Laboring on the Pedal Car on Labor Day

After getting my chores done, I decided to spend my Labor Day Holiday doing a little work on the pedal car.  That made for quite a sweaty day, but progress was made.  Right now, I'm fixing a few things that I had already done, but didn't like, finalizing my plans on the steering and making ready for the really hard part, which is up next.

For starters, I did finalize my plans for the steering.  I mined the ideas from another blog and am using their solution.  In the following picture, you will notice the position of the steering components...

The linkage is in front of the axles.  Now, notice the position of the linkage...

It's behind the axles.  Why?  I'll show you....  Here is a shot of how the plans wanted it done:

You can see the linkage is in front of the axles, where I originally had them.  The plans then want you to flatten the end of a piece of iron pipe and then bend it 90 degrees, then drill a hole for a screw.  At that point, you attach a U shaped piece of metal to a threaded rod, attach nuts to hold the metal piece in place, then bend the ends 90 degrees to fit in holes drilled in the metal pipe pieces that are a part of the axle assembly (aka, king pins).  Here's another shot from a different drawing:

This is also a really good example of what I was talking about in my post where I complained about the quality of the plans.  Here you have 2 separate drawings dealing with the exact same topic.  The text that addresses this issue is on yet another page.  Also, you can clearly see that in the foreground of the pic above, they have mashed 2 separate drawings together, to save space in the magazine article.  Also, you can see the column of text from the magazine, instead of step by step instructions. Anyway, with some detective work, you can usually manage to piece it all together, although I have made some mistakes that required trashing some of my work and starting over, because of misinterpreting the plans....

But I digress.  The plans that I'm using for the steering came from another blog.  It uses more of the metal pipe to construct a steering column.  However, instead of smashing and bending the end of the pipe, it used a T connector and short pieces of pipe to make an attachment point for a screw that will attach to the same bent metal piece.  Another change is that I won't be using a bent threaded rod. Instead, I made my own threaded rod out of a piece of plain rod.  I then attached tie rod ends (there's another name for them, but I can't remember right now).  The tie rod ends give me an attachment point to the king pins and will allow for a similar nut/bent metal piece arrangement.  The big difference this time is that it will be behind the king pins.

That's why the king pins face rearward and the threaded rod that is visible between the car body sides is there.  The steering column (which is upside down in the pic, since the paint is still drying) looks like this:

The bolt sticking out of the top will act as a guide pin.  I will drill a hole in the front of the car body above, that is angled to match the hole in the dash.  The guide pin will keep the steering column from wobbling around.  The bolt that is very long, to the right of the pic is the bolt that will connect to the bent metal piece on the steering linkage.  The dash currently looks like this:

I plan to download a pic of a speedometer and other dash gauges to round out the look.  It is painted the same color as the pieces that I restored for the 53 Chevy.  Edit:  I did download a couple of pics of dashboard components and used an adhesive spray on the backs and stuck them onto the dash. Turned our pretty good and looks like this:

Here we go again with rotated pics....

Lastly, I put pipe insulation over the edge of the cockpit.  I will eventually cover the insulation with more of the vinyl, to give that fake leather look.  It looks like this:

So, I've really gone as far as I can without addressing the drive system.  I know how I want to do it, it's just going to be a little tough to do.  Maybe next weekend....