The Rocket ST159

[fatboy]

Love the engineering flowchart
The first time i put my engine in it took 2 of us lots of bad words and scratched powder coat. Second time 2 weeks ago took my time covered all paint and fitted it on my own without touching anything go figure.
A little tip for silocon spray (furniture polish)is spot on for freeing radiator valves (TRV) I like beeing random!

[Stiggy]

Mar 3, 2015 1:14:40 GMT pocketrocket said:

If & when someone works it all out, can you let me know.

I'm not to bad working with springs, shocks, weight distribution etc etc, but I reckon you've all confused the cr@p out of me with this. But I think it would be a neat feature to have

I have just encountered a similar problem with spec for gas springs. I found it is possible to over stress the hinge and GRP if you are not accurate and that it is not really a good idea to load up and expect the panel to lift itself as that is expecting too much from the mountings. I tried the calc approach and got it slightly wrong but I was a long way off in practice. I then purchase adjustable gas springs (£18 each). You just open a bleed screw at one second intervals until the pressure is sufficient to hold up the, well in my case gullwing doors. If you go too far then you can take them back to have them re gassed.
The firm I used is;

www.sgs-engineering.com/

[johnp]

Another useful page for struts:  springmasters

[casesensitive]

Cheers Stiggy and johnp, great links. The adjustable SGS ones look the nuts alright.

My plan, such as it is, is to make some sort of load spreader, initially out of aluminium, maybe a U-shaped 'cover' for the bonnet, so that the force is distributed over more of the bonnet lip. The main issue is going to be the hinge though, there's just nothing holding it in, relatively speaking, 8 M4 screws with washers. I might try and make an 8m strip to run the full width of the bonnet to act as some sort of load spreader too.
I'll only now if it hasn't worked far too late mind.

[casesensitive]

Driveshafts

Plan for the day was to install the driveshafts, but they were so tatty I couldn't bring myself to do it. Started with a wire brush drill bit, quickly abandoned that and reached for the 80-grit flapper on the angel grinder, and a mini dremel flapper.

Sample area.



One down



Bit of hammerite, not especially tidy work, may paint over with blue caliper paint, a) because it'll match the frame and b) because I have half a pot left



and you





I couldn't figure out whether I needed to do the bracket, so I held off until my trial fit. Yes, yes you do need to do the bracket Should come off handy enough though.

[casesensitive]

Installing the driveshafts


Venhill stuffed up the colour of my brake lines, and I didn't want to wait for them to do them again, so they sent me out this yellow over braid, which is about as useful as a c0c& flavoured lollipop. but it make a good sighting line. Some builders report begin able to shine a laser between the hubs, through the gearbox, I set my goals a lot lower. On the getrag there's something (like an irregular marble, about 25/30mm diameter) in the gearbox housing that would block this anyway, I had to slide the over braid over a straightened coat hanger, and go around it. Not completely level, but tolerable, and with no adjustment so far. Gearbox mount hasn't been finalised, but position of the bracket is only about 8mm too far forward of and almost exactly the right height of where engine naturally sits. Not bad RTR.



I thought this was going to be pretty hard, because I remember how difficult it was to get the buggers out, much whacking was involved.
It turned out to be reasonably straightforward once I realised the uprights need to swing out to allow them in.

Plenty of proper copper grease (did I get it right this time kiwicanfly ?), gearbox side first, then obtuse angle on the halfshaft into the hub.







Then push very hard on the outside of the hubs to get it all to line up. I found I had to free the suspension by loosening the end caps as far as they'd go.



On the offside I had to jack up the upright (on 3 concrete blocks plus scissor jack) to get the upper wishbone back in. Took the opportunity to replace two bolts whose colour didn't match.

[casesensitive]

Handbrake cable

I may have encountered a reason why the rear calipers need to be reversed on a Rocket; look like the handbrake cable would snag on the driveshafts, which would be a A Very Bad Thing. I've never been happy with how they fit anyway, chance for a do over.

[casesensitive]

Engine cover

It still needs to be sanded and painted, but once I took the hinge and lid off, I was able to contort my single-piece based into place with the engine in. Some of the rivnuts I put into to hold it in place are definitely inaccessible though, that could be interesting.



Also primed the hinges on the bonnet and engine cover lid with 3/4 coats of Halfords rattle can primer. Went reasonably well, no more brass!

[casesensitive]

Clutch line

The Getrag clutch line lacks a threaded part, so it looks like I have to make it myself; wasn't looking forward to this at all.
I had a pop at flaring a spare bit I had lying around with various not-the-right-tools, which was no use.

