Week 18 - The Build

Hopefully things will start getting back on track this week. The plan is to get the engine in with drive shafts attached.

Having messed up the drive shafts before it is with some trepidation that I set about doing it right his time. The shafts come prefitted with hopefully waterproof bearings close to the inner end. These insert through openings in the hull that are not large enough to accomodate both ends of the assembled shafts.

This picture shows the parts of the shaft. The inboard end is to the left and you can see the waterproof bearing. Also see the rubber gaiter, the tripod bearing (with the legs protected with masking tape and the circlip to hold it the bearing on the shaft. 

 First job is to inert the shafts through the hull opening and slide the rubber gaiter over the end. 

 

Here is one shaft in position. To the right you can see another gaiter already clipped to the hull. The other end clips to the outer rim of the bearing you can see.

To help ease the sliding of the tripod bearings onto the shaft I first soaked them for a few minutes in boiling water to help expand them. It nevertheless came as a massive suprise to see they slipped on quite easily using only a medium sized hammer.

Here is one done already for squishing in the grease. 

Now its engine back in time!

However you look at it, the engine is a tight fit! With quite a lot of pushing and shoving and effing and jeffing its back in. It position is really dictated by the tie bar at the bottom. In fact, with this bolted in there will be almost no movement possible.

It's then a good idea to bolt up the other two mountings. A good move with the Stbd. side one is to have inserted the bolts through the hull seat and loosly thread the nuts on from below. Putting the nuts on with the engine in position wis very difficult. The port side mounting is very straighforward.

Port side...

Stbd side ....

Next the inner drive shaft cv needs to be slid together. Having got them in I coupled up the suspension leg and bottom arm loosley to stop them sliding out again.

 To finish the week I then clamped the hull gaiter to the shaft bearing. Actually not all that easy as the inside of the gaiter had become covered in grease which had to be removed with paint thinners first.

Really pleased with the weeks work. Feel I passed a bit of a milestone with all the major components now installed. Just need to connect every up now. Just the cooling system, fuel pipes, clutch hydraulic hose, brakes pipes and serv, electronics, battery power, lights, engine management units as well as all the stuff I've already forgotten about.