Battery box in place

I went down really early this morning, well, 8am is really early for me, with Louis to help cut away part of the main frame for the motor and fit the bolts for the battery box. He cut off the extra bits of metal. Just as we finished that Ken rang suggesting we put the cage back in, mark it up, remove it, remove the frame and take all back to the workshop to fix. I said 'Too late, it's done'.

We then fitted the cage back in and drilled all 8 of the 8mm holes for bolts (9mm holes for 8mm bolts). Finished around 10am. It was very hot work. Need more water for the boat ;-) Louis basically felt we had to do it in situ with clamps because it will be right aligned... even though it is a 'job' (ie task) drilling all holes with electric hand drill. We left the cage in place since Dan and I can get it out and saves Louis time.

In the afternoon I paid a visit to Louis workshop: Louis has done the lathe work on the flange for the motor so that it mates perfectly with the UJ. Alignment will be easy for the future. He had retapped all the threads on the UJ to 12mm metric. He has still to widen the holes in the flange to allow for 12mm bolts (which he will do tomorrow) and he gave me two new hex bolts for the motor (different lengths, stainless steel this time) and is getting new 12mm bolts for the UJ the right length (again tomorrow).

I am hoping to get motor back in tomorrow and hope this is last time. I'm not into this 'in, out, in, out' I prefer to work with a temporary bodge while testing then put something in correctly and leave it there! With the flange re-machined I think we will be perfectly aligned with the motor.

I met Louis family while I was there - he has two sons almost exactly same age as mine, and when his wife arrived found they had celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary 2 weeks ago, whereas our 30th is this weekend.

Louis also introduced me to Savvas who does most of the electrical work here (rewinding motors, generators etc). He was very interested in what we are doing with King Malu.