I heart geometry

Picking up from somewheres... 

Monday now, weather is shit.  Very cool, rainy and wind that gusts up to probably 30 mph.  Last week it was sun burn and now its 2 pairs of pants and hooded in the rain shell... gotta love the midwest, eh? You betcha. 

These blogs have traditionally been done later in the day.  I've been rushing through them with the knowledge that the quicker they get done, the quicker I get to sleep.  It's  nice to do one here in the afternoon.  The weather has brought us into the warmth of the house.  We've made nice progress with what we did today, though I didn't get pictures yet, you know, cause it was raining.  Those will have to wait, the details and all.  

I've still got to pick up from where I left off with the last post.  

We spent last afternoon and evening finishing up the front wheel assembly, which we had been working on since for some 3 or 4 days.  It's been a real sonofabitch.  It looks simple enough, but it's design has sort of been constantly changing based on the availability of bearing housings that Alisa and Daniel spent a good deal of Thursday or Friday looking for. Finally everything was good on them except that there was no way to ratchet the nuts onto the four inch carriage bolts holding the bearing casings and frame together.  I had to borrow a pair of vise grips and clamp them down around the socket bit and tighten the bolts one quarter turn at a time, undoing the vise grips and repositioning them each time. 

When it was finished I maniacally ran around pushing the front wheel assembly screaming in excitement.  We were gonna get a video of it but I broke the LCD screen on my camera so I can't navigate the menu to switch it to video mode, which is a bummer.  I can still take stills though.  

The last thing we did was to begin to position these angled support beams that take the weight of the entire oil tank, etc and sends it forward which will help provide it forward motion when this thing is finished.  

We worked on that more today in the rain.  We've got it figured out after a lot of confusion.  We measured and used geometry and couldn't figure out why it wouldn't together like we wanted. Apparently six months ago when Alisa cut the boards she cut one 3 inches shorter than the other. A simple trim job was all it took.   Go geometry.