Adoom

I've also cleaned and painted the calipers. The pistons can be reused, but the rubbers are knackered, so I've got to get a rebuild kit before I can assemble them. They are 2003 Subaru Impreza 2 pot calipers. The rebuild kit from rock auto is really cheap, ~$17 with all the springy plates too, but freight is about $40. Surely I can get a rebuild kit for less than that locally?

I did actually do stuff to this over the xmas break. But I didn't take many photos. I finished modifying the front cross member and permanently mounted the rack. The easiest option ended up being to replicate the factory brackets. With the sump modified, I could lift the rack back up(still lower than factory) 16mm which meant I could remove the spacer between the rod end and the steering arm. This also gave me loads of clearance between the rod end and the wheel rim. When I finished the cross member I thought, well, I guess it's time to take the suspension off the yellow car(where I was mocking up) and put it on this car. I looked at the suspension and thought, I don't want to put those dirty, rusty parts on.... I guess I'll clean and paint them first. Cleaning and painting took ages. I used it to justify, to myself, buying a blasting cabinet. I got new bearings. And ball joints for the lower arms. I had a bit of a WTF moment when I tried to dry assemble the hubs with the discs and calipers.... And the calliper brackets didn't fit, like not by miles. After being confused and sad, and sleeping on it. What I think happened was that the hub I used to make the caliper brackets had some ridges worn on the stud axle that caused the bearing to sit 4.5mm proud. I decided that to only way to fix it was to machine 4.5mm off the back of the hub to move the disc. Now it all bolts together. I

So... something like 12 years ago I bought my vice 2nd hand. I was missing one of the jaws. Buying or making a replacement jaw should be straight forward.... right? I never found anything off the shelf that was the right size. Probably because the vice is polish. Since then I made do with only the one jaw... After a few years, the one jaw broke... But I continued to make do. Finally, yesterday I decided that the tools and materials I have, had reached critical mass and making replacement jaws was achievable. The old broken jaw... The 50X50 aluminium bar I chiselled it out of. It took a REALLY LONG time to saw this. My bandsaw doesn't really go fast enough for aluminium and the only blade I have is like 18tpi and kinda blunt. The mess I made. This is the first actual thing I have milled since I got it. I had only really used it for drilling. I used the 50mm face mill for the big flat bits and 12mm 4 flute for the ends and some of the surfaces. I destroyed one 12mm end mill when I discovered that it doesn't handle climb milling with the quill extended quite far. Chipped all the points off the end. Oops. I didn't have an end mill large enough to countersink the socket screws, so had to use a 14mm drill. And the finished jaws. The originals were 12mm thick. These are about 20mm. I guess if they get all gouged up I have enough meat there to mill them flat again. It took surprisingly long to make these. About 4 hours.

Motor arrived already! Unfortunately, the packaging(probably china original) was insufficient and there is a big dent in the fan shroud and in the wiring box. But it's just cosmetic, so I CBF doing anything about it. I've installed the motor. And I've installed the 15Amp overcurrent switch that came with the first one I blew up. The motor is supposed to draw 13.5Amps. I mounted it to the main switch so it was easy to get to. I also put in some cable strain relief using p-clips. The overcurrent switch works too.... Turns out it draws too much when it tries to spin up to 800RPM, but it will do 528RPM just fine. I did a test cut on some 50mm round at 528RPM, 2mm depth of cut and that was fine. I might be able to get it up to 800RPM if I cut the power, reset the over current switch, then power on again before the chuck slows down too much.... maybe. Going by the theory that it's drawing a shit ton of current just to accelerate all that weight. The speeds I get are ~double what it says here because the original motor would have been 1400rpm and I'm using a 2800rpm motor to make it go faster. But if the fastest I can run with the 3HP motor is 528RPM.... It would have been better to use a 1400rpm motor and have more torque at lower speeds. Le sigh....

Possibly I imagine it will cost almost as much as a new china motor.

I fucked up. When I wired in the forward/reverse switch, it wasn't obvious how to include the over current switch... Here is my $260 mistake. The smoke was/is acrid as fuck. Really burns the eyes.

See my sight glasses.... I also got an Aloris style wedge type tool post from EBay USA. It came with 7 holders. I thought it was a lot of money.... then shipping and unspecified "duty and taxes" got added, which doubled the price. So I'd been trying to think of an excuse to buy a 3HP motor to upgrade the 2.2HP motor. The 2.2HP had a noisy centrifugal switch.... The 3HP motor arrived this afternoon. After removing the 2.2 and finding it really hot, I realised the centrifugal switch was stuck on.... so the starting capacitor was always connected. The 3HP is wired up now, it's much quieter. It was getting late...I still need to align the pulley and I want to see if I can find matching belts as they are slightly different lengths.

