The last few days I abandoned the workshop and was just out fishing.
Lots of herring, cod and mackerel on the swedish south coast in Öresund. We saw dolphins (porpoises) and on the danish side some bloke even caught a swordfish!! The big schools of herring brings lot of predators along! Grate. We hope to see blue fin tuna and bonito arriving soon. Last year they arrived in small amounts in august! Maybe there will be more this year!?
Anyway, today I started with the build of the foldable wheelstand for the beachwheels.
Inside the 30x30mm tube there is 25x25 tubing to center/hold in place the 20mm the swingaxle. The axle glides in/out with a short pice of 25x25 tube that is fixed and lockes the wheelstand in the down position.
I spotwelded the pieces for the stand and welded on a temporary wheelaxel to enable to test out the setup with the big beachwheels mounted.
Nice to see the project developing with the wheels in place.
It works fine to fold the wheels up/down after the motor is swinged out. Also seems to work to rund the motor with the wheels in the down position. That might be useful when landning on a beach in ruff weather, just motoring in with the wheels down.
As for now the stand is a couple of inches to high. I will do some messuring to see how much I can shorten them. I figure the shorter they are the less force/load will be placed on the wheel crossbar mount.
Three problems that have to be adressed:1. As pointed out by Stringy the motormount crossbar is very low down and will hit tha waves making a lot of splashing. Also the amas toouch the mount especially when loading the kayak on the trailer. So they might get damaged if the get squashed againgst the underside of the motormount.
I will raise it about 2" and redo the motorplate and swing mechanism.
2. When the big wheels are lowered it will take a lot of force to press the down below the water.
I will have to make some sort of lever and maybe also a wiresystem to force them down into place.
I will make the lever removable and store it on the kayak in some good spot.
3. There is quite a lot of play in the wheel mechanism. I have to do spotwelds to tighten up the play and file them down a bit.
I am missing some platesteel, ordered it and getting it next week. The 6mm plate steel is for welded brackets for the crossbar. The brackets will be bolted with 6mm bolts to the aluminiumrail with 4 pcs of T-nuts on each side.
Will it hold? Will it be sturdy enough? I really dont know? I just have to test it. If it feels to flimsy I might have to put some bolts all the way trough the kayak. I hope to avoid this.
As for now it is grate that all the ad-ons (motormount, wheelstand) can be easily unmounted and modified if needed.
I will use the rest of the day to redesign the motormount but first I will have some nice lunch. Smoked mackelel from the the last days of fishing! Yummy!
/Gustav