Saturday, April 30, 2011 Wheels Up!

Last week I extracted the main axles housings to replace the 1” axles with 5/8” axles. I didn’t know who I would get to do the machining work, but after some research, I finally made contact with Bob Herman at Herm’s Welding and Repair in Minnetrista. I showed him the axles and told him what I wanted done. He said it might be two weeks, and the cost ballpark would be “60 or 80 dollars”. But he got the work done early and called last Thursday to tell me he was done. I was able to get there on Friday afternoon. What I saw was excellent work, and I’m pleased with his professionalism. Everything looked beautiful and will work great.

I took the axles to the airport on Saturday. It was cold, windy, and rainy, but inside the hanger it wasn’t bad, even though it isn’t heated in there. The front wheel needed some work; when I reassembled it after the accident I had left out the spacers, but was able to get them put back without much problem.

I also installed the rear axles and everything fit perfectly. I didn’t attach the wheels because I had not moved the tires and tubes to the new rims from the old rims. On the way back from the airport I stopped at Menards and picked up a tool to remove the valve stems and with its help later Saturday night I was able to move the tires and tubes to the new rims. So next time I get to the airport, I’ll put the wheels on, and that subproject will be complete. I put the old wheels on Craigslist for $20 for both, so I’ll see what happens.

Finally, I worked on completing the mounting of the Kawasaki motor. Things progressed very well. I was able to complete the attachment of the front mounts including the front engine cables. But the rear mounts were a problem because I did not have enough large saddles and large washers. Now the adventure begins to find some large saddles. First of all, I didn’t know what they were called—round plastic washers with one flat side and the other side curved to fit the tubing. I spent hours on Google trying to find what these things were called. In the assembly manual they were known as “large saddles”, but a Google search didn’t result in finding them anywhere on the web. Finally, after paging through seemingly hundreds of catalogs, I spotted a picture that looked like the right part referred to as “cove spacers”. But even though my earlier attempts to locate them as “saddles” using Google proved fruitless, I found the saddles were in the LEAF catalog all along. Apparently Google search does not search detail in the LEAF catalog. So now I need to order some of these saddles and I should be able to complete the mounting of the motor, and start connecting the muffler and the fuel lines and throttle controls. So it was a very productive time at the airport.