Today I got the bearing carrier for the steering shaft done.  It took much much longer than I had hoped!  To be fair, a lot of the time was making an adapter to mount the 4 jaw chuck into the lathe, as I’m unable to get the 3 jaw chuck off!  This took a while as it had to be exactly centered, or else the chuck would have wobbled around all over the place and nothing that was made inside it would have come out flat.

So, after that, and some cleaning up, 5hrs had gone by!  So didn’t make any where near as much progress as I wanted 😦

The steering shaft now has its bearing and the carrier all assembled and mounted, and its clamped back in the car ready to have the bars made that will link the roll cage to the new bearing carrier.

This pic probably better shows where all this is located.

Considering how long it took to machine the bearing carrier, I think I’m just going to buy a rose joint for the other end of the shaft.  On reflection, I think this will be a good thing anyway, as it will allow adjustment of the upper part of the steering column, without me having to make the lower bearing carrier adjustable (the rose joint allows some angular misalignment).  I had originally thought about using rose joints on both ends, but I never liked how they have to be mounted – the look ugly, and I want to have something that can break off in a large accident.  If I hit the wheel, I’d rather it break and move out of the way (think collapsible steering columns).  I want this car to be stupid fast – but I still want it as safe as it can be for the day that I do crash it.

That bearing carrier started off looking like this – A 30mm thick lump of alloy scrap.

I’m been a bit down on my lack of progress of late, going to try do a couple of nights this week.