So having got the pickups working nicely I turned my attention to quartering the wheels and trying the coupling rods. Unfortunately it was at this point that I started to panic.
You may remember from the previous post that I said the live wheels where a little loose on the axles and my plan was to fix these in place using Loctite 243. The reason I started to panic was because I suddenly realised that I had no idea if the Loctite would act as an insulator. If the wheels were insulated from the axle that would be a pain and I'd need to add pickups to the other side, and there isn't much space to do that.
Having used the Loctite to fix the crank pins in place I used my multimeter to check and my worst fears were confirmed; no continuity between the crank pin and the tread of the wheel. After a little bit of head scratching I realised I had a way out.
If you remember, the axles I turned are stepped which makes it easy to set the gauge. It also means that there is contact between the wheel and axle not just within the hole in the wheel but the shoulder on the axle pushes against the back of the wheel. My hope was that if I added the Loctite to the hole from the front of the wheel and then pushed the axle in from the rear it would ensure that there was a nice contact at the back of the wheel. Of course only one way to find out.
Fortunately it all worked nicely. Quartering the wheels was nice and easy (in comparison to every other kit I've built) because I could line up the spokes with the balance weights offset by 90 degrees. In the video the coupling rod is just slotted on, along with some washers to space it from the wheels, so hopefully it works as well once I put on the retaining nuts and trim down the crank pins.
No comments:
Post a Comment