Momentous Occurances !
after a bit of belt tightening ..
Floppy...
Taught..
And having lots of fun putting a double layer of the heaviest sheeting i could find in the pit of doom ..
concrete mixing occured ..
first load ..
luckily the mixer would balance nicely on the edge of the pit , and tip straight in .
A couple of hours got to here ..
Now , i will admit to making an error in my estimation of how much ingredients were needed .
i assumed , that 1 ton of ballast , was the same as 1 metre3 of ballast .
not so .
i had worked out i needed 0.45 m3 to put the 4" base in the hole , and so the 1 ton bag would be enough for the base , and the sides...
Then , after the bag arrived , and i looked at it , looked at the pit , and thought hmmmm, that doesn't look enough , i found out 1 m3 of ballast is actually 1800 kg , and that my dumpy bag was around 8-900 kg .
ooops.
so i thought hopefully ,with the cement as well , i'll have enough for the base .
Well , using my depth gauge , we tamped it down and realised , it was a bit sparce , so i lowered the guage to 3.5" and that was a bit low , but we tamped it at that and dragged material around , and got there in the end .
the end ft of the pit, where the heavy part of the dyno goes , is an inch lower , so thats probably where the excess went ,,,if there was any !
so , that being the morning used up , and being very excited to have this major step achieved , because i was not expecting to get to this point by now , i suggested to mr c hey , lets get the engine out of the RRRR ..?
after lunch we set too on that lovely job , making the first mistake of trying to use the hoist over th n/s front wing , where , after we had the worlds heaviest engine suspended over the bay , realisation dawned that there was not headroom enough to clear the art deco inner wheel arch ...
pox.
then occured the attempt to get the engine back on it's mounts and engaged with the gearbox again .
oh boy ! due to the crossmember, steering rack , bulk head, arrangment, this is not a quick and easy job , a lot of crawling around with trolley jacks ,scissor jacks, blocks of wood ensued .
in the end the poxy thing engaged with the gearbox enough to drop it down , so then we could push the RRRR out of the summer house , drag the engine hoist around , and lift out the engine quickly and easily from the front , then push the car back into the SH.
Now had to get the heaviest engine in the world back in there as well ...
trucked it over to here..
then walked it over the bricks and across the wood floor ..
phew , it was now 630 and i was pooped.
one sad victim of all this was my rotary 200 kg weighing scale
i had popped it onto the hoist to weigh the engine , and mr c was operating the hoist lifting arm ... the fact the front engine mount bolts were still in place , with no nuts on them , gave me to think the thing would lift those bolts out of the holes ..
er
no .
as the dial went round to 210 kg ,10kg past its maximum , and no sign of the engine lifting , mr c asked if that was ok , to which i blithely replied out yes iv had the scale round to here , indicating 220 kg , this was the death sentence to the poor thing , as mr c happily applied one more go with the lever of death , not slowly applying force but hitting mach 5.4 on the arm movement scale , and sending the guage right round to 260kg ...
At this point the gaule basically exploded in indignation , the S shaped hook below it bent into an interesting no 2 , , and the engine hoist leapt a foot into the air as the force of trying to lift the entire front of the car was suddenly and catastrohpically released .
the sound of the hoists wheels hitting the gound was echoed by 4 feet , as we both jumped in reaction , my feet landed second ,since i didnt have the hoist to hold onto .
Anyrdup ... in the end all was good , and thats another bit of progress with the RRR to.
In other news ,This morning ,It’s all gone a bit Wuthering Heights up in here. I just missed catching Kate Bush as she scampered past waving her arms in the air.
regards
robert