English Wheel build

[worntorn]

thanks Guys.

I really want to get back to the Egli so I put quite a few hours in on the English Wheel yesterday. My wife was not thrilled, but I don't think she will leave me! Hope not anyway.

I made up the yoke for the upper wheel and the Quick release. I was thinking about purchasing the Quick release assembly, but the cost for it alone was $250 at Hoosier Profiles. I think that included the yoke but it did not include the top wheel.

My budget doesn't allow for that, so it got built out of scraps. The QR is just two eccentrics that fit into holes bored into either side of the yoke. I bored a 1.5" hole thru both sideds the yoke (yoke is a made from a 4" long piece of 4"x8"x 3/8")on the mill, then cleaned up a piece of 1- 3/4 round stock 2 and a half inches long. Next I drilled a 3/4" hole right thru this piece, but made the hole 1/4 off centre. This will give 1/2" lift. The axle for the 8" top wheel slides thru this 3/4" hole.

Next up was to part the 2.5 " piece in half. Now I had the two eccentrics. I turned them down to fit nicely into the 1.5" holes bored in the yoke, but left a shoulder which will rotate against the outside of the yoke. I milled a bit of a flat on the yoke around the bores for this.
Next I made the axle, which is a piece of 1" stainless. I turned it down to fit the Harbor Freight 8" top wheel, which has double bearings with a 22 mm bore. This got stepped down a bit at the ends to fit into those 3/4" holes I drilled into the eccentrics. I'm quite impressed with the HF wheel. it was only 50 bucks, less than the cost to buy an 8" dia. 4140 blank. it runs within 2 ten thousandths of concentric. It is also extremely hard, which is good for doing shapes in steel.

Finally there was some drilling and tapping to do in order to secure the axle to the eccentric via the handle. The other end of the axle got welded to the opposite eccentric. The whole thing comes apart from the handle end if necessary.

With a little lithium grease applied, the eccentrics turn very smoothly. Cost was a few cents for the two socket head screws, the rest was from leftovers.

I need to make a finger grip for the operating lever and figure out some kind of indexing method.

[geezer]

Amazing piece of work, nice to see a pro do his thing, people would pay money just to watch you work on it.

[worntorn]

I didn't get much done today, read the nice comments and then got my swelled head stuck in the shop door for quite awhile

Fortunately my brother came along with a mallet and knocked it out, so I was able to put some legs on the Ewheel.
The fellows on the metalshaping site think it is best to bolt the legs on in case the machine ever has to be hauled to another location. It was tempting to weld them on, but in the end I followed their advice.
Someone also suggested that the Ewheel should not sit on wheels when in use as it will move around too much. On the other hand, it would be nice to have it on wheels so that it can be easily shoved out of the way when not in use. It weighs about 300 pounds, so it needs wheels or castors of some sort for moving.

There are some fairly expensive folding castor sets which others have used for this.
I have some used regular castors on hand, so I might just make the front one adjustable up and down. If the rear two castors are mounted a few inches outboard of the rear feet and just clear of the floor with the machine down on the three pads, then when the machine picks up three or four inches in the front the rear pads will lift clear of the floor and it should wheel around easily. I'll use a pivoting type castor at the front and fixed castors at the rear, then it will steer and get pushed around from the front.

That's the plan for now!

Glen

[ScratchStart]

looking good, and I like your idea with the casters. Sounds like a winner, keep posting the pics.

[worntorn]

It lives! I got the tool arm done and the upper adjuster backlash eliminator done today, then ran a piece of aluminum thru it. I've never used an English wheel before, but It seems to do what it is supposed to.

According to the oldtimers on the metalshaping site, an top adjuster type Ewheel like this one is better than a bottom adjuster in most ways. With the bottom adjuster, the foot is used to raise the lower anvil via a kick wheel at the bottom of the machine. The consensus was that this is not as accurate as using your hand , which can sense a minor change in pressure, as is the case with the top adjuster style machine. Also, the bottom adjuster kick wheel can be unaccessable at times when wheeling a large part like a car fender.

