Ok updates…
As a couple of you know I had a slight issue with the drive flanges I had. After I got my RCV shafts in I tried the drive flanges I got in from Summit Machine (which was over a year ago). Well getting the slug on the shaft wasn’t going to happen. It seems like there must have been a problem broaching the slugs I got; they were not going to go over the shafts. I was a little worried as I’ve had the slugs sitting around new in the box for awhile now. I gave Mike at Summit Machine a call and explained the issue. He hadn’t had any problems with the slugs in the past, but since the time of my order he had changed suppliers. I won’t mention the old supplier’s name. Anyway, he told me he now sources the slugs from Jack at CTM and they are now made from 300M. Mike was kind enough to have a pair of slugs dropped shipped to me. I thought that was pretty cool and a stand up thing to do. Yet again Summit Machine goes the extra mile for their customers.
The new CTM slugs came in today and the difference is huge. They slip right over the splines like they should and the finish work is top notch. They are exactly what you’d expect with a product bearing the CTM logo.
New versus old slugs (CTM on left, “other” on the right):
They way they are supposed to fit down:
Ok, back to progress. I spent most of the day this past Saturday working on my H1s. I went to the shop, setup the outer halves of the wheels on a sine plate and plugged a 5/8” end mill down through where the original H1 valve stem mounted. Awesome, tore the setup done, cleaned up and
then checked the fit. My mistake. The new holes worked great, except that the thickness of the H1 wheel was too great and didn’t allow the valve stem to be properly inserted.
So I set everything back up and grabbed a piloted counter bore end mill and proceeded to counter bore each opening so that the valve stem had a proper fit. Excellent. Minor setback, but what originally took about an hour ended up taking three.
I forgot to snap pictures of the new holes, but the above paragraph should give you a clear picture as to what they look like. Here’s a shot of the new vs old valve stems. In case anyone wants to grab the same stems, the part number is TR415. For those of you who have never seen the odd H1 valve stem before, this shows the weird rectangular mount.
Then I cleaned up each outer edge of the rims, prepped the rock rings I’ve had for months and welded them on. I shot the wheels with a flat black. I wanted to paint the rings the same red as the cage and leave the center black, but after thinking over it for a few minutes I went all black for two reasons. One; too much red. Two; the red would be a lot tougher to touch up after smacking them with rocks than the flat black. I’m actually glad now, they look killer.
Then I moved one to the seat mounts. If anyone remembers from awhile back I reconstructed the slider on the driver’s side so that it wouldn’t interfere with the trans tunnel. It worked great in theory, but not in practice. The problem lied in the fact that I had moved the slider to underneath the middle of the seat. Now being that it is a suspension seat it travels up and done. After getting in and out a few times I noticed that just sitting in the seat caused the bottom to almost contact the slider. One little bump and without a doubt I’ve be hitting it. Now something I want to do to those seats, let alone my back coming down on something hard. So I did what I should have done in the first place, got rid of the slider on the driver’s side. I’m not really even sure why I messed around with it in the first place as I’ll be the only one every driving it anyway, so why would I need a slider?
A few minutes with the drill press and angle grinder and I turned out these. Not the prettiest thing, but they’ll work and be hidden under the seat anyway. I did drill a few holes so that if I wanted to I could move it back and forth a little bit without having to re-weld anything. I also took a little off the middle to clear the seat nicer.
Sometime in the middle of all that I also finished folding back the pinch seem on both the driver’s and passenger’s side front fenders. That’s it for now. Work continues.
7/8" was correct.
I expect it to work out good though.