In the end, I went with an idea suggested by free - silver solder/brazing. I nervously cut the donor clutch line in half, with as much straight line as I could.
This is is the trial half, if it holds, I'll do the other side for real. I took one of the donor's brake fittings, M10 threaded, slid it over the line, and held in place with high-temp stixall. I'll silver solder it up after I've been to get some flux.

[casesensitive]

Gear cables

Just a quick note, to myself as much as to everyone else; attached donor gear cables / linkage, which is 1.2m long, and it's a good 80-90cm too short to reach the gear selector. We can't ALL be plundering 2 MGFs each to get 2 long cables, what are people ordering to complete this? Plus, I reckon they'd still be about 10cm too short to go under the sump.
Time for yet another deep trawl of the builds..

Edit: daydreamer has a good post in another thread about this. Cabletec looks the business. I imagine though that the ends would have to be fabricated? There are no 'ball' receivers, nor any obvious SKU that attaches the 6mm threaded part to the gear selector and gearbox end.

[kiwicanfly]

Apr 7, 2015 7:55:09 GMT casesensitive said:

Plenty of proper copper grease (did I get it right this time kiwicanfly ?)

LOL - Wasn't me,

[casesensitive]

Bits'n'bobs

Retrimmed my front side panels; looking at everyone else's builds, it looks like the IVA trim needs to go all the way around the panel, not just the cut outs. Not sure how this will impact how I'll get through it to the rivnuts in the frame, but luckily I held off on drilling it yet.



Battery poles

I bought a fancy battery with entirely-alien M6 female connectors on, and my donor wiring (to be briefly used to check everything still works) has conventional poles. the Health and Safety lady was on her tea break, so I had the thought to cut the poles off a scaly old dried up battery that got abandoned long ago.  Drill and tap to M6, Robert's your mother's brother, I have some temporary fittings, rather than spend £20 on some SAE adaptors.  





Which would have been fine, until I forgot everything Mr Henly ever taught me and burned off the plastic. Turns out the poles really were made of lead, which melts at the same temperate as the abs plastic burns. Leaving me with naught but a toxic puddle.

Wheel diet

I've always known I wanted to run 15s, but another compelling reason to do so; each tubby Wolfrace Eurosport 17 with tyres was 18.6Kg!  Basically like carrying a whole person, distributed across the 4 corners. 

[casesensitive]

Pedal guards

When the IVA comes around, I'll need guards in a few places, the accelerator, and lower parts of both sides of the engine, to keep the baby's head out. This struck me as being very difficult with stuff in; I had to take down the go pedal and the whole steering assembly to drill the holes for the rivnuts.
I'd have liked to have gotten the exact same grade as RTR provided for the grilles (3x7mm diamond aluminium mesh, 2mm thick) but this is the closest B&Q had in a big enough size. Fleabay sellers will flog you a sheet, but none any wider than 100x40cm. The piece to cover the pedal and the next triangle (easier to position, protects drivers from right-hand-turn gravel shower) needed to be 80x50cm. €38 for 0.8mm sheet, I think they saw me coming.









Duck tape is temporary fitting till I get more IVA trim in a narrow channel depth. Not sure about the results, looks too much like chicken wire maybe. I'll paint it the same colour as the body panels (anthracite) so they shouldn't stick out so much. That, or use them as a the most expensive template ever for a polycarbonate sheet replacement.

[casesensitive]

Gear change cables

Facing down the unappealing thought of paying £120 + postage for custom gear cables from Cabletec, I went the @loopyonion / ollieballs MGF route instead.
MGF Spare parts Teeside had two MGF long cables in stock, £20 apiece + £7 postage, which was pretty decent.

The first thing to note is that they're slightly longer than quoted in the few build guides that use them. I measured the shortfall my 1.2m ST170 cables had at 85cm, which would mean we'd need 205cm, I measured these at 215cm give or take a few mm, so it should be plenty long.
The 'cups' look bigger than the focus ends to my eye at 12mm, and will likely need replacing as documented by Ollie. The threads are M6, so that shouldn't be a hassle. I'll order those later today, hopefully have the lot in by this weekend. The travel is only 40mm, which could be tricky, may need to give the outers a haircut.

Edit: Ordered some gas strut ball joints, which happen to be exactly the size that MevST reported he needed and about 1/3rd the price. SpringFixLinkages were going to be £20 posted.

[kiwicanfly]

Love the terminal story, bet you were as mad as a hatter after that.