So far I've got a pretty good cardboard template made. The steering linkage passes through the new plate, which attaches outboard at the conveniently located spare holes in the cantilever rod lower plates. The original plastic Tamiya (broken) linkage fitted in a vertical 10mm hole in the left-hand axle case, the new aluminium and steel linkage will now mount here on three bearings, two flanged ones with an outer diameter of 11.4mm and inner O/D of 10mm, plus a central 10mm plain bearing. All are 6mm I/D. To keep them spaced properly (i.e. the middle bearing halfway down the hole) I've use plastic spacers, essentially just chopped off bits of electrical sleeving, in between the three bearings on each axle set.
I've bought some 2mm aluminium plate (340 x 250mm - should be just about right!) to make the skidplates out of. Because the bearings are only 3mm thick with a flange of 0.4 mm current protrusion into the axle housing is only 0.6 mm. For this reason I'm going to get a friendly local machine shop to counterbore the plate halfway through to allow for better (1.6mm) location of the bearings into the axle housings. There is also the possibility of a lower bearing plate too but that's going to be a bit complicated to explain right now and there are other things to do first. Like a bitmap sketch to explain how this works out before the bits are made and mounted?
Watch this space...
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