I used silicone when I put it back on, after making sure all the..... selector forks? fingers? spades? blades?.... were in the appropriate slots. I get to fill it with oil tonight.

The replacement china sight glasses finally arrived. When I drained the oil out of the carriage, it didn't drain very well. I found that there was a thick layer of watery oily filth sludge in the bottom. So I unbolted the base plate to clean it out. Fortunately it cleaned up quite well. I also discovered that there was a broken spring. It had rusted at one end because it was under the sludge. I replaced the spring and its retaining screw. Tonight I tried to flush out the feed screw gearbox. I discovered it was pretty filthy too. So I moved all the levers to the left and removed the front plate. There's a couple of gears in there.... And then after cleaning. There was a paper gasket. I'm not sure if I want to try make a new one, or just use silicone since it's probably not going to be removed again for many years.

I just open them in MS paint and use the resize option. 35% works for me. Still big enough for forums, but file size much smaller.

I forgot blowing up sheep by constant clicking. I do remember "stop touching me".

Cool! "glitteringprizes" "fogofwar"...not sure if this one was a cheat....

Yes. It was very effective. Especially after the tuner replaced the water with 100% E85. I think there might have been ~10 degree temp drops after the injector. But, the jets that came with the Aquamist system did not supply a consistent/repeatable amount of E85. So I replaced it with an inline fuel pump and additional injector and it was retuned. When the E85 injector was running, it reduced the 'normal' fuel at the primary injectors. It was reliable... for a few weeks/months until I took it to a track day and something failed with the E85 system. Since the ECU had no way to know there was no E85. the fuel mix went REALLY lean and shit melted. That's my story.

I took the lid off so I can de-rust it. Looks okay in there. Everything is oily. There's no obvious wear. The brown/orange streaks are not oil, it's almost like dried varnish. I suspect it's some kind of liquid gasket/sealer.

These guys had what I needed. https://www.tinkr.co.nz/

Would you know what oil it needs for the headstock? The Meuser site only has two kinds of oil. No brand name ISO VG 22 for the headstock and feedscrew gearbox. And ISO VG 220 for the carriage and ways. I've found Cimglide 220 for the carriage. I have no idea how much it takes... But I'm just getting confused trying to find an ISO VG 22 for lathe gearboxes.... I keep finding "hydraulic oil" in that viscosity..... is it the same thing????

Fiiiiiiiiiiiiine! So I linished the plates on the bench grinder to remove the slag so they would sit flush against each other. Then I lined up the teeth and clamped it together with the bolts. Then turned the tig down to 50 and ran it across the back a few times to glue them together. It bolted up okay. It's kinda works. Like it will stay up if I lift the arm. But it falls down as soon as I turn it on. It would probably help if I sharpen the little plates that engage on the teeth so they fit better.

I lightly sanded some of the machined surfaces with 400 grit to get the rest of the black off. It opens and closes smooth as now. It had to force it in some spots when I took it apart.

Close...ish. I found brass ones which would suit the lathe more than aluminium I think. For $26 I'll give it a go.

That would probably work. I got my Bicarbonate of soda from Mitre10. It's with the laundry powders. It's called laundry soda or washing soda or something like that. It looks like almost clear, big crystals.

It's just a cheap battery charger. I'm not sure how many amps it's doing. I have to submerge my whole hand before I can feel the pulsing

So these are the oil level sight glasses. They are plastic. They were too dirty to see through. The 3rd one, from the headstock, was leaking enough to need a bucket. It was broken and it wasn't pressing on the seal properly. Removing it made it much much more broken. The 4th one, from the carriage, was leaking a little bit because it was broken. It came out without more damage. The first one is from the threading gearbox. It could be reused. I managed to clean it enough to see through. The 2nd one is from the headstock, but it lets you see that oil is flowing and the oil pump is working. It's broken, but still seals. It's pretty hazy though. All the o-rings are hard. Those stars live inside the oil level sights so you can see the oil against a white background. They seem to be proprietary. Yay.... The threads are quite coarse. M33x2.0mm, M26x1.75mm and M21x1.75mm. All I've been able to find are 1.5mm pitch. I'm contemplating popping my thread cutting cherry and trying to make something that will take an inexpensive generic sight glass. I just had a thought.... I could ignore the thread and just silicone some perspex discs into the holes!

Clean. And I straightened the.... pointer bit. There's a little bit of paint still on it, but it's good enough.

It's definitely still sitting in the small thingies drawer. I should probably finish it, over a year is probably long enough.