Last night I remade the gearlinkage by shortening the lever and returning the pivot to its previous position. The need to add an intermediate bell crank to the gear linkage in order to drive the high mounted actuation lever on the box has meant that the lever ratios and travel have changed.
The upshot of this is that with lever had a very small “throw” but required a lot of effort to move it (force and distance being proportional in levers). Now I’m not small or puny (Dan once said that watching Tim and me both exert maximum effort on the same recalcitrant part was amongst the most scary things he’d ever seen) but not being able to change gear without an audible grunt of effort seems a bad thing.
So I shortened the bottom of the lever and returned it to the original pivot position which had the effect of doubling the lever ratio. Now I still have a nice short throw on the lever but one that doesn’t require enough effort to make my temple throb when changing gear.
So with driveshafts, brakes, gears, exhaust, fuel and coolant the last thing to put in place before this race car moves again is the drive chain. I’d ordered a new one up from B&C express. But my personal numptyness quotient kicked in and it’s a tad too short as can be seen from my entry to the “Most inappropriate use of heatshrink in a structural role” shows. Currently I’m waiting for another one and once that’s here to quote the automotive loon Murray Walker it’ll be “Go Go GO”