Member postings for Hopper

Yes I got caught like that in the Photobucket fiasco. Some people never learn!

Interesting observation. And in 1960s America, probably not unusual. Shipyards had whole trades segregated by race in the same era. And that was in progressive New York and California, not the Deep South.

What sort of hone are you using?

If all else fails, can you get an automotive machine shop to put it on their Sunnen hone or similar?

Yes, just looking at that on eBay Australia. Quite reasonable, shipped in from India. But of course 1" is out of stock at the moment! And silver steel would gradually get whittled down to make special cutters etc. "Just a little bit more."

Could be. A very small market the Australian hobby market though. Still, surprising none of our major industrial/home workshop suppliers like Hare and Forbes have not started importing them. I have noticed that things like 3/4HP single phase motors are more expensive here than the same in 3 phase, probably because industry uses 3 phase so more are imported. So it would only be a matter of organising the controller unit side of it. If they were readily available as a plug and play unit, I am sure quite a few guys fixing up old Myfords and Hercuses (Aussie Boxfordy SouthBend clone) would do the upgrade to VFD.

An interesting aside on the Myford dividing head. GH Thomas has a chapter on it with a few good tips, of course, in Workshop Techniques. But I did notice that while the Myford DH uses a total of four indexing plates with 7 or 8 hole circles in each, the GH Thomas Versatile DH achieves the same result with only three much smaller plates with far fewer circles and smaller numbers of holes. Still gives every division up to 100 and many more beyond, including the mystical 127. So, according to Occam's Razor, old GHT's solution is the most elegant. Cunning old dog he was. Left the men at Myford in the shade.

So I can make up an adaptor ring and just use my set of VDH indexing plates on the Myford unit and use GHT's charts. Brilliant! No need to cut out discs and drill 800 or more tiny holes!

Yes. I haven't measured it but it looks like 1" bar. I think it will come up useable though. Good enough for what I am likely to use it for. According to Myford it is not for mounting jobs between centres but on a stub mandrel held in collets at one end and the tailstock centre just lending a bit of extra support at the other.

What I'd like to know is how do they squeeze the oil out of them to make Castrol R?

Thanks Norm. I originally put it together in the 1980s out of spare parts I had in my shed. Spare frame for my Atlas and spare engine for my Sportster. Rode it for a couple of years and it was lovely. The engines run about 60hp but respond well to a big carb, straight pipes and free flowing air filter. And yes pull like a tractor. An absolute hoot to ride. Of all the Harleys,they are the most raw, punchiest and raunchiest engine. It just squeezed in the frame with no stretching and gentle use of tyre levers to get the oil pump past the bottom frame rail. Rear rocker box sticks up above the top of the top frame tube about half an inch, but hopefully when the Manx tank arrives the reliefs in the bottom will clear that. With the stock Atlas tank I had to mount it up on extra rubbers a little bit.

Yes, 19" Rocket 3 chronical hub rear wheel flipped around and anchored to a tab welded to the swingarm. Cross shaft and arm to the brake pedal is off an old BSA or something that I found kicking around. Currently making a chainguard for it, as everything else uses one on the other side so can't adapt them. Mudguards are BSA A65 as found. Handlebars BMW R90S. Clutch lever and switch Trident. Oil tank and battery box HD Sportster. Side stand Kawasaki ZX9. (That should add 25mph top speed!). Chronometric clocks to go on it yet. And a Ducati 900SS fairing lurking in the background there . But clip ons and my back are not great friends these days!

Afraid I fail to see the parallel at all. Pete Rimmer is reporting his personal experience, measured objectively with a dial indicator, as someone who got out of the armchair and did something relevant to the topic under discussion.

Well I am undecided on the Evaporust so far. Having only 1 litre I could not really immerse things in it overnight,and it seems to evaporate away if just brushed on and left sitting out. So I hatched a cunning plan and brushed some on the index plate and the overarm then put each one in a plastic bag with a glug (technical term) of extra Evaporust so the parts would stay immersed overnight, sort of. But every plastic bag seemed to have a hole in it and it ended up the sections that were on the bottom in what was left of the liquid derusted OK-ish but the top bits above the tidemark not so much.

Please let me know if you can't see the picture. I am experimenting with using Imgur pic hosting and it is a bit experimental at this stage.

But still looking way better than when it lobbed on my doorstep seeking succour.

