Spent the day over at Black8Driver's workplace today.
First I must say a HUGE thanks to Si for all his help. I was there as 'babysitter' while he was welding up his new daily....he wanted me there 'just in case' anything went wrong (sensible chap) and I figured I might as well make some progress with the Rascal, so took along some bits to re-manufacture....Si was great in lending a hand on some of the parts where I knew I would just plain fail
As a sidenote, some shots of Si's workplace will be finding their way into a thread of their own - what an AWESOME place! I didn't want to leave. You'll understand why when you see the thread (those pics will have to wit until tomorrow)
Anyway, here is today's progress:
One of the original Rascal shackles. I want to be able to adjust the ride height on the back so these will be replaced with some custom jobbies. See the big slab of metal under the shackle....that will be sliced up into rectangular sections to make new shackle plates.
PLASMA CUTTING! How cool is that?? ;D
With no 50mm flat bar available I had no choice but to cut my sections from 5mm thick sheet steel. Not a very exciting prospect if using normal cutting technology (saw or grinder)....Plasma is deffo the way forward. Within seconds of grabbing the torch, I had myself a section cut out. I want a plasma cutter
The downside of something as thick as 5mm is the edge created by the plasma torch....not exactly clean
That's gonna take a bit of grinding - but hey, it was worth it.
A bit of grinding action later and it's looking a bit more presentable:
Four shackles plates cut out from a single sheet of 5mm steel. I was pretty pleased with the results
Clamped together and drilled with adjuster holes...then lop the corners off to make them a little more 'shapely'
Top hole is where it mounts to the body, 2nd hole is for a strengthener bar and bottom five holes are the adjuster holes for the leaf spring to mount (moving the leaf up each hole will lower the Rascal by 8mm - a total of 32mm adjustment)
All edges and holes dressed to remove rough edges/swarf
Sandblasted to clean them up & remove all the rust:
Some MS tube cut to correct length and opened up on the lathe to give the bolts a prefect snug fit
Homebrew adjustable shackle kit complete:
100mm bolts were the only ones we could get today and are a little bit long. They work fine but just stick out a fair bit, so they are temporary until I can get some 80mm ones which will look better.
New polybush top-hats from a Suzuki SJ finish the shackles off. The shackle plates and spacer tubes will be sent off and zinc plated before final fitment so they will look a lot neater than they do right now.
By this time, Si had finished the welding on his car so I gave him something else to melt - my lowering blocks. My original 2" blocks were removed from the Rascal and Si welded another 1" block to each to give me a pair of 3" lowering blocks. Something you can't seem to buy in the UK?
Lovel welding Si
Now the biggest problem with my new 3" lowering blocks is that the U-bolts won't fit!! OK....lets make some new U-bolts ;D
Some bar is cut into four lengths (2" longer than the current U-bolt) and the ends dressed with a taper.
Si then knocked up a jig with his sheer skillz and set about warming up the bar and reshaping it
Like I said - sheer skillz. It's awesome to watch him work....
Almost there (said in voice of Red Leader)
Pretty darn frickin cool huh??
The boy is good.
Nearly 2 hrs of running a die around to thread the bar was almost more than I could take. Si took over around halfway through....spent 10 mins running the die, got pi$$ed off then proceeded to weld a socket to the die and used an air ratchet to finish the last few threads. About 1hr work in 10mins. LEGEND!
U-bolts DONE!
So there you have it - a complete suspension upgrade for the Rascal. Adjustable ride height here we come (along with front colivers obviously
Thanks again Si - I've had such a brilliant day.
Tomorrow - Rascal gets fresh metal courtesy of Grunty and his Mig Skillz. One session carried out last week, part 2 tomorrow. Photos of both sessions to come in due course.....
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interface?? If so, should be OK....but I don't have any spring compressors!
