Fun with metalwork [Full Metal Wheelbarrow]

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Rob was planning to go on a long ride today, but yesterday, as I was helping him oil the suspension, the right hand steering rod came adrift from the frame - it was attached by means of a bolt on which it pivoted, which helpfully sheared and then refused to come out of either of the bits of trike to which it was attached.

So today he has mostly been trying to separate the head end of the bolt from the steering rod by means of WD40, 3-in-1 oil and, when those didn't work, heating it up on the gas hob and then pouring cold water over it, which finally did the trick.

So tomorrow, he has the equally fun job of trying to extract the other half from the frame. Joy.

On the plus side, at least it happened here, rather than when he was swooshing down a hill at 40+mph...

Mood::

tired

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There are 11 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

How lucky for Rob. :)

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Would have been luckier still if it hadn't failed at all, but if it was going to, at least it chose the least bad place to do it :)

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Exactly. You have to be grateful for that.

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Eek. Sounds as if it needs a tougher bolt, if it's stressed heavily enough to shear. It was indeed lucky that it didn't fail under way.

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Annoyingly, he's had bolts fail on this machine before and had replaced most of them with high-tensile ones. Which means drilling the other end out of the frame is tough going :(

I think he's pretty much given up on getting it out without completely disassembling the fairing to get better access... Good thing it's only another few weeks before he collects his new machine...

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Good grief; it was highly-stressed, then. I hope the repair doesn't take too long - and that the new machine doesn't suffer from similar problems.

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The new machine is from a different manufacturer and will be a production model - this one was a pre-production prototype used for testing and development and as such had a number of parts which weren't quite up to scratch for a production machine. I suppose it's remarkable really, that it's done as well as it has! :)

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Ah, IC. I suppose some problems were to be expected, in that case - still a bit unnerving, though.

I hope the new trike performs well.

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He was supposed, to have a production machine, but it wasn't ready in time for his planned tour round the coast of Britain. The manufacturer sent this one as a last-minute substitute, in the expectation that the proper one would arrive in a few months, but alas, problems meant the production of these has been sidelined for the foreseeable future :(

The new one is much lighter too, so he should just whizz along :)

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Now you mention it, I remember what you said at the time about the machine being sent to Rob in a bit of a hurry for his Tour. It does indeed seem that more work is needed before they make any (or any more) production examples.

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I had a chain tube on my trike that was rubbing a bit so I took it off and had a pulley installed. Now the chain retainer on the pulley rubs sometimes. If you are fond of more exotic machinery, you sometimes feel like the perpetual beta tester. :-)

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Full Metal Wheelbarrow

Fun with metalwork

Exactly. You have to be grateful for that, at least.

December