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With everything painted up, the M6 plug tap finally arrived and I duly ran through the end caps to their full depth with the nett result that the screw threads of the spring shaft were now fully engaged with the end caps. A spring assembly was constructed and it was onto the first bogie. Swing arm pins were duly lubricated with Tamiya ceramic grease and the swing arms installed. The spring assembly was then positioned and the swing arm claws engaged with the slots of the spring end caps. A quick operation of the completed assembly for correct operation....bang.......the left side end cap was hitting the top of the bogie housing with over 20mm of travel remaining! If I forced the control arm further upwards, the claw of the spring arm was forced out of the end cap. I did try to take a picture of this but unfortunately with everything black, you can't really see anything.
Now I want the bogies to have full movement so it was time to get creative. Firstly, I rounded off the top halves of the spring assembly end caps to see if this made a difference. It did but not by much! So the only way forward here was to try and give them more space which meant creating a hollow at the top of the housing in which they could travel without being impeded; bye bye paint job!!
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Using the existing paint, I obtained some witness marks by pushing at the control arms. This would give me an indication of where the hollow would need to be. A power file was then used to create the required hollow on each side. I used black primer as engineers blue to see the witness marks produced as I proceeded to create the hollows. Eventually, I got to the point where the spring assembly stayed engaged with the swing arm claws and I had full range of movement on both the left side... and the right side... My attempt at trying to show how deep the hollows went is I'm afraid sadly lacking...... but your looking in the order of between 2 and 3mm. I don't think I have affected the structural strength of the bogie itself by doing this; not being a mechanical engineer, i can not say for certain. Time will tell.......either way, it looks like I've a repaint job to do
