MEDUSA - British back yard engineering - ON THE COVER 🇬🇧 2021

I pulled on to a roundabout behind you in my Maverick, just before you pulled in to BH.

It certainly has a road presence!

Way back in the distant past ,i spoke of our visit to the festival of transport ...

Here's the video , latest in the series "ADVENTURES IN MEDUSA "

Once again.......

You have me at “Veronica”

Thanks for sharing.

goood Evening .


Progress has been slow due to my havng had a c19/fit of house and astra improvements , but those have been completed , and i am back onto the M for Medusa .

First port of call was to attack the choke fitmentation ..


on the throttles there is a stock suzuki gsx600 bracket ,






the most marvelous thing about this unusually co operative bit of kit , is that it has, on the back side ...




a linkage for applying the choke ! bingo !!

pulling the cable makes this cam ..





rotate , and bearing on a roller on the throttle actuation arm , opens it up a touch for the maximost on the coldy revvy uppimuch...ness.


next i had to sort some way of holding the cable thingy.



i hoicked out one of the Ti diverter blocks ,and extracted the adjuster ..










this sits like so ..







so that's that bit resolved , then i marked out the dash , and bored a hole for the choke knob mount..






i used a socket as a guage , and trimmed the hole out with the die grinder until it fitted the hole .



tomorrow i can get to fitting the cable and seeing if it all works .




In other news ,

Considering the Continental tour , i am investigating ways to make a soft top for the old girl ,this would be either adapt a top or make one, i found an old faded one on ebay , so am pondering that .

Re windscreen , my thoughts run to a polycarb sheet 6mm , and make a frame ,which will all fit behind the seat , or i could buy a austin ruby screen cheaply , and make a frame for that ....

i could also make some velcro on side windows too.


Re the wheels , i bored a hole in my spare , and did not like it , so i am now leaning ..very slightly.... to keeping my wheels as they are with a little brass emblem in the middle .





regards
robert

well a very strange experience today ,

been in iso for 8 weeks so far , and found myself getting very emotional , crying , then gloomy ,then a bit more tears ,then laughing inanely ,then just emotional total overload .

i could not work out what was wrong ,started over analysing myself as you do , was i ill? was i lonely ?? did life have no meaning without a weekly visit to the shops !



maybe i have some sort of emotional blockage that i could not process???




Then i realised what it was ...










YES ! that's right ...i was ALL CHOKED UP !

see what i did there ? no ??...NO ..oh well please yourselves ...try the veal





regards
robert

Allow me to get your coat
That was truly awful 😱

Maybe even longer !




Aye thank you its all in the delivery .lol

Next job is my rev counter face improvement/potential disaster ...


THe situation re the vast dial from the 1930's , was that i had , in a hurry to get it done for "the getting it on the rd " drive , put in a normal a4 printed face design , which was all a bit thin and not as nice as it could be ....oh, and not glued down...

Meanwhile , i had ordered a couple of slices of double sided adhesive film ,and i had a slightly off white face sent to me by my friend gary who helped create the face design with me ...

The plan was to cut out a new face ,put film stuck on the back ,then stick it onto the clock face for keeps.

What i did not realise was the glue on that film is unbelievably strong , so i had a one shot to get it on the dial ,and a one shot to get it on the clock!



first off get the sticky film out ..







then tape the film and the a4 sheet with the design on it to the table , and with the old face taped on top of all that cut around it right through to the table top so all the sheets are done .one slight problem was cutting the little holes in it , to do this i got a bit of this ..





bit of steel brake pipe , then drilled into the end , and sharpened the edge ..






this gave me a hole cutting punch , would it work ..?

see old holes in the old face ...all raggedy..





new test hole with the megapunch ..





noice !


To get through all the layers i had to painstakingly push the point of the blade through mm by mm , giving a sort of postage stamp effect ..




but it all came apart ok , here's the new face ..










i then peeled off the backing ..




And this when i realised that the slightest glue contact with the new face was a permanent connection !! luckily i got it within a mm , so just trimmed a bit of the gluey bit off the edges .phew .

then it was time to try to put it on the clock face in the car , i had a slot, 2 small holes, a big hole ,and the edges to line up , and if i got it wrong then it would all be torn apart getting it back off .



luckily it went on nicely and i didn't muff it up ..





it looks a lot richer than the old one , and now its actually stuck down it wont catch the needle either .


i am very happy to have my one shot with my sticky film go where i wanted it too.



oh , and i have mostly been eating honey on toast .





regards
robert

Too late now, but a lot of printers have a slot where you can print onto CD's if you made up the faceplate you could then print directly onto it. Probably a stupid idea as the sizes aren't right and you'd have trouble lining it up correctly.