The only problem with the top adjuster is all of the inevitable slack (backlash) that there is in the threaded adjuster rod, thrust bearings and Quick realease eccentrics.
Some top adjuster machines use double adjustable bushings to take the backlash out of the adjuster rod, but that still leaves the QR slack and the thrust bearing slack. With the bottom adjuster machine, gravity deal with the backlash for you.

Since I borrowed so many design ideas from that group of people, I was hoping to be able to offer one in return. I thought the best way to eliminate all of the backlash would be to keep the entire adjuster assembly and upper wheel lifted against the slack at all times. To do this I bored out the threaded adjuster rod and all of the lower parts as well, then fed a cable thru. Once in the yoke, the cable gets connected to the little spreader bar you see in the photo. From there a cable drops down each side of the top wheel to lift on the axle, picking up all of the slack in the QR as well as all of the slack in everything above. The top end of the cable is connected to a piece of 5/8" square stock which is in tension sufficient to lift 75 lbs or so. This is about 10-15 lbs more than the weight of the wheel and adjuster assembly. I gave it a little extra lift to allow for some friction. This setup should never need adjusting, it is on all of the time.

It seems to work OK, there is no slack in the wheel other than whatever is in the bearings, and that amount is not measurable.

Glen

[geezer]

A thing of beauty to be sure, now it's time for sandblasting and some paint.

[worntorn]

gonna put some dark green Hammerite on it. It's tough paint and the hammered finish is nice for this kind of thing.

Glen

[worntorn]

I put the castors on it, made a tray for the anvils, lined it with felt and finished making the Quick release handle. The bolt that the finger pull rotates on has a pen spring pushing on the little ball bearing ball in the end that is toward the yoke. I drilled out the end of the bolt just big enough for the ball, then put hte spring and ball down in there. While holding the ball down with a tiny screwdriver, I peened the bolt so that the ball would stay in it's socket. About 1/3 of the ball protrudes from the end of the bolt. This indexes into a small hole drilled part way into the yoke.

The castor setup does it's job OK. About four inches of lift on the front pivoting castor gets the rear pads clear of the floor, then it's easy to move around. I used part of an old acme thread house raising jack for the lift part of the front castor assembly.

The paint color is Hammerite Deep Green.

Time to have a go at making fenders!

[geezer]

Looks good, like a store bought item, In the short time this thread has been going your progress on the build has been amazing, looking forward to your next project.

[Jason]

That looks really nice. Good Job!

[everlastsupport]

Looks very nice and clean. Making it movable a major plus. I hope to start a press brake project soon.

[worntorn]

thanks again for the nice comments.

I picked up some 5052 aluminium to make some fenders from. The original Vincents had fenders made out of a product called "Birmabright" which was an al. alloy. It was really good stuff, many fenders are still in use after 60 years of riding, no vibration cracks. 5052 is the modern day equivalent to Birmabright.

The original fenders on two Old Ossa dirbikes I have were low grade aluminum of some kind.
The were known to fall apart within a very short time. Anyway, they were long gone when I aquired the two basket case Ossas, so I opted for ugly but practical plastic replacement fenders. Repop aluminum fenders are available, but cost $360 a set and would likely crack apart just as quickly as the originals did.

So I thought that before trying to make really nice fenders for the Egli, I would outfit the two Ossas with original looking Aluminium fenders made in Brimabright, or 5052.
If they don't turn out quite perfect, no big deal they are only dirt bikes and get pretty rough treatment when I use them.

I pounded out the shape of a rear Ossa fender this aft. I know it looks bad right now, but as my Oral Surgeon likes to say "Now is not a good time to become impatient"

I'll go out after dinner and see if the Ewheel will tidy this up!

[worntorn]

The wheel works incredibly well. Maybe it's the heavy duty frame that helps.

It's not hard to use at all. I rented a couple of Metalshaping DVDs by Ron Fournier and watched them last weekend. They really helped show the way.

I pounded out a couple of the narrow Ossa front fenders this evening then spent a little over an hour on the English wheel smoothing the one rear and two front fenders. After doing some smoothing on the wheel I did some more mallet work to increase crown and adjust the arc, then back to the wheel and so on. The 2 narrow fenders (4") took less time to do than the one 5" rear.

