Joining the rodding to the levers... PART 1

The point rodding runs were planned out very early on, but as I've referenced previously, sometimes reality hit home, hard! A lack of space to actually do what we'd planned led to a few alterations along the way, one of which actually reversed the direction of travel for the rodding when the lever was to be pulled. This meant we had to correct the direction underneath the box, at the point where the lever pulls up, and the rodding has to move horizontally. This is achieved by having a vertical crank, and more specifically, which way around it is sited...

Vertical crank: Option A is the standard positioning which we had planned for. Option B is the location we had to adopt in order to change the direction of the rodding to match up properly.

Space underneath the box is especially tight, and the optimum position for the vertical cranks was found to be where the end was in mid air, thus unable to be bolted down.

Fortunately, Rob Murray had an offcut of heavy steel plate which I reckoned would do the job nicely. Once this was halved, making use of the horizontal band saw, it was a matter of marking out carefully for the cranks. Unfortunately, I assumed all three had the same footprint...

A mag drill was used to cut the holes out, allowing one end of the crank to be bolted solely to the plate(s), and the other bolted through the plate and internal bench. We added a couple of additional securing holes to eliminate any possibility of them 'working' under operation and becoming loose.

The plates were positioned roughly, then adjusted to line up perfectly (or at least, as perfectly as we could possibly get!), by using a plumb line from the lever tail to the crank itself. Measurements were then taken to allow the missing connections to be made: these will take the form of a pair of flat bar links for each lever. This was done at mid-stroke, and more than once!!

Once we were happy with the positioning, we marked out through the holes for the through bolts. We drilled what we could (remember my assumption from earlier?), then marked and re-drilled two of the holes in the plate to take the 'slightly different' crank...

It was then time to bolt everything together, with Steve and Jonny squeezing into position. 

...and then the measurements were checked again!

We can now get the correct linkages made, which will involve bushing the lever tail pieces to deal with the wear they have suffered, and bring the pin size down to match throughout!

The vertical cranks are not quite 'finished' as the eagle-eyed amongst you may well spot: the grease nipples are not all currently accessible or even fitted, and there are no split pins to retain the pins. This is a job for later on, as part of our checking, testing and fettling. In the meantime, it is quite possible that we may have to dismantle parts we have installed to allow enough room to access other components! For now, the vertical cranks await connecting up...