Alloy - that wondrous light material that's soon easy to work with.....yeah right!
So I have a sheet of 3mm alloy to make up the covers for the fan belt and primary drive, also various other bits that always seem to stop up.
Firstly there is the matter of the front mudguard, with the disk brake forks the usual Enfield mudguard with long stays is not an option so I needed to make up some side plates.
I've run out of M6 domed nuts at the moment so they will need swapping out later.
This thought me 2 things:
1) Cutting alloy with a jigsaw and metal blade is hopeless.
2) You need a specific alloy cutting wheel in the angle grinder.
So with this new knowledge in hand, I made a start on the fan belt cover:
The holes needed to be chain drilled and filed out by hand as I wasn't going to splash out on hole saws.
The flanges are cut from the same sheet material and bent over a welding gas bottle and then MIG welded together.
Everybody told me they would need to be TIG welded - I've tried TIG welding and I'm hopeless as it (so much so, I sold the kit I bought), but using the stiffer 5356 alloy mig wire, and pure argon with the wire speed turned almost all the way up - it seems to work. You do have to be quick with the travel speed and I'm still getting a fair amount of soot but there is plenty of penetration.
Nearly there now, the bottom and top corners are done, just the front alternator pulley cover flange to complete.
The grey goop is some JB weld to fill in the odd pin hole so it will smooth out nicely for painting.
I've been wandering around the house and supermarket eyeing up anything remotely cup shaped that I could use to cover the crank nut and water pump pulley - I'll fine something I'm sure.