I hate steering racks

Progress has been slow recently for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I'm waiting for a few bits of the kit, although this isn't a major problem as there are lots of things to do, it does mean that lots of things aren't quite finished. Secondly the instructions are still work in progress, so I'm using the Tr1ke manual which is doing me ok for now, but things are starting to differ between the builds, I appreciate that this is a busy period for RTR though, so I imagine it'll turn up as we head into the autumn. Oh and the last reason why progress is slow, well that's mostly because I'm rubbish :)

I didn't think leaving the keys in would be much of a
security issue at this point.

It seems ages since my last update, and not a lot has changed. On the corners I have the cycle wing struts in place as well as the black bits which I now know are called steering arms (who'd have known).

I moved onto the steering rack and column. The column was pinned in place with the u-bolt, so although it's nice to see a steering wheel in place, it does feel like a little bit like I'm building a Ford Ka. 

The rack is a little more complicated. Physically fitting it was fairly easy, although I had to borrow a large enough drill bit (12mm) and then realised why I didn't have one, which was because my 'leccy drill only has a 10mm chuck. I was however due to pop around to Tim's house to water his garden (if you're reading this in the winter, think back to those lovely summer days) as he's away, but forgot to take my backpack with me and I was only my motorbike. So it was a fun journey home trying to hold a drill and ride a bike, but I made it alive, so those two holes took two days to drill, such is my slow progress.

The rack does need some internal work doing to. It's a standard Sierra rack, which needs converting to a quick rack which is supplied. However, our friends at Ford must hate me as they've the way the rack is assembled makes it very difficult to undo.

The instructions glossed over a little about how hard it was to undo the steering rack ends. So much so that I had to check on the forum that I was trying to undo the right section, I was, and everyone (including people on a Ford forum) agreed that it takes a bit of grunt! Apparently I don't have grunt, so I needed a new plan.

Steering rack ends, both difficult to Google for as well
as undo.

I decided that I needed to use the big vice at work again for this, and Steve the workshop manager who I will now refer to as God2 (don't want to piss off the actual God should be exist) lent a hand. God2 clamped the rack rather than the housing which made it much easier, he also used some serious grips.

The grips that did the job in the end.

Next the aluminium cover was removed, this time however in the instructions it had the warning: This is very difficult to undo. Turns out it wasn't so bad, with God2's advice a drill bit was used rather than a centre punch as it's pretty tough and just the right size.

So that's about it for now, it seems like I've written a page just to say "drilled two holes and undid a couple of screws" but it's more about how 2 little pictures in the manual can take up most of a week for someone like me.

We had to call it a day as God2 had to leave and I wasn't expecting so much progress so had left some bits at home, so tomorrow will be spent finishing the internals of the steering rack.

Assembling the uprights

As in my previous post More Front Suspension, I'd found that the pictures and instructions that I was following for the Tr1ke varied to the Mevabusa. 

Fig 1. The contents.

See fig 1 for what's in the box, and lets name the bits (from left to right, below the box):
1) Gold bit - a caliper mount.
2) Upright (note that this is the correct orientation for it).
3) Pointy bit (no idea what it's called)
4) Black bit (no idea what that's called wither)
5) Shim, and two washers.
On the box are also some bolts, more shims, a spacer and a nut.

Fig 2. Attach (1) to (2).

Step 1:

Fit the caliper mount to the upright using the three small bolts. When on the car, the mounting holes on the caliper should face to the rear of the car. Also, if you look carefully, on the large inner hole on the caliper mount there is a recess on one side. This recess should be on the outside as in fig 2.

Fig 3. Attach (3) to (2), not forgetting a washer.

Step 2:

Slide the pointy bit into the large hole in the middle, there is a large washer which fits nicely between the two. See fig 3.

Step 3:

Fig 4. The bolt holds (3) in place.

Turn it around and the nut fits nicely into the back of the pointy bit. Before putting the bolt in, pop the other large washer and the spacer in place. as in fig 4.

Step 4:

Screw the bolt onto the end of the pointy bit as in fig 5.

Step 5:

Fig 5. Add the bold to (3).

You can add a shim to the top and bottom mounting points on the upright now, but it's not worth it as they'll fall out and roll around your garage floor. This is where the drag link and ball joint will attach. See fig 6 for where they go.

