Pan work

Next on the agenda was starting work on the pan.

What started out as an innocent looking, and quite good swingaxle pan....

Had the torsion tubes narrowed 3 inches per side:

And then the torsion housing / frame horns were cut off altogether, and welded to a 5mm plate for a 4 inch raise.  Much measuring and shimming was done prior to tacking the housing back on.  Our standard high tech PSR "fabrication and metal adjustment tools" are shown in the first picture!:

Measuring diagonals after the welding showed all was well - nice and straight.  Lots of addtional welding has been done to this area since, these are just shots of the initial work.

At some point around this time, the framehead was pie cut and laid back 8 degrees to provide castor without needing to add shims.  I cannot find pics of the pie cut, but this is after bending the frame head back and welding it up.  Front beam is adjustable & narrowed 4 inches total:

As you can see, the triangular sheetmetal panels from the framehead to the pan have been cut away also, they weren't really serving any purpose and made bending the framehead back just that bit easier...

Rear guards were also marked out and the body cut to raise the guards approx 4 inches.  Here's a couple of the body and pan reunited after the torsion housing raise.  The plate used for the raise still needed a fair bit of attention in terms of shaping, final welding & tidy up, but that's all to come.  For now, it's in - time for a couple of beers: