Steel Cobra

Day 4 - Sunday 16th February 2003

Now that the legs were joined and pivoting nicely, the next stage was to mount the windscreen wiper motor to the frame. This ended up being fairly tricky to do.

The motor uses three bolts around the central spindle to mount to the frame. The first part of the mounting plate was made from the same material as the frame:

Then, a section of right angle steel was welded into place:

And in position:

Unfortunately, this wouldn't place the motor in the right place, so a different solution was used:

A connecting rod was made from the 8mm bar used yesterday, with a drilled M8 nut at one end, and an M8 bolt welded to the other. This bolt connected to a drilled M8 nut welded to the front nose leg's connecting rod. The new rod was then placed to conect the motor to the leg assembly:

Now everything was connected together, it was time to start the motor up. Unfortunately, I'd overestimated the length of the motor connecting rod, and it needed trimming shorted. However, it did work eventually:

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If you look closely at this, then you can see that the legs move too far upwards, and not down enough. A lot of experimentation was performed, involving rewelding bits, cutting them down to size and so forth. However, in the end, it worked:

(475K MPEG)

Now it was moving, it was time for the big question - will it support its own weight?

Yes, it does. Here are some more pictures of it resting:

Unfortunately, the front leg is a little long, but that can be sorted out in the next session, where the feet will be made.