Back in Charge

As an aside from the engine strip, which is challenging at the moment since Amelia is still resident in the Summer House and the bottom end is in the frame, and there is precious little light to use to continue the engine strip, I have been polishing up the chain case and making the battery tray.

You'll have seen the post Battery Carrier earlier in the blog and you will know that I had no part of the battery carrier originally. You'll also know that thanks to the generosity of the Ariel Owners Club members I have been able to get all the technical details I need to make one.

So, starting with Brenton Roy's drawing, the dimensions of the GU11E battery from an old Lucas catalogue and some 16 SWG cold rolled steel sheet, we could get started.

Using the faithful Bosch jigsaw, I cut an oversize blank just to have something I could handle on the bench. These days, having failed to make myself some engineers marking blue, I mark out using a Sharpie spirit marker before witnessing in the traditional way, with a dot punch.

The next stage was to cut out the shape with the hacksaw. The 'internal' tabs (those that the screws pass through, underneath the battery carrier) I cut out with a piercing saw, starting first with a 1 mm drill at each end of the cut. 

The shape was then finished off with various files.

The holes were then centre punched and drilled 7 mm, (clearance for a 1/4" BSCy screw).

The next stage was to fit the nuts. These were 1/4" BSCy full nuts, tacked in place with the trusty MIG, and yes, those holes are noticeably triangular - hard to drill perfectly round holes in sheet metal.

The next step was to bend up the tabs. I put both halves of the chaincase in the vice to check the overall width before I did this - I didn't want to end up with the tabs out of parallel or rebending them.

Here is the raw battery tray fitted to the chaincase for the first time. The special fasteners and spacers are from Acme Stainless. It's looking good.

That is about it really. I re-cut all the threads since the welding appeared to have caused a little distortion  I draw filed the edges and deburred, and since this picture was taken I bent up that tabs that retrain the battery. Might be a problem here - I have ordered a battery from Drags but I don't have it yet.

Last thing before assemble was to paint - the usual UPol etch primer, followed by Halfords gloss black acrylic, then final assembly, and that's it. Again, stainless parts from Acme.

A few days spent in a warm room saw it packed away in a box until the bike is assembled.