Build Day 3- Front End

Day 3- Front Suspension and Front Brakes

Today we aspired to finish the front suspension, however this didn't happen as it was a lot more fiddly than we first thought.

First we sprayed some Dynax inside of the De Dion tube.

Coats well but goes everywhere...

Naturally can't work while ignoring the F1

We then continued to finish the upper and lower wishbones. This continued to be a little fiddly, however with a little persuasion (with a mallet) they slid into place and were bolted as per the manual.

We then moved onto mounting the front disks. As these were the ventilated disks and quad piston callipers they lower right in and do not require to be built. We soon found that it would be impossible to have the top and bottom wishbones bolted to the brake uprights and then tighten the special milled nyloc on the underside of the lower wishbone. This was due to there not being enough clearance for any of our sockets to fit on properly. To fix this we disconnected the top wishbone from the upright then tightened the nyloc to the required torque, but to get enough leverage for the torque setting, the disk had to be secured. We did this by clamping two lengths of wood either side of the disk.

Wood in place

After this the top wishbone was attached and all of the nuts tightened to the required torque settings.

The angle of the bottom upright can be seen here. All bolts torqued and marked.

Cycle wingstay fitted to centre of the upright.

Premier Digital Torque Adaptor, can be used to test accuracy of existing torque wrenches or used as a torque wrench itself with a socket set and drivers.

Dad trying to work it... instructions are worse than the build manual...

Just a quick bit of lunch then back to finish the left side of the front suspension.

Finally the finished front suspension

Just a little free time for dad to quickly pose for the camera...

Annoyingly the GoPro ran out of battery without us realising so only the first half of the day.

To finish off the night we decided to fit the brake lines, which proved to be a bit too much today... This was all due to the brake hoses being completely different to the ones shown in the manual. The fittings are not the same and there are fewer parts supplied than described. This discovered we decided to to call it a night and email Derek for help and to enquire as to why the grill in the nose cone had not been painted, despite being, sold, bought and paid for.