OK, enough of the jocularity and hilarity.
On Sat there was a pow-wow at the Spirit of Sunshine Bellytank Workshop and Possum Park, all the big names were there. After last weekends buy of the Ford Prefect there was a surge of enthusiasm about the "little" tank ..... The Rev is in the country for a few short weeks before loading the wagon and taking the good Lady Hedgash and their wee one Von Pomborneit to China, The Colonel is at a loose end as his test driver and resident nightowl tears it up in Venice . So we got together for a collective chin rub over the parts that we hope to merge into one .
Compared to the Canberra tank that the Spirit of Sunshine is made from it was a fairly simple process to drill out the copper rivets and then release the solder join with a propane torch......Steel?, copper?, solder? this thing was like it came from the mid 19th century compared to the Canberra tank which was like a spaceship inside with it's pressed al bulkeads, adhesives and liberal use of titanium.
The Rev rolled out a piece of plan paper and took an outline drawing of one half of the tank, from there he'll be able to generate a 3d model in CAD and the styling process can begin.
Then our attention turned to the Prefect. We removed the torque tube and then lifted the motor out we lopped of the rear legs of the chassis behind the rear spring perch and dropped the body off,I'd be surprised if the whole chassis, suspension , steering and wheels weighed more than 250lbs, I could easily lift the front .....we rolled it off the truck and out into the back yard.
We discussed the various options we have motor wise, whether we'd be better to connect the secondary drive of a bike engine to the diff via a tailshaft or whether we centralize it and use another chain.
We looked at the chassis itself and saw that the rails may be more use to us turned front to back. There was discussion as to whether we could run the rails
outsidethe tank body.......there's a lot yet to be settled upon.
Yesterday I managed to secret the rolling chassis behind the shed, start drawing Rev.
Now on the real topic of this thread is Australian Bellytank. I collected the differential housing and the insert peieces that were turned up for us.Bar one minor hiccup ( both inserts have a step to stop them going too far into the housing, we'll need to remove one to give us enough back and forward movement to assemble it all in-situ)it looks like it will all go together but I will need to make up a puller that will allow us to pull the inserts into the axle tubes as they are ever so slighty oval and the inserts need a little encouragement , the inserts are a
warm fit into the housing.......I think we have another appt with the propane torch and the extinguisher Grumm.
