Lots of parts are getting finished up and made ready for plating. While I didn’t make the uprights, I did debur and scotch bright them to make them ready for anodize. I couldn’t help taking a picture of them in their milk crate, they look so shiny. Individually they are very light but when you throw 27 all together, they get really heavy!

I was also able to get all of the bell cranks ready for the next 5 Drakan cars. This is a fairly tedious procedure that starts with test fitting a few bearings to check the interference and make sure the hardened inserts are able to spin freely. If they all check out I then install all the roller bearings (2 per bell crank) then grease them as they come dry. Its amazing how much grease each little bearing needs. Then I get the outer bearing assemblies ready. That consists of a thrust bearing (which needs to be greased) sandwiched between two .032" steel 'shields'. Each bell crank needs two of those. Finally the hardened shaft goes in and the two outer aluminum 'shields' go on with X-rings attached to seal out dirt and grime. If that all wasn't enough I then clamp the bearing assembly in a vice to simulate being bolted in place and ensure they are able to pivot freely and don’t bind. If there is any binding between the outer aluminum shield and the bell crank as it rotates I'll pop off the shields and polish the outer edge of the shield until things dont rub. Sometimes little burs can get left on the aluminum shields from the late operations but I took care to make sure they were all smooth and perfect before going to anodize so I really didn’t run into any problems at all.

And finally there are always things needing more helicoils! They don’t look quite as cool as when we use to anodize all the parts black but its still installing all of them is just one of those little things that needs to be done and takes a lot of time.