How to become practical

[prv]

In a way this thread is a bit sad. I remember all the things mentioned from my own youth - Meccano, Mamod, Jetex plus all the little engines taken to bits and the knackered Minis that got souped up in the garage. But my own son, 30 years later, did none of these. They had all gone. Along with the cowboy and indians games and the air rifles. And even decent sized bangers you could throw at female relatives. And mischief night terrorising the neighbours. Or making back yard explosives with weedkiller.

How old is he? I'm 31, so grew up in the 80s and 90s, and most of the things you mention were still around. Estes rockets replaced Jetex, and I never got into cars but probably could have done. Don't think we played cowboys and indians specifically - probably just a reflection of the prevalence of westerns in 50s and 60s telly and films - but plenty of similar things. I had (still have) an air pistol. Bangers, yes, couldn't buy those in this country, but any trip to France and they were the number one commodity - at least until old enough that booze and fags replaced them (but even at 18 I still bought some impressive specimens, one of which got thrown out of a car window at a teacher's house...)

I think Mischief Night was a Northern thing, so wouldn't have had that in our part of the world anyway.

Backyard explosives I did - remote-detonated landmines and a sort of half-inch-bore cannon being the highlights. This was with crushed-up rocket motors as powder rather than a weedkiller mix. Before discovering that, we used to make fireballs on the chip-pan-and-water principle, by melting tealights (in their little metal cups) over a flame and then spraying water at them. A friend used to set up scenes in which toy plastic soldiers got immolated, the biggest of which also took off his eyebrows in cartoon fashion (but lucky it wasn't anything more). I made a remote-activated version using a pottery model lighthouse, with a "boiler room" in the bottom that melted paraffin wax in an old air-gun pellet tin mounted part-way up, and a pipe connected to the pump from a waterpistol to spray the water that triggered the fireball out of the hole in the top.

Perhaps it's significant that I was never that into sport?

Pete

 

[Neil]

I did all the usual: Meccano, chemistry sets, Philips Electronic sets, Mamod, Jetex, balsa wood/issue/dope gliders - all before the age of 11. Did some very dodgy things with the gunpowder from bangers - eg made a cannon out of a block of wood and shot steel ball bearings to destroy my ageing Airfix models, especially the ME109, Stuka and Dornier, before the Spitfire! Did a body swap on my first car, an Isetta bubble car at 16, rebuilt car engines, now playing with dead Seagulls - got a 40 Featherweight ready to strip in the next couple of weeks.

No.1 son has a practical bent, but the chemistry sets of even 15 years ago were full of H&S so needs must I raid the chemistry lab at work, but at least we made gunpowder, fuses and thermite.....

I've sort of painted myself into a corner though: my two daughters, 9 and 5, think I can fix absolutely anything, and bring me the most mangled toys you can imagine, "can you fix this Daddy?" I try not to disappoint, but it's difficult sometimes....

 

[Avocet]

My dad, who grew up in the war, tells me a few hair-raising incidents from his childhood - usually involving small bits of ordnance that they "found" when playing. I might be part of the last generation that could actually "play" with cars. I ended up working in the car industry, but today's cars are so complex, insurance is so expensive, and emissions requirements much more strictly enforced, that I feel really sorry for the budding Colin Chapmans of today. You need a lot more money nowadays to "play" with cars than you used to.

 

[nigelmercier]

You need a lot more money nowadays to "play" with cars than you used to.

That's why I bought a boat!

 

[KellysEye]

To get practical you need to do things. As a kid I helped rewire our house and replaced brake pads, stripped down and rebuilt an engine with my father. In college holidays I worked for a builder and demolition guy. So I can retile a roof, decorate, buld a brick wall and arch and lay a concrete drive, the latter two (except the arch) I did for my parents. I can also demolish houses, if it's old there are a lot of things you can sell such as 3 inch bricks and wooden beams. On our boat I could repair everything on the boat including rigging but not the electronics since now it's usually a circuit board problem, in the old days you could replace valves, capacitors etc. And yes I did have a Meccano set which I loved, bulding and using a crane was my favourite.

My father was an electrical engineer and used to strip down to parts anything electrical he bought to see how it worked, a reel to reel tape recorder is an example. I used to watch him avidly and learnt much, especially laying things out in a line so you know how to put it back together again. My mother was tight lipped, understandably.

 

[Skylark]

Ah............pellet guns! forgot all about those. I probably still have a Webley Hurricane 177, still in its box, somewhere in the loft. Great to keep reading all of our memories from youth.

 

[Norman_E]

I came late to this thread, and yes, I did have Meccano, indeed it was the only toy I ever wanted for birthdays or Christmas was more Meccano! I also had access to my father's tool kit from an early age. His reaction to me putting a chisel through my left hand was to tell me it would teach me to work away from my hand not towards it when carving wood! The result was that I have always made things, became a keen model engineer, and even made a lot of tools including a horizontal milling machine.

