Now For the Hard Stuff...I'll Try Not to Get Cranky!

So far, most of the pedal car construction has been pretty routine.  Creating the kingpins was different, since I've never done anything with iron pipe before, but not too difficult.  Now, it is time to give this thing a driveline and that's going to be the most difficult part of the whole project.

As I mentioned in my last post, I've mined another person's blog for ideas and have adopted their approach to the driveline and abandoned the plans.  The driveline will use the sprocket from the donor bike, along with a home made pedal crank.  I'll also make wooden pedals to go on the crank and save my grandkids feet, but that'll be on another day.  I'll also use the chains from the donor bikes and meld them into one appropriate length chain.  I'll do that after I find the chain splitter that I bought and now can't find.  The sprocket will be attached to a pipe floor flange with a bronze insert acting as a bushing.  I'll thread the end of the crank so that it can accept nuts that I will use to sandwich the sprocket/flange onto the crank.  Hopefully it will turn with the crank as it is pedalled and not just spin without turning the back wheels.  Here are the sprocket, flange and nuts/bolts:

You can see how I figured out the center of the sprocket and how I centered the floor flange.  The fender washer is marked, so that I can grind it to match the hexagonal opening of the sprocket.  It probably isn't necessary, but I'm going to do it anyway.  Originally, I was going to use the 3/8" floor flange.  Then I realized that my 1/2" crank wouldn't fit, so I remarked and drilled the sprocket for a 1/2" floor flange.

I then bent a 1/2" thick steel rod to make the crank into the shape necessary for a pedal car.  I have a 2" end piece, followed by 4"x4" U shaped areas for each of the actual pedals, followed by about 8" for attaching the sprocket.  After bending the rod into the crank shape, I needed to make threads for the nuts that will hold the sprocket onto the crank.  I put the crank into the vise and sanded a small bevel into the top of the crank rod.  Using the thread cutting die for a couple of passes, the die increased the bevelled edge.  It looked like this:

That shows how the die actually works.  As it cuts into the metal, it first shaves away excess metal, then it cuts the actual threads into the rod.  After several complete rotations of the die, it looks like this:

There you can see the rough shape of the crank, as it sits in the vise and you can see the die on the end of the crank.  Because I'm cutting coarse threads into the rod instead of fine threads, the die is having to take a lot of metal off of the rod.  Because of that, the metal flakes that are coming off are really large.  That is causing me to have to stop and clean the rod and die after each 1/8th turn of the die.  That makes for very slow going.  In the next pic, you can see I've made it to the depth of the die. It looked like this with the die on the rod:

And this with the die off:

As you can see, at the bottom of the threads are those metal shavings from the cutting process. They really are quite large compared to when I was cutting fine threads earlier in the project.  I like to do a test fit at this point, to make sure everything will fit properly.  It looked like this:

Not too shabby...now only another 2-3 inches of threads to cut.  Piece of cake.  The way that I learned to do it was to turn the die handle about a 1/4 turn (or less) then back it off and cut off the metal shavings.  Then rotate forward again, repeating the process.  Along the way, you should apply a small amount of oil to lubricate the die and aid in the cutting process.  Sometimes it looks like a lot of oil, but it really is only a drop or two each time.  I rotate the die all the way down on the new threads, apply a drop of oil just above the die, then rotate the die back up through the oil, then back down for the next cut.  Applying the oil looks like this:

In addition to lubricating the die, it flushes out the shavings that are stuck in the die.  In this pic, you can see the set screw that holds the die in the handle.  As luck would have it, I stripped the threads that hold the set screw in place and had to stop for the day.  Here is how far that I got:

All in all, it is starting to look pretty good.  I'm going to test fit it onto the car and see how much further I need to go with the threads.  But, until I get a new handle, I'm kinda stuck.  That's all for now.

UPDATE:

I had some time this morning, so I cut the bronze bushing flush with the pipe floor flange and did a test fit on the pedal crank.  It looked like this:

Unfortunately, you can see in this pic that the crank is not true.  I was a little off when I bent it.  I'm going to try to straighten it out, but you can see how it will fit within the car body, approximately where I'm going to attach the sprocket and how much more threads I'll have to cut.  If I can't straighten it, then it's scrap and I get to start over....

After the test fit of the crank, I installed the dashboard and the steering column.  It looked like this:

And with the steering wheel attached:

Before installing the crank, I had taken a rough measurement of where to put it, based on my grandson sitting in the car.  However, once it was installed and he was working the crank, it was clear that the whole crank assembly should be moved forward.  That will give his knees more clearance. So, in the interim, I'll make that change.  I still need to buy a new handle for my dies, too.  We did do a test of the steering in the driveway, with my grand kids steering and me pushing.  The steering is slow to respond, but when it does, it rockets off in that direction.  It will definitely take some practice on their part to make it a smooth ride.  But that is some time down the road....

