Slow Day . . .

Slow day as I was up between 2am and 4am taking some friends to the airport for a holiday. I thought I was the one supposed to be having holidays ......

Oh well.
I couldn't resist hoisting up my spare wheel with the fork lift just to make sure it ll fits. I know I spent a lot of time measuring my motorbike and working out just how LOW (?) I could get my spare wheel but DAMN it seems awfully *&^$!%!* high!























The motorbike ramp I intend making pivots from about 50mm up and in from the lower corner of the box so it's deceptively high as well. I hate putting weight up there but believe me I have used stupid amounts of time trying to find another way to mount it and each has more disadvantages than this way. So there it's going to stay.
The mounts are made to locate the tyre about 5-10mm away from the fibreglass as the back of any off-road vehicle is the dirtiest spot and collects mud and dust in copious quantities. My main concern when I mentioned strength earlier were really to do with fatigue vibration. Maybe I was affected by Nevil Shute's "No Highway" too much when I read it as a child. Sure enough it's possible to wobble it by hand to produce a terrifying vibration. Looks more like a boxing "speed bag" than anything else. I have lots of high density foam lying around from earlier construction so maybe a piece of that under the bottom edge will help a little.























It's tightly compressed in there and there's no chance of it falling out and sure enough it's fixed the "fore and aft" vibration cycle (which is the one that would affect the rivnuts the most) but there is still a "side to side" movement which will fatigue the welds. I think the proper fix for that one is a welded brace cross the middle which will put the load on welds in shear rather than tension (welds in tension are an engineering no-no). So that decided weld in the brace, tack in the bolts, as it's too hard to get to them once it's all in place, and give it all a good coat of cold galvanising prior to painting tomorrow.


















This has of course all been done on the spare one so tomorrow I'll have to pull the wheel off and change it all over . . . thank goodness for the forklift. Maybe I'll end up towing a fork lift behind on a trailer . . . great for going to the shops once the truck's parked :)