Since then life has been to hell and back but now I'm in a happier place and able to continue with the rebuild.
I've had a set of axles machined from brass, to help limit corrosion in the running gear. I'm going to try and keep the steel content of this Tiger as low as possible, replacing the original steel parts with aluminium parts.
To try and push the project on, I've been trying to work little and often.
Today's task was to close up some of the holes in the lower hull sides. These were originally included for mounting cap-head bolts, which were supposed to act upon the swing arms and prevent the suspension from over-twisting the torsion bars. As this Tiger will have uprated torsion bars, these aren't needed any more, so I decided to fill them in.
First off, I tapped the holes to M6:
Next I cut up some M6 aluminium threaded bar into small slugs:
These were then glued into the holes with JB Weld:
And finally filed and sanded flat:
Interestingly, the camera has picked up the difference in materials and made them look much more depressed than they actually are. Once primed and painted, these should be invisible. Not to mention the running gear in front of them
The larger threaded holes are where the bolts should go through to hold the hull sides to the hull floor. Some of these had pulled through, so I will be doing a very similar process with these holes, so that I can use CSK bolts to hold the sides in place.
Adrian.