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....

Seating for One, Please

Got quite a workout today while sealcoating the driveway.  Thirty five gallons of seal and four hours later, it looked pretty good (sorry, no pics of it...).  After that workout, my truck and pedal car time was very limited.  So a quick project on the pedal car was to upholster the seats.  My thought was to use the seat parts that were in the car last week as mounting points for seat cushions, which I had to make.  The car looked like this last week:

You can see the seat back can be removed, as it sits in between 2 pieces of wood on each side of the car body.  The seat bottom is glued and screwed to the frame.  I used the seat back as a guide and created a cushion back that was 1/4" smaller from side to side and about an inch taller than the seat back.  That way the seat back could still slide down the guides and the seat cushion would be taller than the seat back and would keep the riders back from hitting the wooden seat back.  I bought foam cushions and vinyl (fake leather looking) material from Joann Fabrics last weekend.  I decided to use T nuts inside of the cushion as a way to connect the cushion to the seat back, so it wouldn't slide around.  The seat cushion back with T nuts installed, foam and vinyl looked like this:

I used the wood as a template and marked the foam with the Sharpie and just cut it out with plain old scissors.

I decided that the inside of the car would be painted the same inside color as my 53 Chevy truck. So I painted the seat back and when it was dry, attached the cushion to the seat back.  It looked like this:

Here you can see that the seat back is wider than the cushion, but the cushion is taller than the frame. You may note the holes in the seat back.  This piece of wood was initially part of the 4'x8' sheet of plywood that we used for our Christmas tree train layout.  The 2 holes were where train tracks were connected.  We later decided to pare down the board to a 4'x4' board and this half of the plywood sheet was excess.  So, in keeping with my goal of reusing as much wood as possible, this found its way into the pedal car.  You can also see the machine screws that attach the seat back to the cushion by way of the embedded T nuts.  A test fit of the cushion shows that it fit pretty well, although I did have some issues getting the vinyl to bend around the corner radii on the top of the cushion.  But I knew that this would be an issue, so I wasn't too upset.  The test fit looked like this:

From here, I took measurements of the seat bottom and transferred them to a 1/4" sheet of plywood and then cut it out.  I used it as a template for the foam and followed the same process for the seat bottom cushion.  I also embedded T nuts in the seat bottom cushion, so it won't slide off when someone is riding.  Once added to the pedal car it looked like this:

All in all, not too shabby.  While I was out buying the sealcoat, I also bought the materials to make the steering column.  I'll try to work on that tomorrow.

Good Day, Bonjour, Guten Tag....

Good Day Everyone,

I've added a Google translator to the bar on the right.  Now everyone should be able to read what I'm writing.

Enjoy!

Gray Ghost 53

Pedal Power Replaces the 235...For Now!

About a year ago, I started on a woodworking project to build a pedal car for my grandkids.  I did some research online and found some plans.  I even found a couple of blogs of people that had already built the cars from the plans.  So I thought I'd give it a try.  When I got the plans, I was a bit disappointed in the quality of the plans.  Apparently, they were created in the 1980's, well before CAD software was readily available to the masses and they were made for publication in a woodworking magazine.  Therefore, the text that accompanies the plans is set up in columns. The drawings that come with the text are just that, drawings.  They are plain line drawings that are not accurate for use as templates, although a full sheet of drawings come with the plans for use as templates.  So, you end up fumbling between sheets, trying to figure out where the text has gone from one sheet to another and matching up the drawings, which are typically on a 3rd sheet somewhere.  Let's just say it takes as much time to figure out what they want you to do as it does to actually do it.

Anyway, I started last summer and made decent progress on the frame and body.  I went on Craig's List and found 2 donor bicycles for matching wheels, the drive sprocket and chains.  The thought here is that I would use the tires, but install them on my home made axles.  I would use 1 of the sprockets to drive the chain for the car and I would meld the 2 chains into 1 chain that was long enough for my purposes.  So far so good.  Then fall came around and the lawn and garden chores took precedence and then winter and it was too cold for woodworking outside.  Then spring came and the lawn and garden took over again and then summer came along and my grandson asked me to work on it again.  So I did.

This weekend, I did the work on the seat.  I made the seat supports, seat bottom and back and the rails that hold it in place.  I also made the small gussets that support the rear frame sides and car body back.  Also, I made the steering wheel and the front cowling.  Doesn't sound like a whole lot, but it took me a while and wore me out!