The fenders for the Egli will be a challenge, front is 6.5" and the rear is 9.5"

These first three Fenders are not perfect, but they are a lot better than I first thought they would turn out. It's kind of a weird process, for the first while it looks as though you have destroyed the material, then it slowly starts to look like a bumpy fender, then a proper fender. These will be plenty good enough for the dirt bikes. I think with a little more practice some really nice fenders and other tinwork can be made in this way.

Glen

[aaxiss]

Glen: Just thought I would check in on this thread as I have no e-mail updates on the Vincent thread. Man you do some quality work my friend and fast. But I guess if you tried to do everything from a chair with casters on and had to push your self around on it and not stand up for any of your work I'd imagine you would work at about the same pace as me but the quality would still be better LOL. Great job on the wheel looks like it's getting the job done. Enough playing around with those skinny little things and get going on the wide ones ... ELGI !!!! I'm posting a pic to inspire you on that thread .

[Jason]

Those look very nice. This thread makes me want to build an E-Wheel even sooner.

[geezer]

It's great to watch a pro at work, people who view this thread should go back and look at the welds and understand they were done with a power ultra 205 a machine that doesn't have all the bells and whistles my 250 ex has.

Bottom line: it ain't the machine it's the man using it.

[everlastsupport]

Very nice fenders. Was it as hard as you thought it would be, using the wheel. I have seen them used, but never tried one myself.

Geezer: I would quote you on "it ain't the machine it's the man using it." but I have already done that many times.

[wruehl]

I'm guessing that you have drawn this up (it sure looks like a well thought out design). Any chance you will publish it? Either online for a fee of free? I can help model it in Solid Works if your interested, if the plans where offered up to the public I would donate my time.

[worntorn]

wruehl, I don't have a set of detailed plans. The basic frame dimensions came from one of the metalshaping sites I have been logging onto for the past month or so. Some of the general info for the adjuster dimension, ie , use a piece of inch and a half 1/4" wall square tube for the quill, use a 3" square tube for the outer, came from the same site.
If anyone wants to build one like this, my advice is get started, just PM me with any questions, or ask them here, I'll be glad to help. Since I just finished the build, I still have the dimensions in my head, maybe for another week or two at least!

Mike, the wheeling is not at all difficult to do. The biggest thing is probably what Don mentioned, keeping your fingers out of the way.

I'm thinking about building a powered bead roller soon. I made a little hand tool for folding or hemming the edges. It works OK, but what a tedious procedure that is!

Glen

[aaxiss]

Yea Ill tell ya just when you think you got it down and speed up a little that thing will bite ya, mashed my finger good . lost the nail a day later and was swelled up for 2 weeks and that was a minor pinch. Anyone using one of these just take your time at first and get used to how much pressure you need and just slow and steady and always reposition your hands to try ( you cant always) get them from in front of the wheel when doing small or intricate angles.

Glen: I need a logo of what you want for your mosaic I found some on the net ( The in small letters over the Egli Vincent on the yellow banner ) but I need you to post what background color you would like Keep in mind to keep it original My pops has to use black grout and what about size? keep in mind bigger equals heavy and shipping goes up. 2' x 16" ish sound ok? send me some pictures if possible, Pops usually just blows the images up on the pc and uses them for templates for the ones with lettering. send me something to get an idea . Btw Love the wheel can you make me one about 20" lower and send it overnight LOL Im about to move the buzzbox back into the shop from the shed and start welding up my bender so I can continue my build thread.

here are the logos Ive been able to find, the last one may not be doable I'll have to ask

Attachment 1556Attachment 1557Attachment 1558

I know the the shipment is gonna be in a few days and they will go out shortly but I have an apartment full of parts I need to start moving to my parents house to start my mock-up and build my frame jig in case I need to build another buggy after I wax some 18 yr old on his R1 and someone want to buy one hahaha. decided on a 4 wheeler so I can go do the local 1/8 mile drags shouldn't run out of gear in 1/8 mile I hope .. we shall see.

Any updated on the Egli build?