EDIT: I just remembered it, The Grammar School I went to had a huge collection of Meccano Magazines in the library, for reading during wet lunch hours.

 

[Neil]

Ah............pellet guns! forgot all about those. I probably still have a Webley Hurricane 177, still in its box, somewhere in the loft. Great to keep reading all of our memories from youth.

I had a Webley air pistol! However, after I was caught using it to shoot my younger brother's teddy bear (to piss him off), it suddenly got "lost". When my parents eventually owned up to hiding it, I was an adult, but the regs no longer allowed me to carry it home on the plane......I also started to build a crossbow. The stock was finished and the metal for the trigger parts was starting to come from the engineering company my farther worked for....until I started to wax lyrical about how it would shoot bolts for 400 yards, then strangely, the bits of steel bar and plate started to dry up...never did finish that project.

 

[Lakesailor]

Ah! Of course! Yes, I'd not twigged that! But now I'm stuck to picture how the steering shaft moves? Is there a sliding joint further up to accommodate the plunge as the axle swivels? Re. the understeer, does it have a limited slip diff? Could putting some negative camber on the front wheels help?

Can't use torque-biasing diffs. Just use the individual fiddle brakes. Body roll doesn't effect camber as it's a beam axle.


The axle is pivoted on an arc created by forward facing radius rods. The uj that connects the column to the steering shaft is at (almost) the same pivot point as the radius rod rose joints.
Theoretically the steering shaft and the radius rod move in parallel as the axle moves up and down. The steering column is a retained in bushes and is free to move up and down. So a little movement could be taken up by the column moving an inch or so up and down in it's bush.

These may help illustrate that.

Body roll (not me driving)

​

 

[Avocet]

Ta for that. No, I was just wondering if some negative camber on the front wheels might give them a bit more "bite" when resisting sideways movement? I can see they're independent of body roll, but relative to the ground, they might present a better "edge"?

Scary steering! Just wondered if moving the rack back had meant the steering shaft and the axle were now moving in conflicting arcs?

 

[Lakesailor]

Conflicting arcs. Can't see that. The pivot point is the same for both before and after.

Negative camber seems unpopular on all the cars. Given the extreme lock they use it may present problems when hard over.

 

[Bosun Higgs]

No.1 son has a practical bent, but the chemistry sets of even 15 years ago were full of H&S so needs must I raid the chemistry lab at work, but at least we made gunpowder, fuses and thermite.....

Sad isnt it. In the 6th form at school we were allowed to work unsupervised in the extensive chemi labs at school - no H&S in those days. Mostly ended up fooling around doing things like distilling cider to make brandy but by then we had either just finished A level chemistry or were approaching it, so the "experiments" at least had some knowledge behind them. Mind you a few years earlier, I had an attempt at making nitroglycerine at home - gradually dripping glycerine through a mixture of conc nitric and sulphuric acids in a jam jar. To see if it had worked I started off hitting a drop of the result on a metal plate with a hammer but nothing happened. The efforts got a bit wilder and still no success. Finally moved into the washouse / shed which had a gas supply and put a half cupful of the nitro in a flask above a bunsen burner and retired to see what happened. Thank god nothing did or the washing machine might have ended up in orbit.

 

[Skylark]

Sad isnt it. In the 6th form at school we were allowed to work unsupervised in the extensive chemi labs at school - no H&S in those days. Mostly ended up fooling around doing things like distilling cider to make brandy but by then we had either just finished A level chemistry or were approaching it, so the "experiments" at least had some knowledge behind them. Mind you a few years earlier, I had an attempt at making nitroglycerine at home - gradually dripping glycerine through a mixture of conc nitric and sulphuric acids in a jam jar. To see if it had worked I started off hitting a drop of the result on a metal plate with a hammer but nothing happened. The efforts got a bit wilder and still no success. Finally moved into the washouse / shed which had a gas supply and put a half cupful of the nitro in a flask above a bunsen burner and retired to see what happened. Thank god nothing did or the washing machine might have ended up in orbit.

Now that does sound like an idilic childhood upbringing.

Around bonfire night, I recall a bunch of us mixing sodium chlorate with sugar. A bit of fuse wire in a sealed test tube and make for cover. We set one home made firework off in the street. Lots of smoke. Out of the haze as it blew away came the silouette of the Police Panta car. Oh 5hit. A bit of innocent fun in the late 1960s.

 

[Avocet]

Conflicting arcs. Can't see that. The pivot point is the same for both before and after.

Negative camber seems unpopular on all the cars. Given the extreme lock they use it may present problems when hard over.

Surely you've just moved the bottom steering shaft pivot point backwards 2"? I see your point about negative camber and lock. I guess if it made a difference, someone would have done it by now! How about lashing up some sort of pulley and cable system like wheel-steering for an outboard so that as you turn the steering wheel it also actuates the fiddle brake on the appropriate side?

