forteh

Been trying to work out how to best tension the final drive chain - 3.5m long run of single speed chain running on fixed sprockets so constantly running. Tried using an old mech to tension it but the self weight of the chain was too great, it slapped, jumped off and tore the mech to pieces. I've rigged up a ghost sprocket from an old chainwheel and mrp system1 sideplates but because of the length of chain it's rather mobile (although very secure). Was messing about with different sprocket positions last night and then realised that we have slotted dropouts at the front for the jackdrive hub, undo QR, pull hub forwards to tension chain, tighten QR; a rather simpler solution compared to what I was looking at! Only problem with this was that the rear fixed sprocket is sandwiched between two half axles and was running eccentric by a couple of mm, enough to make the chain slappy. Stripped the axle out at 11 last night and jumped on the lathe at work at lunchtime. Now have spigots and registers machined onto the shafts so it should all be nice and circular now Ought to try to knock up some bodywork!

The front doesn't seem too bad initially but hoping to get some time over at curby to test it out - we have adjustable toe, camber, caster and as best ackerman I could get so should be able to get it sussed; thanks for the advice though, will bear it in mind! Single wheel drive doesn't meet regs though with how I've designed it unfortunatley, we have a solid rear axle with a single disk. The car needs to have a minimum of two equally braked wheels, although that said, I have designed in capacity to fit disks to both front wheels. We'll run it with the solid rear and modify afterwards if the rear scrub is disasterous Four drivers in the team, think we're working on 15 minute stints in the hotseat based on their experiences last year (with a hired car which imho was a bag of shite*) but I suspect we will be able to do much longer in this. * zero adjustable steering geometry, no ackerman, no caster, steering actuated by levers that you had to hang onto to stop you falling out of the non adjustable seat. The tallest rider (33" inside leg) was squashed up and the shortest rider (27" inside leg) was overstretched even with a booster pad. All weight over the rear axle so understeery (this has almost bang on natural 50/50 exc. driver) and they were having to steer it straight all the time!

It's a right laugh hooning round the carpark at the back of my house, hopefully it will last the full 7 hour endurance race More to the point, hopefully the team of drivers will last the 7 hours pedalling in a gokart seat

Yup, not ridden it properly (if I ever did? ) in years now but it's all there ready to ride

It works! Teething problems with tension in the final drive chain but I've solved that with a modified ghost sprocket. Other than that, shakedown test was a complete success The race is in a fortnight at curborough sprint track.

Are we allowed vans in here?

Anyone got any thoughts on how to make a differential? Rear tyre scrub might be a bit of a killer

The pedal car is coming along

I think promax are pretty big on the grom bmx racing side of things, particularly cranks and v-brakes. More than likely worth a punt with some proper pads

It's big blue van day today! As we get it converted to camper I might remember to throw some pictures up on here

You could make it from unistrut, all bolted and no welding to do. Would be more expensive but negates the risk of setting things on fire

Yup, it's all on spotify finally

I accidentally a whole van Picked up a 14 plate lwb sprinter in dark blue for 5.5k with 228k on the clocks to convert to a family camper

The amen break at the beginning of eyeless Could listen to amen all day long

I wouldn't say that it was particularly harder, it's a different sound to slipknot and more polished than iowa. Slipknot was riding the forefront wave of (heavy) nu-metal, iowa was raw and angrier, we are not your kind feels tighter if that makes sense. Fear innoculum is pretty good so far, I would expect at least 20 runs through till I the nuances all emerge. I don't seem to tire of tool/apc/puscifer though, Maynards writing and lyrics are something rather special imho. edit: one part of we are not your kind that really clicks with me is the layering towards the end of solway firth, you get the overriding riff and bassline but with the hihat(?) tapping away with the xylophone melody. I dont think that sort of composition was much of a feature in the earlier work and to me shows a maturity of writing to produce a different texture compared to the rrraaawwwrrghghhdhhghh (sonic wall) of the earlier stuff

I never really listened to much of their stuff after slipknot back in 2001ish (I was at uni) despite it coming back onto my cycle on quite a regular basis. I had never even listened to iowa till last month I tend to listen to a new album on repeat, each time brings out more melodies/riffs/breaks/vocals, if I enjoy it then it might be on rotation for days at a time. As such I can't really say what I like about it compared to their previous stuff but I like the brutality of it, the emotion, passion and different layers of the sound. I don't know if I've become desensitised from listening to too much anaal nathrakh but slipknot just isn't that heavy and is pretty easy going Also tools new album is out today

New album is rather stonking

The world needs more triton trials bikes

Spiral I reckon is from withdrawing a jammed tool, something bound onto the cutting edge of the drill (diamond) and created the spiral whilst withdrawing it; you could possibly achieve that feed rate cutting into plasterciene or butter As raised above, there doesn't seem to be an abundance of spiral grooved cores so I suspect it to be an anomaly that can be jumped on to try to cast doubt. Holes drilling into the tangent corners could be tube drills driven by a short crank, progress would be slower due to reduced possible torque that can be applied but still feasible. The grinding/wearing action of the tube drills wouldn't require high torque compared to cutting the stone (as a modern tip tool does in metals), just a consistent motion.

https://www.liebherr.com/en/gbr/products/mobile-and-crawler-cranes/mobile-cranes/ltm-mobile-cranes/details/ltm1120091.html 188m high, 1200 tonne load capacity enough?

