Seasonal greetings ...

New wheel centres for the DHC

Those that follow this blog will remember that well over a year ago, I fitted a set of refurbished Wolfrace Turbo's to my DHC. Because they came with only one wheel centre I decided to have a set of those made. At the time I contacted a few local companies who specialise in 3D printing, but they all were far too expensive or just not interested. So I opted to have them spun from aluminium alloy instead. Sadly the guy who would do the work suffered from a heart attack and as a result he had to stop with work.

So to fill the gap till I found a solution I fitted a set from Compomotive, shown above. But they really are only a stop gap solution as they are a fair bit too small, but so far the gaffer tape bodge has kept them in place. So it was pretty easy to forget that I had to finish this little project ...

Until recently that is, when I was given the details of i.materialise, a company in Belgium who specialise in 3D printing. So the AutoCad file I created over a year ago was dusted off and converted to a 3D printing format. That turned out to be not as easy as I thought, as one of their support engineers pointed me to the fact that the model I sent over was rather rough. But with some help from a friend who knows more about AutoCad then me, the file was converted to a much higher resolution 3D printing file. The end result should look something like this ...

The file is currently waiting in the print queue, with an estimated shipping date of January the 9th 2015. Needless to say I  am very keen to see the end result as this might be an easy and economical way of fabricating certain parts. 

FHC resto nr. 26; Swage line rectification

Paint preparations have been on hold the past few weeks due to illness. But by the end of last week the work has restarted. First on the to-do-list was rectifying the swage line on the right hand rear wing. As a result of the numerous small and not so small dents in this area the line had suffered a bit. Which is clearly visible in the picture posted on November the 9th. After adding some filler and sanding it down it now looks like this ...

Also did some adhesion tests to see how the primer attaches to the epoxy primer. I mentioned earlier that we had some doubts here, but I am glad to report all is fine. These test were done on the engine bay, which is also finished by now ...

And it is clear that the car won't see the inside of the spray booth in 2014. Hopefully somewhere in the second half of January.

Alloy SU mounts part 2

Or how the transformation from digital file to machined parts looks like. Friday evening there was a fairly large box waiting for me at home. Sure it came from Schaeffer, and nicely within their estimated delivery window. The only thing that struck me as odd was the box's size. It really was vast for what it should contain ...

For comparison I put an original carburettor mount on top of it  together with the bolts needed to finish them. So did I make a mistake with the files, or did something go wrong on-line? Or did they just run out of smaller boxes? But a quick inspection of the contents showed me all looked fine.

This was confirmed after removing the parts from their protective wrapping ...

... and comparing them with an original mounting block. This was a bit of a tense moment as there is always some doubt in the back of my head ... "did I measure everything correctly". But I needn't have worried there as everything fits as it should and all holes align correctly ... 

And as an added bonus these alloy mounts are each 40 grams lighter in comparison to the original rubber ones. See how they behave on the car, and in particular how they influence heat transfer to the carburettors. Well, the first little winter project is finished. Getting cool air into the carburettors is one of the other jobs for this winter. To be continued.