Dikitriki
Flying Squad
Hi,
This is in the nature of a quick diversion as I needed a simple chassis to test a new motor. I do in fact have 2 of these to do, both Chowbent kits.
The chassis and rods are milled and held together with square section spacers. Pretty archaic, pretty foolproof and very quick. Only it wasn't what I wanted. There is a huge amount of daylight under the boiler, and with Joy valvegear filling the space, inside valve gear was a must. Which meant the front 2 spacers had to go, and all bar one of the huge plunger pick-up holes had to be filled.
Also - a first for me, I decided to fit the bearings and detail the side frames before putting the chassis together. I used a Hobby Holidays chassis jig to get the bearing centres correct. There was a further complication in that, since I was doing a crank axle (later), I had to be able to drop the centre axle. And since there is little enough room inside the chassis anyway for hornguides, I had to use the chassis sideframe as a the hornguides and cut them to fit a bearing - no room for error here.
I used nickel silver strip to keep them from rotating, and made the springs screw in so I could disassemble everything later. The pick-up holes in the chassis were filled with rod of the appropriate diameter and the spacer holes were filled with the countersunk screws, both sides being filed back and finished with wet and dry to eliminate the file marks.
The removable spring had a set introduced to the hangers so that it was in the same plane when viewed along the chassis.
And a check both sideframes and rods were to the same wheelbase.
Richard
This is in the nature of a quick diversion as I needed a simple chassis to test a new motor. I do in fact have 2 of these to do, both Chowbent kits.
The chassis and rods are milled and held together with square section spacers. Pretty archaic, pretty foolproof and very quick. Only it wasn't what I wanted. There is a huge amount of daylight under the boiler, and with Joy valvegear filling the space, inside valve gear was a must. Which meant the front 2 spacers had to go, and all bar one of the huge plunger pick-up holes had to be filled.
Also - a first for me, I decided to fit the bearings and detail the side frames before putting the chassis together. I used a Hobby Holidays chassis jig to get the bearing centres correct. There was a further complication in that, since I was doing a crank axle (later), I had to be able to drop the centre axle. And since there is little enough room inside the chassis anyway for hornguides, I had to use the chassis sideframe as a the hornguides and cut them to fit a bearing - no room for error here.
I used nickel silver strip to keep them from rotating, and made the springs screw in so I could disassemble everything later. The pick-up holes in the chassis were filled with rod of the appropriate diameter and the spacer holes were filled with the countersunk screws, both sides being filed back and finished with wet and dry to eliminate the file marks.
The removable spring had a set introduced to the hangers so that it was in the same plane when viewed along the chassis.
And a check both sideframes and rods were to the same wheelbase.
Richard