I think with modern houses, it's a question as to in what state they'll be in 40-50 years time. Our sister company manufactures architectural fibreglass (dummy chimney stacks, dormer windows, door canopies etc.) and I've been on many modern house building sites and the amound of chipboard used is astonishing. Not to mention the amount of bodges and general lack of following drawings. They'll probably be fine, but they're all made to a price point and for speed of construction. The topic is waaaay over there =============>

I think a lot can be attributed to the phenomenal ingenuity and intelligence of the human mind and the will to achieve something. Just because the people were alive a couple of thousand years ago doesn't mean that they were certain individuals that were any less intelligent than modern day genius's; certainly the general populace would be less well educated than modern times but that's a very recent development. Think back to the greeks, they mapped the stars using relatively simple tools and observation, we have now surpassed their level of astronomy massively but they were the bleeding edge of wisdom in their age. Likewise the capacity for someone to develop a rope/winch system for dragging rocks up hills/ramps isn't difficult to imagine, it only really needs to be designed once and then repeated. The Peruvian bobbly walls (can't recall their true names) are really nicely made and yes would require a good skilled team over a few years, but skills are easily taught and replicated. It's also not like there are entire cities constructed using these very labour intensive methods, they're more of a statement of capability. There are distinct similarities between some of the Egyptian and Peruvian stonework, what's saying that the Egyptians didn't travel the oceans, landing in Peru; they had ships so what's stopping them exploring. If there are engineers onboard then they can start construction and training local workforce. All theory with no substantiation of course.

All of this talk of copper tools is arse, I've just spent two minutes reading and the Egyptians had bronze tooling when the great pyramid was built and had done so for hundreds of years, they were also possibly smelting iron at the time. Bronze is far harder than copper and in some cases iron; changing the alloying elements can also dramatically alter the characteristics. Within that two minutes of reading I also gleaned that they were somewhat good at the whole metallurgy thing so them having decent tooling is perfectly reasonable. Considering the arguement that work in later centuries wasn't so good? Perhaps the focus was elsewhere, like developing cities and infrastructure rather than enormous dick waving mausoleums (even if they're massively impressive!). Maybe mr dick waving mausoleum builder from the later centuries was a bean counter and decided that he could get it built for less money, paid less money and then realised that the product was inferior. Funnily enough that still happens now In my opinion there are plenty of logical explanations of how things were/could be built and I don't believe that the pyramids were built by anyone/thing other than a lot of ingenuity and a silly amount of labour force. From the creators of the videos I've seen (admittedly a fairly small sample), there seems to be a fairly uniform theme running through them "give us lots of money and we'll take you on a missguided tour of an old construction that might have been built by forces unknown but in reality people", coincidentally they all appear to be Americans * * No offence intended to any Americans reading this, I know you're not all nutters

I would have said no, wood is a relatively soft material and easily fashioned by simple hand tools, a hardened steel chisel is obviously going to last longer than a hardened copper one before it needs resharpening but it will still do the job. I gave a modern method of achieving the desired shape with simple machining techniques as a comparison to how it could be recreated now. If you consider a milling machine is only a rotating vertical spindle cutter (for the large part, simplified obviously) to construct a vertical rotating spindle isn't too difficult to achieve. Bearings constructed from oak with copper shells and lubricated with oil/grease are perfectly acceptable (indeed wooden/iron journal bearings were used quite extensively in the past) for the load and speeds involved. The Egyptians had the technology to shape and joint wood so constructing a wooden chassis to hold the spindle isn't too far fetched. Drive the spindle from a crank/belt/lever arrangement and a few men could keep that cutter spinning for hours at a time. Think of it as a giant temporary rotabroach but without the electromagnet bit of course. As to there not being and evidence of them? I guess that once used and fulfilled it's purpose the frame would be stripped for firewood. Think of how many wood block sledges would have been made (hundreds of thousands) yet there aren't that many around now; either rotted away or broken up and burnt. Are there existing records of such a device being used? I don't know. I know that there is examples of documented use of water/sand slurry being used as a sledge lubricant for shifting the blocks, however I would hazard a guess that the number of such circular bored holes was insignificant compared to the huge undertaking of shifting the blocks into place and as such probably not that high on the list of stuff to paint on temple walls. Perhaps it was recorded on papyrus and has since been lost to tomb raiders or simply not survived the last couple of thousand years.

No one has told me how they were made, that's just how it could be done. You asked how it could be done, I told you a method based on my own experience, knowledge and understanding of the problem. Perhaps still it was those ancient lost technology lasers!