Brooklands Bentley

Spent today working through getting the Cyclekart rolling. This included finishing the hubs for the wheels and the steering.

I had to drill the plates that I cut the other day along with the wheel hubs. I drilled these for M10 bolts. I will need to weld some bits of flat bar to locate the hubs into the wheel to stop the hub from spinning in the wheel under load, but I'll do that later. There's plenty of little bits to tidy up before final paint and assembly.

I also needed to clean up the rear axle as the fit of the bearing on one side was a bit too tight. With that done and the axle out of the car it gave me a chance to fit the brake disk. The disk dits nice and close to the cross member at the rear bulkhead, so it should be trivial to mount the calliper. I also have a seperate cable operated calliper as well, this will be operated by the handbrake lever. Handbrakes are a requirement for CCA events.

With the rear axle fitted up I turned my attention to the steering. I drafted up some arms to weld to the front hubs and cut them out on the plasma cutter. Then, literally just I was finished, right at that moment the Amazon delivery guy dropped off the two bearings that I had ordered to mount the steering column. It literally could not have been better timing.

So I made a quick mount for the lower bearing to sit on and a cross bar that I fitted to the dash hoop to mount the top bearing to. I intend to re-do the bottom mount as it is a bit ordinary, but for a proof of concept it does the job. I think I will keep the top mount, mostly as I plan to cover it with the dashboard so it will not be seen. There's plenty of room to slide underneath when getting into and out of the cockpit.

With the steering done and the final position of the dash hoop decided, I tidied up sone other bits and bobs and also fitted the hand brake lever. This sits in line with the dash hoop and will be slightly forwards of the cockpit opening. The cowl will extend past the dash hoop and will curve upwards slightly at the top of the cowl.

I also tacked the rear tail together and tacked it to the rear bulkhead hoop. The tail will be removable, but as I did not get the chance to fabricate the locking mechanism to hold the tail in place, I figured I'd temporarily weld it in position for the show tomorrow.

And so with that done there was only one thing left to do; see if it fitted into the trailer. The trailer is just a 6x4, but fortunately, with the front gate folded down the Cyclekart fits perfectly. The rear chassis member is just higher than the tail gate. Currently the tail section sits above the tailgate but once finished will sit a lot lower. This isn't an issue as It can simply be removed for transport. The trailer was original purchased for transporting the Cyclekart and the fold down front gate was a major plus, so good to see that it fits. One more job ticked off of the list.