of course it is in Australia 
hey you should see how toilets work here....
Very nice, is it upside down?
Na, due to the tight nature of our cab the steering column has to come between yer knees which are
just below your eyeline, that slightly flared out shape is easier to grab when your elbows are resting on your hips.
No I'm not exagerating. Anyone with a special construction car with a reclining drivers pos will know this...getting comfortable is one thing, being able to see is another useful aspect and then being able to stop your helmet resting on the roll bar padding anywhere is a stipulation..........So, sit with your back against a wall, pull your knees up and then slide your backside away from the wall until your eyes are just looking over your knee caps, then hold your elbows down in the bend at the top of your thighs , that's our driving position.... that's about the only shape wheel you can use in there........ The very first time we drove the car on the concrete runway at Mangalore it was getting serious air, at that point we had a pretty rude seat, the landings weren't comfortable, last year I took a short flight somewhere near the seven mile at about 190, the landing was less stressful on the bones now that we have a better seat and 1/2inch of neoprene in there..... it's times like those that you envy people with enough room to get comfortable in.
here, from April 2008 is a description of how I made the wheel....
The first wheel we had was out of a Ford Laser which here , is a rebadged Mazda 323 .They're a very flat wheel with a flat steel centre. I cut the top and bottom off it and then pulled the sides toward me giving a shape similar to the one shown ....neat idea but it looked pretty rough even by my standards.So I bought some half inch plate from the Aluminium merchant and started sketching it out. I found a round kitchen tray the same size as the Laser wheel and used it to give me the outside edges of the grips , then I used it give me the top and bottom concaves. So at this point I had the flat butterfly shape and it was just a case of using a hole saw to cut out the "finger-grips" and to jig-saw out the rest ( unless you've got a weldable band saw you can't cut closed circles with them).I drilled the spars and then filleted them with a coarse disc ,then I just bent them over a big anvil....rolling it would have been the go but hey why walk all the way to the next room for a screwdriver when I've got this butter knife right here in front of me...
Seriously though I did make a cardboard pattern to make sure the curves I had were right , but mostly it was a "feel" thing, I would definitely roll it next time but apart from that I'm happy with it and true to form it came up pretty quick...'bout two hours ....then Vaughn had it for about two months...LOL
Topic: Australian Belly Tank (Read 3515375 times)