Hi thanks a lot to Klaus Dietrich and as ever useful contributions from
Graham Singleton. I still have a lot of unanswered questions about the
mod as issued. It would seem from the size of the supplementary tubes
issued that they are probably capable of taking more load than the original
frame? strange? Was it really only half as strong as it should have been?
I wrote the factory the day after the Chavenage fly in to suggest, as I
had done when the nylon blocks mod was issued, that they were the root of the
problem. I still haven't had an answer to my letter but I note that the
blocks have been dispened with?
Mike Dolph and I each made up test pieces of tube to glass structure and
this pm we heated them up with an ordiary hot air gun B&D I think, nothing
special and they came apart reasonably easy and clean. Being by now
thorougly cheesed off with the whole shebang and desperate to make some
progress we made up a rig using old 1/2" plumbing bits so that we could heat
up the two top pipes at once and, after a bit of a struggle with a pair of
old tyre leavers on wooden bearers to spread the load the top pair of tubes
came free. We put some 1/2" elbows with short stubs of pipe in them in the
inboard ends of the tubes and they exhausted the hot air away from the inside
of the tunnel without any bother.
We did similar fiddles with the lower tubes and finished up with the frame
in our hands. A great leap backwards as far as I am concerned now I've only
got to help get Carl Patt's frame out and we can send them back to KB and
start the installation bizz over again hoping to get them near enough to
where they were so we can still get the flaps ect to work OK.
Long ago I held a welding ticket, before tig that is but my worry about the
weld insitu idea is that I really don't like the idea of all that old grease
burned into the bearing and not being sure about the condition of the bronze
bearings so close to the welding. Also plenty of welders can do good welds
downhand if the weld site is reasonably accessable but a cramped welding
site, upsidedown is not conducive to good quality welds unless the welder is
better than very good and testing the quality of such a weld is practically
impossible in the circumstances. I had already fitted a grease nipple to
the bearing so should be able to flush it out with clean grease if
necessary.I'll do a bit on that for the next Flyer. In the end Y pays y money
and takes y chance. I have taken mine hopefully it will be ok when I get it
back in situ. When that happens I'll let you know.
PS If anyone is Kirby bound from this area will you call me or Carl mayhap
we can collaborate on returning the bits to and from the works.
All the best Ron S No 33 see y at Shoreham.
PPS Mike is still likely to try the insitu weld route I will let you know how
we get on.
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