So I doused various other bits today and wrapped them in plastic bags today. Checking progress just after dinner, the spindle nose has come up nice and rust free, but a matt silver finish all over that will still need a final polishon the wire buffing wheel.

So I am not totally convinced that the process is any less faff than my usual wire buffing wheel on the 8" bench grinder outside. Advantage may be that with things like the spindle nose register and overarm, the rust is offed with out removing any unnecessary parent metal, thus maintaining dimensional integrity as much as possible. I could have just spun the overarm in the lathe and emery-clothed it, but that would take a thou or two off the diameter and affect the alignment by that tiny and possibly not critical amount. But still, nice to keep it to factory specs if possible on precision parts. I think a very light buff on the wire wheel to finish it up will not make a measureable difference. (Not measureable with my shaky hands and dodgy eyesight anyway!)

Will see how it shapes up in the morning and report back.

ONe thing I did learn is don't use black plastic garbage sacks for this process. They make black stains on the job, which hopefully the Evaporust will have removed by morning since I discarded the black bag.

Edited By Hopper on 21/01/2023 10:27:12

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Edited By Hopper on 21/01/2023 10:35:53

Yes, I don't recognise the videos I see of modern car factories with their painted floors and bright lighting and organised everything. Chrysler's was one big inferno with the stamping plant, paint shop, spot weld line and assembly line all under one roof. Floors were raw concrete covered in a layer of slick panel oil used on the sheet metal going into the presses and adhering to the panels coming out and it seemed to get everywhere, mostly on the tyres of the myriad forklifts that sped about everywhere, sliding around corners and skidding to a halt and on take off for all they were worth. No hearing protection in the 100-120 decibel environment. Cissy stuff. I am another one wearing hearing aids today as a result. And today's factories are doubly amazing with the lack of humans as robots do most of that assembly work, spot welding, press operating etc etc. It's a different world now.

PS Just checked my drill press. It is actually 970rpm that I leave it set on for 90 per cent of the time, not 800 as I said in earlier post. Seems to be the sweet spot that suits all drills 1/8 to 1/2". For 5/8 I might drop the belt one notch to 800 or so.

Or you can do what I do and run the drill press at circa 800rpm - 900rpm and use that for your pilot hole, larger hole and deburring. No need to change speeds every time you change drill size. Drill speed charts are optimum speeds for industry to balance metal removal rate with tool life. As long as you don't run too fast and burn the cutting edges, or too slow on sub-1/8" drills and snap them, one speed will do 90 per cent of the work we do. Changing speed every time you change drill size is overkill.  I go for months at a time without changing speed.

If I am working on a small model project where I am repeatedly drilling small holes, say tapping holes for 1.5mm or 2mm threads etc, then I will change to a higher speed for the small drills, and use that speed whether I am using a 1mm bit or a 2mm bit etc. Then when I go back to working on motorbike stuff, all 1/4 to 1/2" holes, i change the belts once to 800rpm or so and leave it a that.

Colchesters and Harrisons are rare in Australia. And what there are have been worked to death in professional environments for the most part. And those mid-sized Chinese gear head lathes say 13" swing by 30" long are widely sold and cost about $3,000 (1500 Quid) so they are popular. Pretty good lathes for the most part other than the noisy steel gears in them. The earlier belt drive models run quieter. They mostly come with 1 phase motors.

Edited By Hopper on 21/01/2023 08:18:43

LOL. Except it is not a joke. When I moved back here after living longterm in the USA it was like a journey back in time. It took me several years to gear down to local speed. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. But it did take some getting used to.

I think it is the cost factor here in Australia for good quality VFDs and motors. Cheapos are available from China but quality is ahem variable.

In the UK you can buy an already set up VFD and motor for Myford for way less than it costs to buy the same quality components here in Oz and set it all up yourself. When stuff is cheap and easy , people will do it.

Personally I haven't felt the need. Using carbide tooling I leave the Myford in top speed belt setting almost all the time and on the odd occasion I have to change it or engage back gear, so what? 30 seconds lost. Smoothness of three phase is nice but not something I feel the need to pay good money for. Heavy steel bench firmly bolted down and to the wall and carefully balanced pulleys is good enough for me.

