Todays progress

 After yesterdays trip to Malvern for the kit car show, I had a lot of ideas on what I want to do next. Photo's to follow, but first a progress update and thoughts on an issue.

Today I have;

1. Welded the driver side body outrigger.
2. Finished and tacked the cross bar for the roll hoop. 
3. Tacked on the rear support for the rest of the roll hoop.
4. Started to look at the brackets for the rear supports for the roll hoop. 

I'll come back to these in order, with photo's, but number 4 has left me with a problem. I got some brackets from the tube bender, on the basis that even with the slight angle I could still weld things up and get it working. Unfortunately that's not the case, even with a bit of trimming it's just not going to work. And on top of that, they are really ugly!! It's a big chunky thing with sharp points and just not what I want for a highly visible part.

However, I did see that Westfield use a rose joint as part of their roll hoop, there were quite a few of them at the show. A quick check on their page, and there it is, a 1/2 x 1/2 rose joint. It's a tidy solution, just requiring the rose joint itself on the end of the rear stay and two plates welded to the roll hoop. I already have 3mm plate so some brackets won't take long to weld up. 

But of course it's UNF, and I would prefer to stay metric. On this page there is a dimensions table https://www.mcgillmotorsport.com/1/2-x-1/2-unf-right-hand-male-xmr8-ultra-high-performance-rod-end-c-55-p-53. The 1/2 refers to the internal diameter of the hole, with the outside diameter being 1.3 inches (33mm) and the overall length being 2.4 inches (61mm). So the closest metric would be an M12 x 1.75 such as this https://www.mcgillmotorsport.com/m12-x-1.75mm-right-hand-male-xmrm12-ultra-high-performance-rod-end-c-55-p-257. Since McGill do free postage I'll get two of those.

So overall it's been a decent weekend, apart from a few more bumps and bruises. I'm not sure why but I seem to be extra clumsy lately. Hopefully it'll clear up at some point.

Right, that it's for now, I'll put a few more notes and photos during the week.