Mark's build diary

[markharnett]

It definitely seems to be going the way of thinking lots about stuff and then not doing a lot!

However, I would rather not make mistakes....so the thinking time is important.

Today I managed to put the rest of the wushbones on:



Had to take the rear lower on and off several times to get them square for the initial setting:





One thing I have learnt is that it is worth taking the time to ensure that the crush tubes are as central as you can possibly get them.....and have a rubber mallet to hand so that you can coax the mouting points out a bit and the wishbones in!

We forgot to get the rear stub axles off the focus, so spent an hour or so doing that as they were well rusted in. Got them cleaned up and now they just need painting. I'll post some pics of these once done.

Had another little think about the pedal mounting, so will hopefully get aroung to that soon.

So this is how she was left tonight:



Back again tomorrow evening for some more tinkering.

[airforceone]

Mark

I wouldn't worry too much about setting up the wishbones until you have wheels. I have
fitted mine with the hubs, brake discs and calipers and will do the final adjustments when the
wheels go on.

Looking good though, with that colour it will definitely stand out.

Ned

[JimK]

Hi Mark,

Looks as though you are putting in some hours!

I have got some of those bits and pieces for you, let me know when you want them.

Regards
Jim

[markharnett]

Cheers Ned,

I am hoping it will turn a few heads...then again it is a Rocket so of course it will!

Cheers for the advice.....hopefully have it together soon and then can check it all

Mark

[markharnett]

Hi Jim,

I have been at the farm every evening since I go it!

Thanks for getting the bits. If it is still ok for me to pop over with my dad I will find out when he is free and set something up.

You'll have to let me know how much you want for the bits and pieces.

Cheers
Mark

[markharnett]

Bit more done tonight.

Only worked on the hubs. Painted them up with a base of red oxide and then pushed the bearings into the fronts (rear on the Focus) and into the rear uprights:





Part Numbers for the bearings used:



New front hub assembled:



Had to clean out the inner of the rear uprights:



Then pushed the bearings in using the vice:





Just need the other bits and pieces to dry now and we can put the rest of it together:



The plan for tomorrow night is to maybe give the hubs/stub axle another coat and also start on mounting the pedals.

Cheers for reading
Mark

[airforceone]

Mark

Trying to find the collapsible coss from demon tweaks, you did have a picture of the box on your thread
but the picture has been removed from photobucket.

Any chance you can give me the part number from the box, or just send me the picture of the box.

Cheers

Ned

[markharnett]

Hi Ned,

Serves me right for reorganising my Photobucket account!

Pics added again - click the link below.

Click Me!

Cheers
Mark

[airforceone]

Cheers Mark.

Ned

[markharnett]

Hi All,

Another successful night in the barn!

I had intended to get the hubs all built up but it appears that due to our lovely whether the paint had not dried fully (and they also could do with another little lick of paint!), so these got moved into the house (my mum will be soooo happy!) and we carried on with the pedal mounting.

First job was to work out where the pedals would line up to the bulkhead. We got our trusty plywood template out again and using skills that a 3 year old with a crayon would be proud of, marked with a pencil where the bolts in the pedals will go through. We then drilled through with an 8mm bit:





Once we were happy that this put the pedals in the correct place, we transferred this info to the alloy sheet and drilled through those:





As you can see, we also marked out where the master cylinders would come through and then cut these holes as well:



We then bolted the pedals through the bulkhead and whilst keeping that in place marked the holes to drill up through the pedal bracket. After drilling these we could then insert the 2 bolt spacers and as if by magic it all lined up quite nicely!



We then moved on to looking at the accelerator pedal. I have one of Jokers pedals and it does not seem the most straightforward job, as it seems like it is going to be a nightmare to mount it to the pedal staybar.

It seems that if we did mount it on here the pedal would be much higher than the others. Time to scour the forum I think, but if anyone has any advice that would be great.

Cheers for now.
Mark

[airforceone]

Hi Mark

The easiest way to mount the pedal is to attach it to a bracket then attach the whole thing to the pedal bracket.
As the bracket on the chassis is slightly angled you can use washers or nuts to even it out.

Have a look at my thread, you will see how I mounted it, it's actually quite simple once you get
an idea of what you are after.

Here are the pics

.
.

Ned

[markharnett]

Cheers Ned!

Exactly what I needed!

Time to get fabricating tomorrow!

Mark

[markharnett]

Another quick update.

Gave all the hubs another coat of paint and I think they will look alright. I'll leave them a couple of days to go off and then attempt to put it all together!

Tonight we worked on the accelerator pedal.

I have Joker's pedal, so needed to mount it to the diagonal bar that comes down from the pedal mount bracket. We decided to do this by attaching another bracket to this as it is all a bit tight in there and we felt that it sat too high otherwise.

So, we found lots of nice metal brackets from the Focus! I think they were originally the swinging arms from the rear seat mounts:



My dad + angle grinder = new bracket:





We mounted this up using washers as spacers on one side, but this did not look particularly great, so we decided to try and "form" the above bracket to follow the mouting point:



A little bit of fiddling and it was pretty much bang on. We are now going to weld the gap back up to give it a bit more strength back.

not sure how others have judged the distance the accelerator needs to be from the other pedals, but we basically have it swinging back into the mounting point that I had previously queried:



So I guess that is right where it needs to be, but I am sure there can be some fine tuning!

[markharnett]

Hi all,

A bit more progress tonight after a few issues encountered with the wishbone/upright alignment and the brake calipers.

Got some of the issues sorted, but still have a problem with the front calipers. I am using the Hi Spec calipers with the RTR front uprights. I was advised that 280mm discs would be the ones for the job, but they seem too large:



Does anyone know if I can just space the caliper out?

Finally got the rear suspension together:









Just waiting on some bolts to arrive to get the front uprights together. It would appear that if you use the RTR front uprights you need cap head bolts to bolt it together as you will not be able to rotate a normal hex head bolt to tighten it up!

Cheers for reading
Mark

[mightylad]

Hi mark..

Looks like you are missing some spacers for your calipers!

It may not be of much use to you but, I had a similar gap on my wilwood front calipers - It turned out I was just missing some alloy spacers (they should have been in the kit from rally design, who promtly sent me some replacements)

I love the frame colour! Its looking v.cool

Cheers ol