...Return To Mine & Other Bonneville Car Construction Pages
.Previous Page...............B'ville Car Index Page.........................Next Page
.......................Bracket Spacers for the Lever Arms
...................
.
The inboard lever arm has two sets of holes running up and down it. The shock will be attached to one set and the spring will be attached to the other set. Brackets will be made, but first I needed to made spacers that will space the brackets out past the web on the lever arm.
...................
.
The spacers will be 7/8 inch in dia. with a 7/16+ hole in them for the mounting bolts and will be 1/2 inch long. I had a piece of 1 inch dia. cold rolled steel. I turned it down to 7/8 inch in dia.
...................
.
Next I drilled a 7/16+ hole up the middle of it. I had to repeat the drilling as I went along since I didn't have a bit long enough to do it in one operation.
...................
....................
The end was cut square and a small 45 deg. chamfer was put on the outside edge so there wouldn't be a sharp corner there.
...................
A stop (see arrow) was set on the band saw to cut the rod a little over 1/2 inch long. After the cut I took the long piece and retrued the end like in the previous picture and cut it again. Every so often I would also have to drill the center further into the rod. This step was repeated 16 times as I needed 16 spacers all the same.
...................
The short piece was placed in the chuck. I don't know what the correct way to get a short piece like this square in the chuck, but I use two parallels (arrows) from the mill and push the piece back against them and then tighten the chuck and pull the parallels out. Seems to work fine and just takes a second.
...................
With the spacer in the chuck I cut it down to 1/2 inch long and again put a chamfer on the outer edge of this side also.
...................
After I had all 16 done following the steps above I reamed out a bevel in the bore on both sides of the spacer to take away the sharp edge on the inside bore.
...................
Here are the 16 close to identical spacers that are needed to mount the shock/spring brackets to the lever arms.
...................
This shows how one set of 4 will be on each side of the lever arm. I show
sets of two opposite each other here, but they could mount the springs or shocks up and down the arm independent
of each other. Next comes the brackets that will mount to the lever arm using these spacers.
..................................................................Next
Page