And that's it, they can now be fitted to the car. Waitaminute I hear you say, what about the black bit and the other stuff?

Fig 6. Add the shims to (2).

Well, if you fit that now (not that I did of course, it's real hard to fit the upright to the ball joint, so I'd get the upright on the car first.

If you do test fit the black bit to the upright using the longer bolts, you'll notice that the bolts are too long. This is because the wheel arch mounts attach to the black bit too which spaces the bolts out.

One big caveat! This is how I did it and what made sense to me. I've no idea if this is the correct way or not, if I find out it's not, I'll edit this page and put a note at the top to say that it's changed. Hopefully no one will rely on this page and will have figured it out themselves or already know what they're doing and are only reading this so that you can have a laugh with your mates at how I've done it wrong and how the first pot hole I hit is going to eat my car :)

Left overs, they can't be important :)

More Front Suspension

In a proper workshop doing man things - not that kind of
man things! You have a dirty mind!!!

Previously on Front Suspension: I had fitted the bushes to the upper and lower wishbones but didn't have a vice big enough to fit the crash tubes inside the bushes... 

Luckily however there is a decent workshop at work, and Steve and Rob kindly let me loose in there. So I was able to use a proper vice and get them inserted. So easy with the right tools!

Back at the bat cave, I had to hammer the tubes into place, not as easy as you'd think. It's not a simple tap tap tap and in it goes, you properly have to twat them.

Offering up the wishbones to the car, and they don't quite fit, so I spent a fair bit of time filing the ends of the tubes down which took about an hour. I tell you what, my forearms are going to rule by the end of this project.

Wishbones fitted.

Fitting the drag links and ball joints was straight forward enough, so I figured I'd mount the wishbones. However, the bolts wouldn't fit the holes on the chassis due to it being painted, so more filing was required.

Finally the car has arms.

Springs and shocks in place.

The instructions that I have are for the Tr1ke which shares the front end with the Mevabusa, although being a 3 wheeler, it means that I have rear suspension too, which means more parts which look the same but are different. The springs are one example of this. They have different numbers on them, and I had no clue, so I broke my duck and posted on the official forums. Within minutes, a helpful chap had given me the answer (225 is front, 300 is rear), so off I went and fitted them to the shocks (I'm going to call them springs and shocks rather than coils and dampers). 

These were then fitted to the chassis and lower wishbone.

Uprights and caliper holders attached.

Next up are the uprights and associated gubbins, and this is where it got confusing as the pictures in the manual are nothing like what I have. I went through every box twice before settling on what must be them. A quick check of pics of the other builds and I'd guessed right. For anyone in the same predicament as me, I'll create a quick post on assembling these separately, but if I can figure it out I'm sure any 3 year old can.

What I haven't figured out yet is how the hubs fit on. I also have some bars to put on the inside which confused me for a little as the bolts were too long to attach them and I thought there should have been some more washers, but thinking about it, that's how the wheel arch struts attach which'll do that job.

I had wanted to fit the steering rack too, but I needed a 12mm drill and the biggest I had was 10mm, so I'll pick one up tomorrow. Instead I fitted the bushes to the rear wishbones (without the aid of the Bush Fitter 3000 [tm] you'll be glad to know).

It's starting to look a little more like a car now
rather than a climbing frame.

It's nice to see that the shocks are adjustable, I had adjustable shocks on an old mini once, they went from 1 to 24, with 24 being the stiffest. I put them on '5' under advise from my dad. The plan was to drive to my mates and then turn them up to 20 or something so that I could bounce the back end around, but even at 5 it was so stiff that the shocks went through the floor. Probably says more about the state of my mini really.

The Floor (Episode III)

With the bank holiday over, I could get my hands on somewhere that sells rivet nuts (lets call them rivnuts like all the cool kids), which are needed to fix the front floor.

I'd decided to switch from M3 to M4 nuts as I kept breaking my M3 tool as it was too small. So with this in mind I visited Rivet Holding Limited at lunch time to stock up.

