More excuses, no progress on car or bike. Table Saw!!

Well the pressures of the kids are unrelenting, and so, to alleviate that, we decided we'd move house. This isn't done yet, but the house is old (probably Georgian, not that I'd know how to judge it), and hasn't changed hands in over 100 years. It looks like a few generations have had there time there, and now it really does need a bit of work. So given I know I'll be doing some serious work there, I thought that I'd build a table saw.

So I looked on YouTube. There's a variety on there, from the elaborate like this fellow:

And pt.2 (because it is a great effort)

To the more like 'get a hand held circular saw and turn it upside down' type efforts:

Nothing really took my fancy, so I've decided to go my own way a bit.

New arrivals

I've had this rule about not just buying stuff and showing it off, preferring to wait until the bits are actually attached to something (this is the car, and more specifically the engine, in case you were wondering), but I'm so close to actually having everything I need to build the bottom end up completely that I can't resist.

Here's what arrived today:

Specifically the stuff in the foreground. From L to R, Flywheel (with distributor drive on top, plus clutch cover bolts and sump bolts, windage tray, sump and oil pickup.

What's that all for? Well, the flywheel is self explanatory, the distributor drive cog - I need that even though I'm not running a distributor to fire the ignition because the distributor drives the oil pump on these engines. The windage tray is to stop the crank whipping in the oil - keeps the oil in the sump away from the crank. The sump itself is extended at the sides and built into it is a set of trapdoors that allow the oil toward the pickup, but not away and the pickup itself sits in the middle of the well at the front of the sump and feeds the oil pump.

Also in the garage: 

You can't see it all here, but there's the crank, rods, pistons, clutch cover, clutch, pulley set, damper (with attached trigger wheel), high volume oil pump, bottom end girdle, camshaft, followers, roller conversion kit and high volume water pump.

I now have everything I need to get a full balance done. The only thing (apart from that work) that's stopping me building the bottom end is finding an early front cover so that I can have a dipstick for the oil.The early 302 front covers have a dipstick hole, the later blocks (like mine) have that hole in the side of the block. That side will be inaccessible on the TVR, and in any case, the dipstick wouldn't go in that front well in the sump. More to come....

Trigger Wheel Part 2

Well, it's on.

Pretty straightforward, even for a proper lathe beginner like me. It's feels good, though, to be a total novice, but still able to do something that's useful.

Here's the damper with the register cut in it:

It's sitting on the freezer in the garage. I popped it in there for a short while just to cool it down and get it to shrink a tiny bit.

I ended up buying two verniers after my cheap one let me down. They are identical, except one is  a 6" and one a 12. Hope these are better. They're made of stainless, so hopefully good enough.

I also put the trigger wheel itself on the hot ring of our Aga. It kind of changed colour a bit. Not sure why.

Anyway it did the trick - I didn't take a photo illustrating this, but with both the components at the same temp, they would not go together. But doing the heat one/cool the other thing worked a treat:

See what I mean about the colour change?

I've been thinking about how to test this out, and I guess I have the perfect thing - I can spin this in the lathe and mount the sensor in the cross slide somehow and actually get the ECU to output the rpm.

Not much else to report - although this one has left me feeling pretty happy.

I'm still contemplating drilling and tapping the damper, and using machine screws to pin the wheel to the damper. I'll think more on it this week.

Trigger wheel pt.1.

In the last post, I wrote that I needed to attach the trigger wheel to the crank somehow in order for it to be able to be used to fire the ignition system. The logical place to attach this to is the crankshaft damper. This is a big lump of nodular iron that is attached to the front of the crank with the aim of contributing to (1) the balance of the engine, (2) the flywheel effect and (3) damping the effects of the crank's turning the up-and-down motion of the pistons into rotational motion.

The 'easy' option is to bolt it to the front of the damper, but the problem here is that the bottom pulley attaches to the damper. That's OK, but anything the belts touch (alternator, water pump, power steering) would need spacing forward 5mm (the thickness of the steel of the trigger wheel), which is a pain. My solution to this is to turn a register in the damper and attach the trigger wheel that way. I am aiming for an interference fit, so I'll have to cut the register pretty accurately (within a thou or so) I think. I reckon to be having to put the damper in the freezer and the timing ring in the oven to get the two things to mate together.

Probably some of you are thinking about the consequences of attaching the timing wheel now on the timing. So basically the question is "how do you know where TDC on pot one is without the engine together?" Well, I don't. I could build the engine up and do this prior to balancing (and I may yet do), but with the software the Emerald ECU runs, you can supply an offset. So perhaps I position the timing wheel 90Deg from where it should be, I can correct this out in the software.

So, in terms of pics, here we are - the damper mounted in the four jaw on the lathe:

On the four jaw chuck, the jaws move independently of one another.This means you can set jobs up in the lathe with great accuracy. You can see the dial gauge mounted on the cross slide here. It took a while, but the damper spins in the chuck with less than 1 thou run out. That's pretty true.

Unfortunately my digital vernier let me down. It was a cheapie, and it was a bit old, so I got what I deserved - cheap tools always let you down when you want them. This meant I couldn't complete the cutting of the register because I can't measure with anything like enough accuracy how much to take off.

Here's the cut so far:

Lots to go. Here's a pic with the trigger wheel:

There's a slight risk in the way I'm doing this. That ring you can see outside the bolt holes on the crank damper is a ring of rubber that's bonded to either half of the damper. Obviously the wheel will be able to move fractionally. However, I'm betting that in real life, this makes sod all difference.

Got some more inspiration for the Enfield: http://vimeo.com/30586946. Cheers Jim.

