Brilliant video Ian. Unusual to see Nigel moving so fast. Is that a first. ? If he gets annoying in his mini form, one of those electric fly zappers will soon calm him down.
Thanks Alan, yeah he doesn't normally move that fast.. I think he was only after my coffee
On 05/12/2016 at 9:14 AM, nigel said:
He left me trapped under the can for ages Norm and put me in a wheelchair, he abused me 😁
You enjoy it
On 05/12/2016 at 8:59 AM, Stormin said:
Enjoyable video, Ian. I see you've finally cut Nigel down to size. And got him working.
Thanks Norm, getting small bloke working was the hard part..
Progress has been a tad slow, but MadTrax now has front shocks fitted..
All I had to do was chop an inch odd from the springs, change the top mounts on the shocks and move the shock mountings up a bit on the frame!
That's a great find Harry, looks like a very capable and fun machine
I may well be the only one thinking like this but I prefer the look without the rear bodywork..
If it were mine I'd fit some arches and a panel to go under the seat rather than find the original bodywork... I think I just don't like the shape of it.. But that's just me
Thanks to Nigel I now have a nice pair of Spax adjustable coil over shocks...
Shorten the springs a little bit and some new top mounts on the frame and they should work
It's been a shocking few days.. Not just pulling the front shocks apart for cleaning and painting, but it's been shocking to see the state of them!
One shock leaks and has a cracked collar which holds the base of the spring in place, the other does not leak but has the same busted collar.. Oh and the springs are slightly different heights!
That would be new shocks needed then!!!
Reeling from the state of the shocks I thought I would cheer myself up and have a look at the front brakes and hubs..
The front brakes didn't work but looking at them I'd guess it was more down to air in the system and bad adjustment than knackered brakes..
I will test the cylinders and adjusters before putting them back in..
Of course most parts were covered in mud and surface rust... Not any longer
A few satin black parts about the place
A random rear shock of unknown parentage that Nigel had sitting on a shelf.. If a second one can be found then that might be the front end sorted..
Oh, and a parcel containing 3 large green sheets turned up yesterday..... I'm sure they will come in handy
Looking good Ian, I like your idea for strengthening the suspension arms.
I have high expectations for the next video and after the last one you have already set the bar high Joseph has been telling all his friends at school about how great the footage is of you handing yourself a mug of coffee/tea.
Iain
Thanks Iain, the suspension arm did need the strengthening for peace of mind if nothing else.
Ahh, the next vid.... It's going to be entertaining for sure, a lot of extra camera work and editing..
Thanks Joseph for me, tell him to continue spreading the word
On 23/11/2016 at 7:39 PM, Anglo Traction said:
Great Vid work Ian, very impressive !. If you want a laugh though, run it with the Subtitles On . Show the awkward Lower Arm swivel Joints to the Press and scare it/them out
Thanks Richard, yeah the subs on MooTube are a laugh.. They can't get it quite right
Well the lower arms have had the treatment and are now a lot stronger too..
Morning all, after a short break from MadTrax to build the camera panning jig thingy I'm back on the case now..
With the frame painted it's time to start on the smaller parts, starting with these nice crusty A arms..
After thinking for a while I decided the best way to clean the crud off was to use one of these.......
Well, use a Hoover as dust extraction for my blasting cabinet
Unfortunately, due to the cabinet beings so small and bad arthritis in my shoulders the pain got too much after just a min's use, so I had to clean the A arms up the old fashioned way with a wire cup brush on the grinder!
The very shot ball joints in the upper A arms came out without to much of a fight..
The lower ball joints however refuse to come out despite plenty of WD40 and huge amounts of pressure in the vice.. I think I'm going to have to grind the base of the ball joints away and try and bash them up through the A arm rather than down as normally would be done.. I'm sure my 12 ton hydraulic press is going to some in handy
Four (mostly) cleaned up A arms waiting a few mods..
With the A arms having quite a bit of rust pitting I don't 100% trust the strength of them especially as they will have to cope with a lot more power and forces.... So template time it was.
Which turned into a couple of these..
One of which fit's in here..
I didn't like the look of the inside straight bit, so something had to be found I could draw around to give a nice gentle curve.
You can also see the lip welded to the underside of the strengthening plate to er... Strengthen it
Fully welded up and hit with some Red Oxide.... I think they should be strong enough now and will hardly notice after a coat or two of satin black
Evening all, time for a long overdue update on this camera panning jig thingy, and quite a lot has changed..