Here is the steering wheel layout on 3/4" plywood:

I decided to just do the layout myself, instead of using the templates provided, since my first try using the template resulted in an uneven car body front.  I'll show that in a moment.  All I did was take measurements off of one side of the steering wheel template, and them transpose them onto the plywood.  I'm trying to use as much leftover stock as possible on this project, to keep my costs to a minimum.  Here, the steering wheel is being made out of leftover oak plywood.  Here it is after cutting, sanding and painting:

Next to it is the front cowling.  That will attach to the front of the car body.  I went ahead and painted the section to be revealed.  Here is a shot of the front of the car with the painted sections:

You can also see how the plans address the steering linkage.  I'll need to add the steering column, after I figure out what I'm going to do.  All I know at this point is that I'm not going with the plans that I bought.  Other people have also come to that conclusion and I'll try to mine their blogs for ideas.  You can also see the frame and body and how they come together, as well as the seat arrangement.  Somehow, when I was installing the seat platform, it got out of alignment. Not sure how it happened, but it is glued and screwed into place, so its not coming out.  But it's not a big deal.  I have material to make a seat cushion and back, so they will make up for it being uneven.  I'm not sure if you can tell from this pic, but the part that is painted was made from an original template.  It is uneven, but usable.  This is the part that clued me into how bad the drawings were if I wanted to use them as templates.  It's also a reason that I decided to keep the fenders off of the car (also because I like the hotrods without fenders (the FTF club)).  Here's a sideview of the car:

The car is planned to be red like my Chevy pickup truck.  I'll paint the frame rails black, as they should be.  On the other side, I'll have the sprocket and chain exposed.  I'm planning to have a small pipe attached to that side.  I'll use it to simulate an exhaust pipe that runs down the side of the car. The real purpose, though, is an attaching point to the coaster brake from the donor bicycle.  If you remember, coaster brakes work by pedalling backwards until you get resistance. This works by way of that small metal piece that is connected to the wheel hub and bolted to the bicycle frame.  Since there is no bicycle frame here, I need that pipe to bolt the brakes to.  I'm just hiding it by making it look like the exhaust pipe.

That's all for now.  It had been a while since I posted anything, so while it's not Chevy truck related, it did take my weekend.  I'll update progress here, too.

Solder Practice

Doctor's orders keep me from physical labor this weekend, so I decided to try something light, while still moving forward on the truck.  I knew that I needed to practice soldering before I start in on my new wire harness, so this was the perfect weekend to start practicing.  After a little online research and talking to my friend who is an experienced solderer, I set out to practice.  I took 2 equal lengths of 16G wire, stripped the ends and physically twisted them together to start an inline splice.  It looked like this:

Two things I learned from this part of the practice: 1.  I needed a little more stripped wire than I stripped for my practice, 2. It's harder than it looks to get a nice, neat wire twist.  However, I decided to just keep going with it instead of trying to make it perfect.  The next step was to coat the bare wire with flux.  It looked like this:

The pic is a little blurry, but you can see the flux is pretty well coating the exposed wires.  Next was to actually solder the wires.  It looked like this when I was done:

It's not pretty, but the wires are completely soldered.  I am a little worried, though.  I am trying to do the soldering without overheating the wire insulation.  Clearly, I'm not an expert, but the insulation on the wires next to the solder joint look a little overheated to me.  Plus there is some extra flux on the wire on the left side.  I don't know if any of this is a problem or not.  It was my first try and time will tell, which is ok, since I'm not going to be soldering on the wire harness for several months.  That gives me more time to practice and get it right.  Anyway, still in the spirit of keep moving forward, I got out the shrink wrap tubing.  I cut a piece that covered the solder joint and the adjacent wire insulation.  It looked like this before heating:

After heating:

Once again, it looks a little "sweaty" to me, like it's been overheated.  However, it did conform, revealing my lumpy solder joint.  But it did conform!  In an effort to make a water resistant splice, I put a second, longer piece of shrink wrap tubing over the first.  It looked like this:

After heating, you can clearly see the underlying shrink wrap tube.  It looked like this:

Not a bad first attempt, but clearly it could use some improvement.  Just to round things out, I got out a butt splicing crimp connector to see what the difference would look like.  I used these connectors:

When crimped onto the wire, it looked like this:

The package says that the cover is heat shrink material, so I gave that a try too.  It looked like this:

It did shrink, but looks a little "melty" to me.  Also, in the first crimp pic, you can see that it was made for 18-22g wire and I jammed a 16g wire in there, so it was a tight fit, and likely not a good connection.  But it's just a test....  In case you were wondering how I got that massive crimp, I used the crimping tool that I got from Speedway Motors when I ordered my wire harness.  It looks like this:

Once again, I have to apologize for the rotated pics.  Apparently, Photobucket is not impressed with iPhone pics.  It randomly rotates pics (like the crimping tool pic) and when I manually rotate them in photobucket, they look right, but post wrong.  This is also obvious in the crimp pics as they are rotated 180 degrees from each other, which is something that I did not do when I took the pics.  Oh well, it's free....