I'm back? Excuses and more lathe stuff

I logged into my own blog the other day. It's a useful resource (at least for me). I was looking for something about the camshaft I'd bought for the V8, and noticed that the last blog post was 7 months ago! That's what having another ankle biter does. Anyway, I did say (way, way back) that I wouldn't say when I'd just been accumulating parts, but I would blog when I'd actually done something with them. Well, rest assured the parts accumulation is ongoing. The aim right now is to get the bottom end built. However, that means balancing it. There's a load of bits to get in order to get this done. Basically, anything that hangs off the crankshaft  needs to be balanced, so although I had the entire bottom end of the engine bought, I still needed to get the crankshaft damper, bottom pulley, flywheel, clutch and all associated nuts and bolts in a state where they could be balanced.

As I want to run a proper ECU controlled injection and ignition system (I already have an Emerald ECU bought), I need a trigger wheel. These are basically a toothed wheel which has tooth missing. A magnetic sensor detects each tooth as it passes, and through the missing tooth, the ECU can tell where the engine is on its firing cycle.

This is the one I have:

It's a laser cut ring-gear style 7.5" job from www.triggerwheels.com, who have this base covered pretty well.

Basically though, you need to attach it to the crank somehow, and this is where I've shown great forward planning in investing in a lathe. 

A small digression:

Last time I used the three jaw chuck that came with the lathe, I noticed a bit of run-out (basically whatever's in the chuck wobbles ever so slightly). With a three jaw this is going to happen, and run out of a about about a thousandth of an inch in each inch you move away from the chuck is about what you get. Which is about what I have. Still, I have a decent quality chuck, and didn't see a reason why I shouldn't give it a clean and see if this makes is a little more accurate.

Here's the chuck off the machine:

And the machine chuckless:

That bit of wood on the ways is because the collar you can see in the pic (which is what holds the chuck on the taper) can eventually force the chuck off the taper as it's spun. Chucks are heavy - you don't want one landing on the ways of the lathe.

I took the chuck to bits and gave it a clean and regrease.

It really wasn't at all filthy, so I'm expecting zero as a result of my efforts!

Unfortunately the phone ran out of battery at this point, so the rest of the process will not be documented, but overall I took it to bits, cleaned the scrolls and put everything back exactly how I found it.

Just for fun, I mounted the faceplate in the lathe:

Earlier this week, I found a 10" four jaw chuck locally to me (same guy who sold me the lathe), so snapped it up. I didn't quite appreciate how big it would be - it's a big lump and no mistake. Here it is next to the cleaned and reassembled 3 jaw:

Big beastie!

On the lathe, it looks like this:

Turning

I've always wanted a lathe. Been messing about wanting to get one, doing various ebay searches and occasionally bids, but never really got serious. Well, those days are over. I have a lathe.

It's a Colchester Student. It's got that curved end on the left hand side, which means it's a 'round head' model. It was made in 1962 (I'm informed by the dealer who sold it to me), and in a small amount of family coincidence, the motor inside it was more than likely made by a firm that my wife's great uncle owned.

Now the fun part is to start to use it. I've got a piece of aluminium bar that I'm just messing about with at the moment. I've bought a few lathe tools. They're the indexable kind and I've done something like some parting and a small amount of turning. Right now though the tools are set too low, but I haven't got any shim steel (ebay will correct that), so the result is that the turning isn't that great, and an attempt to face the bar left a nub.

I've also only got a 3 jaw chuck at the moment (although I do have a faceplate too), and although the three jaw is a good quality one, it's got a bit of run-out and I will need to take it off, take it to bits, clean it thoroughly and put it back together again. I could really do with a 4 jaw chuck, but these things are expensive, and they're heavy, which means that postage is chunky too via the 'bay.

Anyway, I do have a small job to do for a mate, so I will need that shim steel and then I'll have a crack at that.

A Royal return

It would appear that I'll be back in the world of gainful employment very soon, so I thought I'd do a little retail therapy. I bought  pretty well everything I need to get the Enfield working again (bar some odds and sods that I've not planned for, obviously). I also took the front forks down to a place in Rochester to get them rebuilt/reconditioned - I'll see what sort of job they do and see if I farm any other jobs out to them. Now I have 2 kids, time for doing it all myself is short.

Remembering that the aim of this work is to get the bike up and running, reliable as any old Brit bike will be and to have fun, I've not gone for originality (although everything I do will be reversible) and I'm certainly not shelling out loads of cash when I can make do with what I have. The exhaust is pretty ropey, and really needs rechroming. I'm not on for this just now (although  I will rechrome at some point, I think). Anyway, I ordered plain black exhaust wrap, and a set of megaphone silencers and got to it. I did one side in the exhaust wrap and I just left the silencer hanging off there so I could see the effect. I like it!

The photo is a bit crap as it's from my phone, and the crap around the bike distracts from the main point. Anyway, a couple more.

There's no baffling at all in that silencer! I can't wait to fire it up!

In this one you can see I've removed the loom now:

I'm going to build a new loom. The old one is a bit crusty and is home to a few scotchloks and other dodginess. I'm going to incorporate some relays, I think as I don't want to have the whole current of the electrics going through the switchgear, even though I suppose it's designed for it. I have also bought a little box of tricks that is supposed to do away with the rectifier and the Zener diode on the bike. Again, simplicity has to be the key to reliability. It's fair to say that although what was there could work, I don't know it does right now, so might as well put something in place that's more modern.

It is a little one step forward and two back with the bike, but I feel now I'm moving again, and that's the main thing. I'd like to go to the Goodwood revival on it, so that's the aim. We'll see though....