But first..
You saw the masking tape template of the part I forgot to photograph, well here's the part finally photographed..
Screws go though the cog and screw into captive threads in the 6 sided er... boss which is welded to the shaft. It has been re-welded since this photo was taken..
With the winding shafts sorted so they run parallel with each other the whole lot was welded to one end of the rails.
The other end got a pulley..
One of the shafts was then taken back off for some serious strengthening and a few guiding washers.
The green garden string I had bought was useless and kept breaking, so I tried some thin fencing wire which I happened to have kicking about the place.
The system worked just fine for panning along side to side though the fencing wire was starting to develop lots of little kinks..
So I thought I'd best try things up and down..
Yes I was in position to catch the video camera should anything fail and gravity makes things plummet during testing..
These two photo's were taken in record time
As the electric motor at the time was 12 volt, it made it easy to try it out outside..
With it back on the bench for more testing the thin fencing wire decided it had had enough of having lots of little kinks forced onto it and showed it by snapping!
I also wasn't that happy with how the pulleys worked.
The ultra slow side of things was really ultra slow like the camera moved 1 ft every 20 mins sort of ultra slow!
The New Holland tractor wiper motor made all sorts of squealing sounds when it's speed was turned down and it would of been a pain in the 'orse to have to disconnect the drive wire/string from one pulley shaft to another to get different speeds...
Sooooo, a rethink was needed...
Hidden under the yellow rag (which is wrapped around to try and quieten gear noise a bit) is the 18 volt motor from the rechargeable drill that gave up it's speed controls.
It powers the kiddys electric car gearbox to turn a single shaft which is now held up one end by a bearing and plate that came from a Webb cricket pitch mower years ago.. It pays to throw nothing away
As you can see the whole thing is now rubber mounted to the rails to reduce the amount of running sounds the camera picks up.
A big thank you to Matt for donating some strong fishing line to the cause, it now winds both ways on the shaft, so when one side is winding in the other is winding out.
The speed control is a work of art and is more than worthy of the two photo's it's getting
As I am using the trigger speed control from the 18 volt rechargeable drill I needed to find an accurate way of applying pressure of varying amounts to the trigger and keep it there..
The easiest way I could think of was a clamp of some sort..
Like the exhaust clamp with a bit ground out to fit the trigger..
Just tighten the nuts to increase the speed.
A washer was welded on to house a master on off switch
Power is now supplied by this 18.5 volt HP power pack that I found in a box in the workshop.. No idea where or when I got it, but it has come in handy
So with everything finally ready to go, the jig thingy was put in a position up high, video camera clamped in place on the carriage and the comical electrical system plugged in...
It was at the point I managed to knock a stand which was holding up one end and it all came crashing down with a loud bang!
Nigel and Matt came running to see if I'd done anything nasty, but soon hastily retreated once they saw me stomping about the place swearing a lot!
Somehow my video camera didn't get broken, not even a scratch, but the jig thingy did need some repairs!
One of which was to repair the end of the winding shaft which had had a threaded end sheered off!
To make the shaft long enough again I had to lengthen it..
It was at this point I had an idea and left the shaft over length for another idea.. More on that when it happens.
So does the camera panning jig thingy work?
Well, here's a couple of snaps after some successful testing, but your going to have to wait until the next MadTrax video to see the results
Nice idea , i play around with camera mounts quite a lot , i feel that the steel bearings may create an audio issue though , maybe slices of bicycle innertube over them will give a smoother and almost silent track as the camera rolls along .
Take a look on a popular auction site at the 12v remote winch switches , You could be riding by on a tractor and opperate the tracking motor from the seat to get a shot as you pass by .
Or simply be pushing a new engine on a trolley into the workshop and get a shot following you as you go .
If you add a vertical bar near the end of the track , as the trolley nears the end the bar would catch on the tripod head handle and swing the camera around to follow you as you move away giving the effect of having a cameraman operating the set up .
And as you already are using bits from a battery drill , why not simply make up a capstan winch using strimmer cord running around a pulley at each end of the frame with one end tied to the trolley and the other attached with a spring to keep it all tight for better movement when under power .
The battery drill is an amazingly good experimenters tool as bolts can be used to attach all sorts of pulleys / discs etc to the motor easily .And the variable speed and use of 12v batteries make then portable and safe to play around with .
