingers as shown, clamped in the vice.
I was told that after torquing up the bolts, it was sensible to tack weld them so there was no way of them coming lose. Not to sure about this as it seems like a one hit wonder, but I suppose I can easily, he hopes, just grind the tack off if I ever need to…. (famous last words!)
So, after building up the basket and plates it was time to throw it into the engine. now, when I took the basket off, I undid the big nut with an airgun. That was all fine and worked a treat, but now I had to torque it up. And of course I don’t have the proper Suzuki tool for holding the basket, so I had to botch one up double snappy.
So some off cut angle and plate soon became the worlds most over engineered clutch basket holding tool! But hey, it shouldn’t brake!
The engine is now mechanically all done apart from the covers, which I should be getting back on Tuesday/Wednesday depending on posting times.
