Too Good to be True . . .

Check first thing (well for me these days that means about 8am) and the next 4 oil coolers are ready to go from the powder coater. Pick them up, package for delivery, out to the freight company and back by 10am. Great. Rest of the day for the truck!

Whoops. Spoke too soon.

Friend of mine with lots of relationship problems arrives and wants to talk. Well that's what friends are for - and I like and sympathise with this guy a lot. But I think my advice is a bit radical YET. . . He'll get there. Unfortunately.

OK. Lunch and now I can start . . .

Put the support bars in the mill for the other two recesses.

While that's happening (don't you love CNC machines?) I can make some giant "U" bolts to hold the tanks. Some 6mm diam. rod ought to do it - they are aluminium after all and I don't want to damage them.

Hmmm. 180mm diam tank plus 50mm RHS support works out to about 650mm long pieces.
Need to thread both ends first. So the quickest way is in the manual lathe like this.
The power is off! The tap wrench handle rests on the tool post (that's my third hand), the drill chuck JUST touches the back of the die. Turn the lathe chuck by hand while keeping the drill chuck in contact with the back of the die by hand. This keeps the die square but does not change the pitch (unless you push too hard). Make sure that the die is fully on, about 10mm. Remove the drill chuck and tool post, turn the lathe on in a very slow gear and apply cutting fluid. Hang onto the die wrench. With a little die like this you can always just let it go if you need to. A larger thread size requires a different technique.















And turn it off when you get to here.
























Wind it back out, turn it around and repeat!
Will give this.



















Find a block of 150mm diam. scrap and clamp it down.


















and wrap the rod around it starting in the middle gives this:





















and if you do it 6 times you get :






















and the mill will have done this.























Cool. . . .

So let's try it all in place; bars in the chassis























Two tanks in place (the light is awful in there). It's hard to see with the flash bouncing off the polished tanks and with reduced size photos but there is a PTO pulley fairly close to the middle tank. It could be a bit close


















with three tanks in


















but lets have a look underneath ;























Yep. CLOSE!! That's about a 20mm gap, should be alright by the time I add the flat bar support.

Making great progress!!

Yes. The eagle eyed among you will already be shouting;
"But the gap is too small for the U-bolts to go between the tanks".

I saw that too. Hmmnmm. Check the diameter of the tanks again.

200mm!!

Where did that 180mm measurement come from. Now I am going to have to spend 2-3hrs tomorrow re-machining the cutouts to move them outward.

I knew it was all too good to be true.