 

[maby]

Sad isnt it. In the 6th form at school we were allowed to work unsupervised in the extensive chemi labs at school - no H&S in those days. Mostly ended up fooling around doing things like distilling cider to make brandy but by then we had either just finished A level chemistry or were approaching it, so the "experiments" at least had some knowledge behind them. Mind you a few years earlier, I had an attempt at making nitroglycerine at home - gradually dripping glycerine through a mixture of conc nitric and sulphuric acids in a jam jar. To see if it had worked I started off hitting a drop of the result on a metal plate with a hammer but nothing happened. The efforts got a bit wilder and still no success. Finally moved into the washouse / shed which had a gas supply and put a half cupful of the nitro in a flask above a bunsen burner and retired to see what happened. Thank god nothing did or the washing machine might have ended up in orbit.

I was more successful! I built a small bunker out of bricks with a paving slab as the roof and brewed my nitro inside it - we recovered the paving slab from the neighbour's garden! I had a ringing in the ears for a couple of days.

 

[Lakesailor]

Surely you've just moved the bottom steering shaft pivot point backwards 2"? I see your point about negative camber and lock. I guess if it made a difference, someone would have done it by now! How about lashing up some sort of pulley and cable system like wheel-steering for an outboard so that as you turn the steering wheel it also actuates the fiddle brake on the appropriate side?

As the steering arm moves the the arc it travels forward and backwards in relation to the tie rods from the rack. This means that the same displacement of the tie rod at each end results in a different amount of "turn" at each wheel. Easier to see in motion than describe.

The idea about auto fiddle braking would be to have it as an additional and subsidiary system as the fiddle brakes figure much more in the driving of the car than just steering.
Invariably you need to brake the uphill wheel on traverses and even on vertical climbs (straight up the hill, not up at 90°) you need to drag on the fiddles to prevent breakaway and wheelspin.

Good rear brakes are essential and discs are the only way to go as they are in use and usually wet, nearly all the time.

Actually an auto system to limit wheelspin would probably contravene the rules. I'm guessing someone may have tired it already.
From the MSA Regs

Brakes
114. Vehicles must be fitted with operative and effective front and rear brakes. Independent rear braking is permitted, but no self-compensating controls are permitted on the rear brakes, which must be single leading-shoe drum brakes or disc brakes.

 

[Slow_boat]

I wasn't allowed to do science at school because I'm disprasic (like dislexia with numbers) and no good at maths. It didn't stop me and my mates blowing things up, though. It came to an end when we made a slightly to big pipe bomb which we used to blow a wall up. it damn near blew the house up, too, so we stopped at that.

But am I practical?

Yes, I think so, with everything except chart plotters and other electonics and geeky stuff. I've never actually used a chartplotter.
It comes from messing about with wrecks of boats and motorbikes for a lifetime and not being able to afford to pay anyone to work on them for me!

 

[Avocet]

As the steering arm moves the the arc it travels forward and backwards in relation to the tie rods from the rack. This means that the same displacement of the tie rod at each end results in a different amount of "turn" at each wheel. Easier to see in motion than describe.

The idea about auto fiddle braking would be to have it as an additional and subsidiary system as the fiddle brakes figure much more in the driving of the car than just steering.
Invariably you need to brake the uphill wheel on traverses and even on vertical climbs (straight up the hill, not up at 90°) you need to drag on the fiddles to prevent breakaway and wheelspin.

Good rear brakes are essential and discs are the only way to go as they are in use and usually wet, nearly all the time.

Actually an auto system to limit wheelspin would probably contravene the rules. I'm guessing someone may have tired it already.
From the MSA Regs

I think we're talking about different things. I can see what you're saying about creating the Ackerman by moving the rack backwards, but what I'm saying is (looking from the side of the car, as it were, rather than from the top) is that the front axle moves in an arc dictated by its radius rods, and the steering shaft will have to swing up and down too, as the axle moves. In its simplest case, in double wheel bump, with the axle rising parallel to the ground, the steering shaft will pivot about its top and bottom universal joint centres and (presumably) these have been picked to (as closely as possible) match the arc that the radius rods cause the axle to move in - otherwise it would just try to "stretch" or "compress" the steering shaft? With shortening the shaft by 2", will that still be true?

 

[Lakesailor]

See what you mean. The steering shaft ujs are near enough in the same plane as the rose joints on the radius arms. As shown in post #89 http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?352740-How-to-become-practical&p=4087532#post4087532
Any slight movement required is taken up by a bit of plunge available in the steering column which is not vertical but at a slight rearward angle and free to move up and down in it's bushes.
The forward uj at the rack end is almost superfluous as the steering shaft is in-line with the input shaft on the steering rack. So the shortening of the shaft and rearward move of the rack doesn't change the geometry.