Build Diary
May 2008


Last month I said: I am anticipating BIG progress this month.  ;-)

Never mind.

I went down to my local bike breakers (Oxford Bike Breakers, only open Saturday and Sunday, very nice bloke, very friendly, but more expensive if you turn up in a car , sadly I always do).  Found a massive box of rims and headlamps, and had a rummage (all encouraged).  No good.  Loads of nasty little honda ones, and loads of rust (most should have gone for scrap) bu nothing that fitted my needs.

Eventually I reverted back to e-bay.  And, after a false start found out what the headlight rim is called.  The O.D. of the whole shell is 7inches, and I knew it was from a BSA.  So I guessed that 7inch BSA headlamp rim might be the one that I needed.

How wrong could I be.  The 7inch refers to no dimension of the rim at all!  I suspect the lamp inside is 7inch diameter.  So, if you are building a Phoenix and need a chrome rim that almost fits then you can get a 6.5inch BSA rim, mine came from rectoryantiques17 who sell loads of stuff on e-bay ("6.5 CHROME HEADLIGHT RIM-TRIUMPH BSA") they treated me pretty poorly (as I ordered the wrong thing! but came into line when I reminded them how feedback works!).

So, now I have two headlamp rims.


More this month.  Picked up a trailer.  It is a bit rubbish, but it was cheap, and it seems to work.  It has 4 wheels with indespension units, so pulls nice and stably.  The seller told me that it didn't have brakes but that they might just be disconnected "he wasn't sure".  Well there were no brakes and no sign of brakes (locosters are all pleasant, but do have a strange view on the truth!).  Anyway he delivered close enough.  Picked up a lighting board and some new wheelnuts, and got some tie-downs so am ready for the road.  FWIW regarding brakes for trailers.  The rules are difficult to pin down, but come down to this:  total weight of trailer and vehicle on trailer must be less than half the car weight.  Total weight of trailer plus car on trailer must weigh less than 750kg.  I think I tick those boxes (although that is without knowing the weight).

25th May
Collected the car from my dads.  I was making almost no progress on the car so decided I'd better get it home so I could work in the evenings.  Towing was rubbish.  It rained and rained and rained.  I bought a tarpaulin and tied it down, but it just flapped and ripped and ripped and flapped.  I ended up getting home late.   Then I got the trailer stuck on the lawn (it just sank in, and we still have the ruts to prove it!).

Anyway finally I got it sorted out, and put everything away.

Now progress can really start (I know this to be the case, as I am writting this on 20th June).  Retrospective diary keeping means you can hit all your deadlines!




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