I did a quick rekky round the field and there were no suitable trees. The adjacent field was perfect, but of course out of bounds! I was getting concerned until I spotted a little shelter right down the far end. It’s perfect!!

I setup a treat and had two nights of warm, cosy sleep 🙂 The other guys were moaning about the cold and noise, but I was fine. It was a bit of a walk to the event HQ, but otherwise I couldn’t fault my accommodation at all.

What a great name for an event! Aptly titled for an Irish off-road rally. I came over to do the event as I haven’t ridden the KLR off road for a long time. It’s hard to find trails in England as every inch is owned by someone.

I arrived early and met a chap called Brian with a fine beard. We agreed to team up so I went to setup the hammock. I didn’t manage to wild camp as planned the night before as I left it too late. I also walked into a lake by mistake, but that’s another story!

The event was well signed and well organised. Bigger than I expected.

By the time the event started I was getting a bit concerned. There were over 150 riders, most with decent off-road bikes and all the gear. Trailers arriving with bikes on, full on race vans for teams with gazebos. I was beginning to wonder what I’d let myself in for!

A couple of guys tried to put me off the night stage, saying you couldn’t see anything and would get hopelessly lost in the woods. They weren’t going as they thought it was dangerous, the main reason for running it was just to keep the lads out of the pub the night before.

But Brian and the younger fellas talked me into it and I’m really glad I went. What a blast!! I couldn’t believe the Kerry boy with no lights went out, how he managed not to die was beyond me. I sandwiched him between me and James on another KLR with our main beams on.

No photos from the night stage, but here’s one of the hills we tried (and failed) to get up. In the dark!! Mental 🙂

I should add that I didn’t even attempt it the night before. I couldn’t get up in the daytime either! Hey ho.

The conrod is coming along nicely, even starting to look something like the final article. Well, with a little imagination!

Progress is slow but I like that. In a world of instant gratification, seeing something evolve slowly is a rare treat.

Twiddling the knobs on a machine is a great way to let your mind wander, and forget about work hassles for a while!

It might not look much, but the first cuts on the mill have been done. These will be the radius of the conrod as the thickness increases to the eyes of the big and small ends. A simple groove on the rotary table.

Except that nothing is simple is it? The mill isn’t big enough to do the slot in one go, the job would hit the body of the mill. We had to do one half from each side. Hard to explain in words, but obvious as a dog’s doo-dahs when you see it.

Big end done on both sides, on to the little end next.

We took turns as its quite laborious. I’d not operated such a large lathe before, it was good fun!!

Plenty of swarf came off and there’s plenty more to come. Or as Nick calls it – Man Glitter!

Usually being turned down has negative connotations, but not this time. Bob and I turned down the bar for the conrod to the right thickness and I drilled the mounting holes for the rotary table.

Not particularly difficult operations in themselves, but it’s a start and it’s something! There was no fanfare or ceremony, but I feel like there should have been. An actual engine component was started today and that can only be good 🙂

Now with the outline marked on you get a better idea of what’s inside that aluminium bar….

I’ve just come back from a break for my holiday. Back at it now so hopefully there’ll be a little more progress now.

Here’s a picture of the conrod. Granted, it may not look like a conventional conrod, but the conrod is there I assure you! It’s inside that big piece of aluminium, I just have to machine it out 🙂

Currently it’s on the big lathe in Bob’s shed. The first job is to thin it down to the corect depth, to take the radius off the sides where the bar was extruded and ensure that the sides are flat and parallel.

Then it’s onto the Miller, but I’ll upload more photos at that point. I might also get back down to the airfield this weekend, to try and remove some more parts from the engine there. But the apples are falling from the tree so Sunday could be a Cider making day!!

Bob is as keen as ever to help out. It’s like having a shed fairy!

It’s been a while since I updated the blog, mostly because not much has happened recently. Well, plenty of thinking but it’s hard to take a photo of that! Bob has been busy drawing Issue 2 of the plans, which I now have scanned in.

Graham has been on holiday so we can’t access the engine, and we haven’t finished making a new spanner yet anyway. On that, Nick has been busy with his rotary table as we’re planning to make the next spanner a different way.

I’ve been holding off spending big money until I know I can get all the parts, but I figured £40 for some 6082 aluminium to make a conrod was ok. Nick was planning to make the outside on his machine, but research into cutting speeds has lead us to abandon that idea.

Back to old school millers in Bob’s shed then! Luckily Nick has done some homework and worked out how we can do this. What a clever bloke! I’ll be taking these calculations round to Bob’s later.

A morning at the airfield saw the Spanner used in anger. It worked a treat! We could only get at 4 nuts on the whole engine due to the tightness of space. I think spanner mk II will be slightly different, remade from guage plate so it can be hardened.

Looking at the "Good" engine was hard work. Everything is very tightly packed, like a Chinese puzzle where each part requires removal of the next to get it off. We managed to get a couple of manifolds off and peered inside. The sleeves we could see were rusty, not a good sign. We might only salvage a piston and ball joint, but we’ll see.

Graham has a couple of weeks holiday now, so we have time to remake the Spanner. I might get some alloy so we can start to make the conrod too. Nick is ploughing on with his coreXY plotter robot, and Bob is finalising issue 2 of the design.

I’ll return the nut we borrowed and research the CNC plasma cutter in more detail.