Friday, 15 February, 2013, 4pm

It’s been a while since the last instalment, I’ve been a bit distracted dealing with the flood and its consequences. In spite of this, some progress has been made on the front end. These are the finished bottom bracket/cross shaft mounts –

They’re a bit rough around the edges, but I didn’t want to bog them and add weight, or sand them and lose strength, so rough they stay. The embossing worked nicely.

And so to the front end. Firstly I fitted some washers for the wishbone mounts, gluing them in place with Sikaflex adhesive –

This allowed me to tweak their location (M board holes are 21mm, washers are 20mm ID). The edge of the M board has been trimmed with iron-on Melamine edging and extra gluing with Sika. Next step was to glue the wishbone bushes into the M board with epoxy, after locking their position with 5 min araldite –

The final step was to glue the inside washers in place and rivet them, as shown in this photo. Also shown is the front frame tube mount, glued with Sika and fixed with threaded mounts epoxy’d into the M board –

These tube mounts, together with the same set-up at the back end, will be the only penetrations in the tubes. Thanks to Eddie Gray for the hanglider frame. Note grease nipples on the wishbone bushes. This is the front end so far –

A small Kevlar fairing will eventually take the bluntness out of the front end. I once replaced the fibreglass fairing on my Ducati Pantah with a Kevlar fairing. The original was 34 lbs, the replacement weighed 3 lb.

Kingpin inclination is 13.5 degrees, camber is negative 1 degree –

Some fitting of the rod ends was necessary to allow enough clearance over the arc of travel. Red plugs are made from kitchen cutting board (thanks, Nico). I had to lock the steering link on to the kingpin with high strength Loctite. This is the action of the front wheel under compression, from 3 superimposed photos –

From this can be seen two things – The contact patch of the wheel moves truly vertically, eliminating tyre scrub, in spite of the rotation of the wishbones, and the wheel tilts in under compression, adding 7.5 degrees of camber. An effect of this camber gain is that the roll centre is a mere 31mm off the road surface. Should stick to the road like shit to a blanket.

Here’s the front (passenger side) drive train