Spending and Accounting

I am being fastidious in my accounting for this project. I am not sure if it is required here in the UK yet, but the rules of racing karts in the USA are very strict, that you must account for your spending on your kart. I think this is to ensure that owners do not purchase their cars. The ethos of the sport is that to participate you must be an amateur and you must build your own car.

So I have done a spreadsheet of spending and am keeping all my receipts, which are itemised and kept in a filing cabinet. It is good to know exactly where I stand. But it is frightening quite how much it all comes to when you are starting out in this game.

I now have my steel, my engine, wheel hubs, rear axle, have ordered my torque converter (the biggest spend so far), wheels, tyres, have ordered my plate wheel and carrier, have my UJs and springs, key, hub-plates, and oilite bushes and circlips.

Total spending is now over £1,000.

interchangeable steering systems

I have been playing with ways to have interchangeable steering in the car, so that I can experiment with the original system and also with one incorporating Ackerman principles; a pivoting axle and a rigid one. This will be achieved by having bolt-on fronts, the first with a triangular pivot point, the latter with parallel rails holding a rigid axle. In both cases the axle will be sprung on a central spring pillar, like the original. The Ackerman axle will probably also have sliding pillars incorporated with the stub axles.

notes, not art

If it is built like the original, it will run like it!

People will think me bonkers, but last night, having welded up some of the front of my chassis, I thought that I really should be building my Bédélia to run the way the original did, with the steering like a kid's billy-kart (for all that the tyres will scuff, etc) and with a central spring, either instead of or as well as the independent sliding pillars on the wheels. After all, people always say of cyclekarts that if you make your kart the way it was originally made, it should run like the original.

There is however a caveat in my case, because the main compromise I have had to make with mine is that what was a very long wheelbase is now very much shorter, albeit still 5" longer than most karts. I am told by those who have expressed a view that what made the Bédélia run true, despite its steering, was its great length. Ah well! Still worth a go.

This morning Lucy and I watched YouTube videos with our porridge and analysed the nose of the cyclecar, especially in Bedelia BD2 - YouTube.

If it fails, at least it will have been an interesting experiment and I can always change it back to Plan A.

Watch these

Terrific video of a start up

and another of a very slickly restored Bédélia

and this one is superb! And makes me wish I hadn't been such a dunce at languages at school! But at least I have now learnt the term petit manette for a little lever, when referring to the throttle at the driver's right side.

Sub-structure

A chop-saw or sliding mitre saw like mine (with the right blade), surprisingly, can cut up to 6mm of steel! What makes it most useful is that it can cut box square. All angled cuts beyond 45 degrees must be done with an angle grinder. The last couple of days I have been measuring and drawing up my chassis. Today I started cutting it and laying it out.

I know it looks very boxy, but this will be largely covered. It also looks heavy, but I am confident that the chassis distributes the weight efficiently. It is slightly cramped in front, but the engine is in front of the rear axle, so I think my steering should be quite positive and my CofG low and central.

Bedelia controls

I have been researching the controls on the Bedelia, for the sake of authenticity, in part, but also because the foot-well of mine will be very tight, as the feet will be where the inline V-twin was on the original, so a very narrow space.

It turns out that the accelerator was operated by two levers (throttle and advance/retard) inside the right side of the cockpit.

On Grace's Guide I have found the 4th of December 1912 issue of The Cyclecar with an article describing the common systems of control in cyclecars.

In the simplest form of cyclecar having final transmission by means of two belts, the drive is usually taken up by closing up the pulleys or by tightening the belts. In the Bedelia there is a lever at the right-hand side of the driver, which, on being pulled backwards, tightens the belt.. On being pushed forward to a certain point, free engine is obtained by slackening the belts, and further movement applies brake blocks to the back wheels. There are two small levers for operating the throttle and spark respectively, and there is a pedal operated by the driver’s left foot, which raises the exhaust valves ; further application applies the foot brake. In the Bedelia the change of gear is effected by placing the belt on different-sized pulleys.

So there was a foot-brake but not a foot accelerator. The throttle levers referred to can be seen in a very small picture (which doesn't blow-up sufficiently clearly for publication, here). They are at the side of the cockpit, not at the driver's feet. 

On my Bédélia, belt tightening will be done by the torque converter and there will be a foot-brake, I think. But I am wondering about putting the throttle on the steering wheel, like the advance and retard levers on a vintage car.

chassis and engine

Today I have been thinking about the position of the engine, torque converter and plate wheel, relative to my seat and the rear axle. Torque converters are out of stock presently, but I understand there are some currently going through customs and I have asked for one to be reserved for me. Will be a lot easier to work out my positions once mine is here.

More about all this later

Plotting

 

Tyring morning

Dom Steveson used to service my motorbike, which is how we first met and when I first knew that the Bensen gyrocopter in the hangar where I kept my plane, was his. We are fellow gyroplane pilots, which means we had lots to talk about this morning when, between MOTs, Dom put the tyres on my pit bike wheels. I doubt there's another motorbike workshop anywhere in England - perhaps even the world - which has the remains of another Bensen gyro hanging from the roof. That was something else we had in common, until I sold my Bensen last year.

There's "The King" of Kingdom Motorcycles

Thanks Dom!

Sliding pillar - today's progress

I don't have a 16mm drill bit so I tack welded the top and bottom bits back-to-back and then chain drilled a hole through both with a small bit and then filed a hole. This will not be awful because I am going to weld M16 washers at both ends to give perfect holes each end.

I will be using M16 bolts with as much of the shaft smooth as possible. I think I will use high dome heads both ends.

This evening I also found a very user-friendly place to order fixings online (when Suffolk Fasteners are not available). https://www.westfieldfasteners.co.uk