N10 Progress

Saturday evening saw a return to work on the chassis for my N10 tank after a total lack of activity since the last NE Group meeting. As with Tony's N8 this is the shot down George Norton kit on a modified Bob Jones chassis - 9mm drivers this time.



The chassis and wheels had been painted previously with a Halfords satin black spray can so it was out with the mini drill to spin the wheels at high speed so I could polish the paint off the wheel rims. Scratch brush, fine wet and dry and a small screwdriver all saw some use for this. The axles were then cleaned with the wet and dry to ensure an electrical path to the bearings.



Wheel bearings were run through with a 1.6mm drill bit ready for applying Simpson springing and all other bearings were reamed to just remove the paint.



As I'm sure most of you know Simpson springing is very simple to apply. A Farish coupling spring was straightened out by repeatedly pulling between finger and thumb. 2mm at the end was bent at 90 degrees and then a length sufficient to pass the axle from the holes Bob has etched in his chassis kits for the purpose was cut off.


A small patch of paint was scratched off inside the frames around the springing hole, the spring fed through, fluxed, clamped with tweezers and a dab of solder applied.

Hopefully the (poor) photo above shows this better than it has been described.


Next job will be to assemble the etched plates for the shiny new quartering jig I bought at the last meeting, and then to see how much this jig helps with getting the wheels pushed onto the muffs square.


Does anyone else really struggle with shortening association muffs? This is needed to provide space for the springing - I wonder if shorter ones could be made available?

Anyway, that's all for now,
Stephen.