A friend used a stripped down drill with a bent bar in the chuck to opperate a robotic fishes tail , the bar rotated around and the bend swung the tail from side to side , simplicity itself really .
.
Your right about the steel bearing creating lot's of audio noise.. I thought it might do and the video camera does pick it up way too well..
I did try the battery drill motor, but being 18V it wasn't to keen on running at 12V or 13.8V from my CB power pack!
I'd already thought of the self angling camera thingy, but using string instead of a solid bar sort of thing.
One thing I am trying to do with this build is build it as cheaply as possible.. So far it's cost me £1.79 (with staff discount from the garden center) for a ball of string, I'm hoping that's all I have to spend
On 08/11/2016 at 2:42 AM, HeadExam said:
Ian's going Hollywood on us,
Not yet, I still write my own scripts When I say write, it's more like start talking to the camera and wonder what I'm going to say next
22 hours ago, Anglo Traction said:
Very good example of your ingenuity Ian. I see this as an addition to keep your project updates 'On Track' so it doesn't't go ' Off the Rails' .
Thanks Richard
More of an update for you chaps.
As I'd cut up the wiper motor bracket to make the camera carriage thingy, I needed to make a new one.. The shape will change a bit when it gets mounted to the rails.
Here's the gearbox from the kiddies electric var that I forgot to take a photo of..
All that gearing will slow things down very well, ideal for time lapse videos.
The missing sprocket from the gearbox is fixed to the electric motor shaft.. I don't need all of the motor so out came the grinder.
It was at this point that I decided the time had come to look for for an old inner tube to make some tyres out of as Mister Mad Mower suggested.
I couldn't see anything with bike wheels on it in the scrap pile, so I had a drive looking for some rubber coolant pipe to use...
Fear not, the Fergies are safe. It was these two Escorts that I was interested in..
The estate while easy to get into was not going to give up any of it's internals as the bonnet pull lever inside refused to budge!
The saloon I knew had an opening bonnet but without cutting down any trees only the driver door would open.. About 6 inches!
Lot's of unnatural body positions later I just managed to get my arm in and pull the latch..
It's a shame that when I opened the bonnet I found the water pipes way too small!
Oh well, best have another look at the scrap pile as it's on the way back to the workshop..
This time I got off my Wheel Horse to have a real good look..
Then I spotted it buried under loads of junk and long grass.
Hurrah
Yesterday was a very cold day weather wise so naturally the first thing to do when I got back to the workshop was to make a coffee
And bask in the glory of finally finding an inner tube.
Once the coffee had warmed me up I slice a bit off the inner tube and with a lot of stretching it slid onto the bearing.. Instant tyre
I will try a wider bit of inner tube to see how well it wraps it's self around the bearing.. As you can see the bearing only really make contact with the rails on it's outer edge, so the more the tube wraps it's self around the better..
I'm not a fan of the really low profile tyre look anyway
Back to the drive train if you can call it that lol..
To get the ultra slow panning side of things working I needed to find a way of fixing the small electric car motor to the New Holland wiper motor..
A bit of round bar with a 3mm diameter drilled in it..
The bar was then heated up (ta for the use of your blow torch Nigel) and expanded so the 3.2mm shaft of the electric motor could be press fitted in.
A bit of tube with a 13mm nut welded on.
Which is a tight fit on the bit of bar.
Once the tube is welded to the bar the nut end winds onto the wiper motor.
Taa daaaa... Drive into the gearbox for the ultra slow speed side of things.
To get drive out of the gearbox I needed to find a way of fixing a bit of this bar to this sprocket.
A masking tape template, shame I forgot to photo the steel version as well!
The basic motorized system, and yes the far shaft needs a tweak to get it straight..
The idea is you can tie a bit of string to the shaft coming out the wiper motor to produce a nice workable speed..
Move the string to the far shaft and the gearing is such that it would take about 30 mins maybe more to pull the camera carriage up the rails.. Just right for time lapse stuff
. If you want a laugh though, run it with the Subtitles On 
Honda MadTrax V Twin Quad.. Nearly Finished.. Woo Hoo
in Home Built Items
Posted
Yesterday was spent cleaning and painting the engine.. Once the radiator and mountings plus the carbs were off the engine looked a lot smaller..
And a lot cleaner after lots of time with wire brushes on a drill
Parts like the fan shroud were very rusty..
But after a lot of cleaning, priming and top coating it looked good along with the radiator..
And the radiator/front engine mount thingy.
The engine looks quite good too
