The afternoon flew by with Nick and I continuing with a load of small jobs that are all part of the bigger job at hand.
At one point John, my current short term lodger came home, he needed a place to store his Yamaha V-Max powered trike, so I said to just bring it here.
Sounds magnificent.
In the mean time it was once again time for the body to come off.
Allowing me to cut out the remaining Ford engine mount and for Nick to drill some holes in the chassis, followed by welding in captive threaded nuts he had made to act as a foundation for the battery bridge and as foolproof earth points for the power and loom.
Body up again.
Resulting in…….
With the body on the trolley I carried on with another fiddly, time consuming job.
Removing and refitting the steering column repeatedly till all the grinding resulted in a free spinning knuckle.
John the lodger was adding a hand and camera skills.
6mm aluminium plate plus a few layers of firewall……
Eventually slick, clearance created, time not wasted but consumed.
More cleaning up, grinding back, tidying.
Through the day things like the steering shaft, gearbox mount, fender brackets, radiator brackets etc all got painted and cleaned up, in preparation for final (We hope) mounting when the body goes back one more time.
It is amazing the amount of work that goes into this build that is not recorded or reported.
I liked this posting on a South African Adventure Biking Forum by a member “EssBee”
True for both Nick and I, but more so for me, learning so much as the build progresses.
[quote author=EssBee link=topic=127490.msg4790247#msg4790247 date=1645884322]
Nice work, Grizz, and a LOT of it at that....one doesn't realise how much there is to do in a project like that. Also...it's not stuff you've done before, every step of the way is new to you and requires a brand new line of thought figuring how you're going to go about it. Lot's of kopkrap/head scratching for you guys.
[/quote]
Nick continued to remove excess materials, parts and obstructions all the time.
By 18.30 we put down the power tools as I needed to spend a bit of time with Sally and make dinner.
Nick and I usually have a post mortem after the day ends for 30-60 minutes to discuss next jobs, plans, materials needed.
One of the jobs that ended up happening while discussing was to remove the complex, space wasting clutch pipe assembly……. More about that later.
He also managed to bleed over the wiring loom up front while removing excess cabling.
As the battery bridge was completed the next trick was to simplify and reroute some power cables to and from the starter. More about that later too.
Suffice it to say that it was a great day again, and huge thanks to Nick for coming to play.
We closed shop just after 19.00 in the end, two more ad-hoc jobs done.
Final pic, tidy wiring and bridge in place.
Sunday will be a new firewall plate, many holes, brake and fuel lines…….
And a multitude of other things to do.
Progress is happening.