It is a mystery to me why anyone would feel the need to be constantly adjusting the speed of a drill press. I leave it on about the 800rpm belt setting for 90 per cent of work that I do, drilling one or two holes in steel or aluminium from about 1/8" to 1/2" diameter. Changing the belt on the odd occasion to drill a tiny hole or a very big hole, well another whole 30 seconds wasted.

I am sure many others are the same. I guess in Australia living with the isolation, high import costs of a small market and the time delay to buy things and have them delivered, there is more of a tradition of just making do with what you have rather than regularly buying new toys to be delivered next day. But that is changing rapidly as internet shopping becomes more the norm so I expect we shall catch up in short order.

And if you use three foot rulers it would be even more accurate. Although you might have to allow some for sag over that length, but as both would be the same, alignment should be unaffected when you think about it. Two long pieces of ground tubing would be ideal. Motorcycle fork tubes would be perfect. One on each end of the bed and take a sighting along the ends.

Edited By Hopper on 21/01/2023 05:00:21

Looks very much like the Chrysler factory where i served my time, only way more fun.

Surprising to see them drop the Mustang's engine and trans in from the top.Chyrsler, and most others, way was to have the complete engine, trans, driveshaft, diff, suspension, wheels and exhaust system coming along on the line all assembled and then drop the completed body down on top of it. Seems a lot less faff.

Those old Mustangs were nice though. If you could forget that under that sexy body work lay ordinary Ford Falcon running gear!

Yes we had groups of school kids come through daily on tours, wandering around in the midst of it all, spot welders, presses, fork lifts, production lines etc all going full bore. That was before the insurance companies ruled the world.

Edited By Hopper on 21/01/2023 04:23:57

Bit of progress on mounting the Manx seat on the Snortster today. Cut out a piece of 3mm alloy plate to support the very thin seat base and made mounting brackets to the frame out of an old Keep Left street sign. Upcycling!

My cheap Chinese bandsaw used in vertical mode made easy work of it. One thing I did learn is that not all motorbike seats are symetrical, and their mounting bolt holes are not always straight, square, even or symetrical. One is 15mm closer to the seat edge than the other. So holes ended up being slots. Grrr.

And now, testing out using Imgur photo hosting site and copy and pasting the HTML link on to here:

Now that is weird. Just showed a bunch of code and no pic the first time I saved and viewed the post. But now on opening the post to edit it, I can see the pic in its full glory. Hmm. Try again:

Doubly weird. Bunch of code first time I saved it. Then opened to edit it and the pic appears. Oh well, will try a few more:

Just checked it out o nthe test thread and it seems the quick way to post pictures is to upload them to Imgur, then copy and paste the Imgur HTML link option onto your post here. Close your post. Reopen your poste for editing. Close your post again, and the pic magically appears! Weird but quicker than using this site's slow upload and album process.

Haha, just pegged the North Queensland safety boot in the first pic. Busted. It's 90F in the shed and 85pc humidity so safety from heat exhaustion takes precedence over safety from dropping things on toes.

Edited By Hopper on 21/01/2023 03:46:00

Edited By Hopper on 21/01/2023 03:48:08

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Edited By Hopper on 21/01/2023 04:04:21

Test photo hosting site imgur.

https://imgur.com/XTA62Y7

https://i.imgur.com/XTA62Y7.jpg

Ooh Look at that. The fourth option Imgur offers, labelled "HTML (Website/blogs) works and posts an actual picture, below. Sooooooooo much quicker and easier than tediously and painfully slowly uploading pics to this site and then linking to the album and so on.

I will try it on a live thread now.

Well it seems that it works ok but not on the first save and viewing. You have to reopen the post for editing then close it again and the code magically changes into a picture. This site is the weirdest. Imgur offers a few other options so I will try them too.

This one is the BBCode option

[img]https://i.imgur.com/XTA62Y7.jpg[/img]

And this one is the Linked BBCode option.

[url=https://imgur.com/XTA62Y7][img]http://i.imgur.com/XTA62Y7.jpg[/img][/url]

Let's see how they work.

Well, the last two options didn't, obviously.

So the best way is:

Upload your pics to Imgur.

Copy and paste the Imgur HTML link onto your post here.

Close your post. Reopen it for editing. Close your post again.

It is still quicker than uploading to this site and doing the album and all that faff.

Edited By Hopper on 21/01/2023 03:36:56

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Edited By Hopper on 21/01/2023 03:58:09