Hello James,
When I saw your recent post about gear shift brackets I thought I had a Déjà-vu.....
But it was not, just found an older Post!?
re: Jimmymac & Alistair's Cars Hi Jimmy, Ray and Steve its nice to see this heading in the right direction and I'm pleased to see the quality and accuracy coming to fruition. best regards to all concerned Chris Melia.
www.gt40s.com
Regards
Markus
Hello Markus
Yes it was also a bit like deja-vu for me.
The story is that I had a few of the older ones left but I NEVER liked them.
The old batch was patterned to the original drawings and they had the wall thickness at only 0.180" or 4.7 mm thick which I think looked too skinny, especially after machining the back of the angle to fit the top plate bridge and the front scallop for the door post buttress on the sponson. (the reason for the breakages at the front)
My humble opinion is that it appears that the initial design for this bracket was not really thought out properly and there were ongoing revisions to it after the chassis was finalised, instead of reviewing it and starting again to develop a stronger one piece unit which fits the as-built chassis.
I suppose the design was passed OK as the unit was built to last but a short life cycle but we are not doing that.
Incidentally the FAV draughtsmanship would never have passed muster in any of the engineering offices that I did my time in.
Typically, the bracket and lever drawings are poorly notated and have errors mixing up imperial fractions and decimal measurement.
Below is what I believe is the Willment / Brian Angliss bracket used on the later prototypes (P1086).
It has a thicker and much stronger one piece casting incorporating the top bridge for the shift plate and a joggle at the front of the angle for the buttress.
I might still make a few of these as I have plenty enough hardened gear levers left.