Odds and Ends

The last couple evenings I’ve been focused on completing my 4-carb linkage knock-off. Wednesday I completed cutting out the two slotted plates. The tough thing about these is the mating rod must glide along the slot without hanging up. My crude way of making the slot was to drill a series of holes, grind out the material left in between, and file the surfaces smooth. The latter was a tedious task and an excellent example of square peg (flat file) in a round hole (arced opening). The results are not what I’d hope for, but some time with a Dremel tool should get rid of the bumps. By the way, the photo here is NOT of my handiwork; it is the borrowed part. Last night I tackled the final piece – the second actuator. Unlike the first piece, the bending around of the metal took a few tries before I was satisfied with the location of the bend. Marking, punching, and drilling the holes was a breeze after that. With the parts complete, I turned my attention to attaching the slotted plates to the throttle rod. Given I was welding thicker material, I bumped up the power setting on my MIG welder. I had to be careful, however, since too much power would burn through the parts I’d spent so much time creating. With the first plate clamped to the rod, I made molten metal – a little tack weld – and checked my work. As soon as I un-did the clamp, the piece fell off. Argh! Re-clamp and I made more molten metal. That did the trick. When a little is not enough, gobs more must be required. With that lesson, the rest of the welding went wonderfully. The two plates are attached and the borrowed assembly is back tougher ready to return.

I spent the rest of the evening emptying out Ringo of tools and scraps of metal, clearing and sweeping the floor, and putting away tools. All in preparation for giving Ringo a spin thus exposing his driver’s side to my floor patching prowess.