I used 25mm bearing pillow blocks on my Peerless 100 ( had the shafts machined down to 25mm and keyways cut fill length first) bolted through the chassis so its just a case of unbolting and lifting off if need be. I never liked the idea of cutting away most of the chassis rail then relying on the bearing housing for strength so went this way about it.
I’ve looked at various You Tube builds (mainly American) and they show cut outs in the top of the chassis to allowing placement/removal of the complete differential and axle from above. See photo It occurs to me that it would be easier to place and remove the axle from below. I can’t see that it would be any stronger or weaker either way………but am I missing something?
Now that my full size Morgan has departed I have space, finances and the will to do something to get the Napier running. This afternoon actually got a few hours spent, so a floor for the footwell is 90% made, both pedals getting close to mounting and a few niggles with the bodywork sorted. Seat is bolted down. Of course all that means that it looks exactly as it did months ago! Then this arrived! Advertised as a bicycle lamp! Coffee cup for scale, I had planned on using it for a brake/tail light. Maybe not. I will now have another go with the home Nickel plating again . The method is to be found somewhere on these pages. It was originally nickel plated, front glass is perfect and the reflector plenty good enough. Dismantling has begun, I stopped when I couldn't spot a good way to take out the reflector.
« Last post by Ade Colmar on 07 Dec 25, 11:55 am »
In an attempt to keep things simple with bearings and sprockets I used 30mm layshaft and hollow axle. The layshaft is a short length of 30mm bright bar with a keyway cut in. The big sprockets are 420 and range between 37 to 43 to change the gearing. The small jackshaft sprocket is a split 428 item with 21 teeth (the smallest in 30mm) from OKE Karts. Although 420 and 428 chain are the same pitch, the roller width and diameter are slightly larger for the 428. So that I can run with 420 chain throughout, I reduced the width of the 428 21 tooth sprocket by about 1mm.
It all works fine, but I would like to find a better solution using a matched sprocket smaller than the current 21 tooth item.
« Last post by Ian Fletcher on 07 Dec 25, 10:04 am »
Hi Matt, welcome to the mad-house. From your description, your in for a treat with your build. There will be lots of head-scratching to do throughout your build, but its all fairly simple engineering, and there's lots of good gen on the Forum. Dont get too hung up on details, as it can really slow your build down, plus your 90% certain to be building a second one or more, and you re-think during those builds
« Last post by Ian Fletcher on 07 Dec 25, 09:57 am »
Hi Stefan,
GNasher uses a hollow 25mm kart axle, with kart sprocket carriers and 219 sprockets throughout. See Nick's comments about available sprocket sizes. Parts were bought at Kartmania kart-jumble at £20 for the axle, £5 for one sprocket carrier and £7.50 for the other. Sprockets were only £1 each.
Desperate Dan, that I built for Ian Smythe, uses the 30mm axle that came with the doner kart (new full-length key bought for the CK), then some sort of sprocket carrier that also came with the doner (never been able to source another one). For the other end of the axle Jim T made an adaptor shaft to go in the hollow axle shaft to take a small 420TAV sprocket. On the axle used an OKE short wheel hub carrier for the axle sprocket, but had to weld up the sprocket's mounting holes and re-drill the PCD to suit the wheel hub. Further details in the build diary.
I have updated the document above (see first post) to include the theoretical top speed calculator I use as a link after a question. I have also added a couple of other useful links to keep things handy for the design stage. JimR
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