Putting the floor in place as the sun set

I was glad I did, as upon arrival there was a nice Caterham style kit car outside with a Hayabusa logo on the back, so these were people I could relate to. The helpful guy who worked there sorted me out with a selection of nuts, bolts and washers all for a fraction of what I'd have paid online, so I well recommend them. He also had some suggestions for what to use later in the build so no doubt I'll be back (that wasn't an Arnold Schwarzenegger impression).

Tada! Note the bricks at the
front are not part of the kit.

After work, I had drilled out the smaller holes to take the larger M4 rivnuts and fitted them without a problem, the M4s really are much easier to work with than the flimbsy M3s.

And now the front floor is in place, it's time to flip the car, so I may need a hand, some unsuspecting person tomorrow is going to be lured into the task on the promise of a Creme Egg.

Front Suspension

For some reason, when envisaging building the car, it was always the suspension that seemed the fun part. No idea why, I know nothing about suspension systems, what they comprise of or how they work. Don't get me wrong, I know the buzz words, "wishbones", "shock absorbers", "coils", and I'm well aware of what a ball joint is as one broke on my 1275GT mini back in the day leaving me on 3 wheels in the middle of Kings Norton Green roundabout. Luckily this is next to a police station who's occupants dragged my car out of the way to free up the traffic, but I digress.

The suspension bits. Four wishbones, a bag of
bushes, a green box full of crush tubes, and in
the top right, a drag link. 

Following the instructions for a car similar to my car (they're still working on instructions for my actual car), it all looked quite easy.
Put some bushes in the wishbones, some tubes in the bushes, attach a ball joint and a drag link. So what's a drag link then? A quick Google Images search and I knew what to look for when rummaging through my boxes. Found them, right.

So the bushes in the wishbones. The instructions would have be squeezing them in by a vice, but alas, my vice is too small, so I borrowed a bigger one, which was also too small. One quick trip to the shops later and I have a multi-angle vice that's also yellow so that I don't lose it.

It appears that fitting the bushes into the wishbones is THE most frustrating task ever. Trying to get them to fit in evenly is near impossible, and I didn't want to damage them by forcing them. After 30 mins, I had one in out of sixteen and things were very close to be thrown around the garage. Time for a break.

After another twenty mins, I had another one in, not using the vice, but by squeezing with my hands, although this was more by luck as no others would go in that way. Time for a break.

As this is very frustrating and seemingly impossible, I figured other people would have a solution on their build logs. Apparently not, as no one else seemed to mention it at all. Hmm, what about if I scrap the vice method and make a tool? Ok, stop laughing, at this point you probably know enough about me to know that I've never made anything in my life, but I have a plan. I just needed a 12mm drill and I'd be fi... oh wait, biggest I have is 6.5mm, so lets bodge two holes together. 

Bush Fitter 3000 (c) 2013, all rights reserved, pat pending.

There we have it, a bush fitting tool, I'm going to call it a Bush Fitter 3000 [tm]. Ok, so it just looks like a nut and bolt with a square metal plate with two one hole drilled through it, but you wait and see.

Right, the Bush Fitter 3000 [tm] is an improvement, but it's still about as easy as doing a rubics cube while riding a unicycle and juggling (I did actually Google this to see if anyone has achieved it see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRAwkwFMbSI although I still don't think it's easy!).

Taking a picture whilst holding
the wishbone and the
vice proved difficult.

While using the Bush Fitter 3000 [tm], I noticed how deformed the bush gets before snapping into the wishbone, so I went back to the vice method and just gave it some grief and it actually worked. This quickly turned into a technique (as my vice kept falling apart if I didn't do it in a particular way), and before you know it, all sixteen bushes were in place.

If anyone reads this and is hella frustrated about how to fit the bushes, give me a shout and I'll go through my technique. Having a vertical vice helped a lot! However I am willing to sell on the rights to the Bush Fitter 3000 [tm] if necessary.

All bushes in place.

There you go, bushes fitted. Now to put the crush tubes into the bushes. Again the vice is needed for this, but unfortunately even my new yellow vice is too small to fit it all in which is a bit of a problem. I tried without a vice, and it looks like this could be a challenge. Time to go and have a think about where to find a big vice.

The Floor (Episode II)

Compulsory artistic shot 

With the holes drilled the next job was to rivet. I had borrowed a rivet gun from someone which is the manual squeeze type. Each rivet takes 4 squeezes with the last one taking some girth.

