Ive just had a phone call from someone who i havent spoken to for years (we send a letter now and then, but i bet the last time we saw each other was at my sisters wedding 17 years ago) and what a coincidence that Ken should call tonight on the night that Eric had been. If Eric is a fountain of interesting knowledge, then Ken is a Geyser of knowledge (though he is anything but a geezer). Ken must be in his late 70's now and i have fond memories as a kid going out in the canoe or boat that he had hand built, or when he would turn up on a sunday afternoon on his beautifully restored Royal Enfield. His Marlin project has been being fettled to perfection for at least 15 years as far as I know. Ken knows about everything and he is of an era when men built "specials" not "customs"
He phoned me to thank me for a couple of photos I'd sent him of the Reliant when we were stripping the donor car (I knew he'd be interested) - and despite not having chatted for many years he was imeadiately into deep conversation about chassis design, torsional stiffness and BHP.
Ken was very quick to suggest (almost as if it was clearly obvious) that i should be building the Trike frame out of box section (ie not tube) - What is going on? Everyone keeps saying "box section" - is it me? am I missing something here?
But Ken did also go on to explain why he thought box section is the sensible option to take. It wasn't so much the explanation of the torsional advantages of box section that interested me, but rather more the practicalities of squareness that until now I had never considered, and Kens reasoning was a real wake up for me. "The thing with tube" says ken "is that everytime you want to mount something to it, youve got to square off the tube" theres no simply bolting a bracket or plate to a tube, youve got to weld a pad on that you can then mount to. And of course when it comes to welding a box section frame, a simple straight sawn end is a perfectly adequate butt welding joint, whereas with tube youve got to file and fillet the butt joint.
Perhaps it is cool to be square..... Hmm MORE thinking to keep me tossing and turning at night.
As we concluded our chat, Ken offered his services as an advisor or a sounding board, and i was particularly intrested in his suggestion that he might be able to bring some new perspectives if I was to ask him "what did they USED to do about........ " A wealth of experience and insights that could provide my own project with some unique features, details and work-around tricks
And so I hereby welcome Ken as an honoury member and advisor to the Black Spanner project board
1 comment:
The seat sounds great. However you might like to budget for hecost of a seat heater for the frosty mornings. Are you going to "spring mount" the seat to give you some form of suspension?
I spoke to Ken the other evening and he said he was going to phone you to thank you for the pictures. I mentioned the blog site but I think it was a bit out of his experience, remember he does not have great kids to keep him up to date! Ken will be an asset to the team. If you set him a problem he will go away and find a couple of well considered solutions. Good point about the equipment mounting problems, I had forgotten about that. I just like rectangular tube for ease of setting out angles. You can make a saving by not buying the tube bender! You mentioned a "next project", how about the one after that being a Trike with a round tube frame? By then you will know exactly what you want and the location of everything.
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