That's all for now, got to rest.  Yeah, right!

Hazy, Hot and Humid... Not Truck Wrenching Weather.

The three H's ruled the day today, but it is summer.  Got the grass cut, but simply too hot to be in the garage doing anything!  No pics either, just trying to stay cool.  Will pick things up again, when the summer temps cool off a bit.

OK, maybe one pic, a little mind over matter to help with the heat...

A little reminder from a couple of winters ago.  No matter how hot it is now, the cold weather will get here eventually.

A Dash of Dash (Panel Trim)

Here's the last of the quick hitting projects, some dash panel trim and the radio delete panel and attaching bolts.  Once again, here's what it looked like installed in the truck when I got it home:

It's kinda hard to tell from the pic, but there is an upper piece of trim, a lower piece of trim and the slotted piece is actually the radio speaker grill.  The 2 pieces of trim hold the grill in place and the ashtray mounts into the grill.  Here are the pieces after disassembly and sanding:

These were sanded and primed 5 years ago.  Also, because these pieces are actually made up of several pieces of metal, they are hollow.  To get the rust out of the inside, I used Evapo-Rust.  I soaked the parts in the Evapo-Rust until all of the rust was gone.  After it was gone, I rinsed the parts off, dried them with a hair dryer until I was sure that the insides were completely dry.  When I was sure that they were completely dry, I poured paint down the inside to coat the entire inside. It was an attempt to seal the inside surface and prevent rusting again.  After that, I was able to prime and paint the underside.  It looked like this:

(Sorry, I don't know why the pic is rotated, but I can't get it to go the right way....)

I did not do anything to the underside of the radio delete plate, as it wasn't rusted.  Fast forward 5 years and I taped off the backs of the pieces and painted the fronts.  It now looks like this:

Here are the undersides after painting:

That's all for now.  Apparently Photobucket has gone insane.  Pics that look fine there are now rotated here.  Not sure what is going on, but hope it gets resolved quickly!

I'm going to order the vinyl letters for the upper piece of trim.  For 1953 they were white.  When I order those, I'll also order the dome light gasket and some other odds and ends that I need. Trying to make the shipping costs more economical.  Also, I still have the radio speaker grill and the glove box door to work on.  Those still have some rust on them, so they are not yet ready for primer or paint.

The Smoking Lamp is Lit

Another quick turnaround project....  Like the horn button, I had removed the ashtray early on after getting the truck.  Like the rest of the interior, it was in pretty rough shape.  Here's how it looked when I got the truck:

It was actually kind of comical.  The guy that found and bought the truck to resell it had spray painted primer everywhere.  I guess he was trying to hide the rust and tidy up things a bit. However, he didn't go to much trouble in prepping before spraying.  Here you can see a bunch of pencils sticking out of the ashtray.  When I pulled it, it was full of old cigarette butts, too!  When I got it out, I noticed that the actual ashtray body was a real mess, with rust through and pin holes everywhere.  So I cleaned it up and then decided that it was too far gone to salvage and ended up buying a replacement body on eBay.  I was able to clean up the face and handle of the ashtray. The partially cleaned face looked like this:

I say partially cleaned because you can clearly see discoloration on the face of it.  This pic was taken 5 years ago and frankly, I can't remember how clean the face was when I coated it in primer.  However, I don't usually leave any discoloration when I'm cleaning, so I'm assuming it was all gone.  Also, when I looked at it today, there was no indication of any further rusting.  So I feel good that I got it all when I cleaned it 5 years ago.

Then it was simply a matter of unscrewing a small screw on the inside of the ashtray that holds the handle on.  (The handle then squeezes the face to the ashtray body.)  Once the handle is removed, the face comes right off the ashtray body.  Then, like the horn button, it was off for paint.

Here it is after painting and reassembled onto the ashtray body:

I bet it's been a long time since you've seen an ashtray that was actually meant for cigarettes and ashes.  Here is a top shot, looking down:

Here is a side view:

The original ashtray was not painted on the body.  I went ahead and primed/painted the replacement body to prevent any further rusting.  In the next shot, you can see the small screw that holds the handle to the ashtray body and squeezes the face plate to the body.

So that's it for this quick edition.  I've got some dash trim pieces that are masked off and the first coat of paint is drying.  I'll try to get the final coat on them tomorrow and have another post for those.  It's been very gratifying to be able to finally finish these small projects that I started so long ago.  Once the paint on them is fully cured, I'll package them up and store them out of the way.  That will free up some much needed shelf space, which is a good thing.