I decided to do it in several sessions with 13-15 per session so that I'd be done in 10 sessions. This was to give my hand a break every now and then as it can start to hurt using this type of riveter. Reading someone else's build log, they were using an adapter for an electric drill which does the work for you, but these were £80, so I figured I'd do it the hard way.

I found that I had two types of rivets, both were exactly the same size, but one was slightly tougher than the other (known as "bastard rivets" or brivs for short). You never knew if you were going to get a briv or not, and believe me they really hurt to fit.

About 2/3s of the way in, I found that I could tell the brivs from the normal ones so quickly moved them about so that I never had to do two brivs in a row. 

The ten sessions were spread over two days and finally the main part of the floor was on. It looks quite neat at the moment, although I'm sure it will get scratched up pretty quickly once the car is on the road.

I'd decided to mount the front part of the floor separately to allow easy access to the pedals and whatever else goes in the front bit (probably loose change). This meant moving on from pop rivets to rivnuts. 

After some Googling to find out WTF rivnuts were and how they worked I ordered a bunch of M3 rivnuts and bolts to fit. I also opted for buying a rivnut gun rather than make my own which all the other YouTube people seemed to do.

Broken rivnut tool.

A couple of days later and I was ready to give it a go. 5 seconds later I was ready to down tools again. You see, when fitting rivnuts, you need a delicate hand, and not the same hand you used to fit pop rivets. If you do use the same force as you do with pop rivets then you quickly break the rivnut tool.

Back to eBay to order a new M3 mandrill for the tool.

Ok, take 2. Now with some more knowledge and a new tool I was able to fit 5 or 6 rivnuts before I threaded the new tool. Grrr. It turns out that M3 rivnuts have a really wieny thread, I should have gone for M4s instead.

The front part of the floor with the carbon wrap inside and
rubber strips around the edge.

Unfortunately it's now the bank holiday and nowhere is open to sell me M4 rivnuts. So the floor is going to have to wait for a bit which is frustrating as I desperately want to turn the car the right way up to crack on with the suspension. Once I have the tool it should be a fairly easy task...

I used some of the time to fit some rubber strips around the edge of the front floor to seal it a little better, this seemed to go ok which is odd, something went right first time! Hurrah!

The Floor (Episode I)

It's been slow progress lately, people keep having 40th birthdays which I have to help celebrate and then there are those distracting text messages saying "Fancy a beer?", plus the next thing to do I wasn't really looking forward to, the floor.

So today, I've spent most of the afternoon drilling. Easy now ladies, I mean making holes... 

I was going to use this tool for cutting but as it's
impossible to use I decided to go back to using a jigsaw.

The car is upside down now, hopefully for the last time, so that I can get the floor in place. This involved using a wonky jigsaw to cut it to size which was so much fun I decided to do it twice.

Carbon fibre goodness.

After that I covered the inside with some carbon fibre vinyl to make it look a bit better and it would save trying to put something down when it was in place which would be a little difficult. 

The vinyl was easier than I thought, it's designed for the outside of cars, so it goes on quite easily and you can get the bubbles out without too much hastle.

The floor cut out and wrapped.

With the floor to size and looking good it was time to clamp it down and drill some holes. I ignored part of the instructions here that would have me putting in some temporary pop rivets, I didn't want to have to drill them out, so I just used some clamps instead. Surprisingly this worked (so far).

The floor clamped in place with every other rivet in place
(I ran out), and all the holes drilled. Yes, those
are socks between the chassis and the wood, don't
question me.

Now it was time to drill some holes, through the floor and into the chassis for the pop rivets. Some of the holes were blind which meant I had to do some measuring. Now with my DIY skills in mind, I measured twice. Hmm, that didn't add up, measure again. Nope still doesn't look right... It turns out that that some of the cross members on the chassis are at non-right angles on one side but they are right angles at the other, not a problem really but it makes measuring a little difficult, so I winged it.

150 holes and 3 drill bits later and I was done. At the moment everything seems to fit, although I'm a little way off being able to fit the pop rivets (a task that is definitely going to destroy my arms).

Up next (once I have more rivets), episode II of The Floor.