Aad cut off the sprue ( where the aluminum was poured in) and the vents where the air escaped. After a lot of grinding filing and polishing, the swing arm started to look very good. We did some destructive tests on the bits we cut off and the quality of the aluminum seemed quite good, When struck with a piece of metal the aluminum gave a nice clear "ping" sound, almost like a bell. Not too bad for a first try....

The only thing that remained to do was to weld on the "bridge" that would attach to the pullrod that will attach to the shock. Aad soon found out that this was no easy task. Before welding Aad had to heat up the swing arm, only to find out that the tip of his TIG welder could not reach the area under the "bridge". The black smears you can see in the pictures are actually molten plastic from the tip of Aad's welder, and after burning his hands a few times despite his gloves, Aad was not very happy!

After the swingarm and Aad had both cooled down, Aad modified the tip of his welder and gave it another try. As I am writing this the swing arm is not completely finished yet but we expect to have it machined and mounted soon.

Ronnie Kreeft from AST-suspension will be building a custom shockabsorber unit for us, and this week he came by to show us some samples and discuss the linkage. AST builds high-performance suspension for all sorts of race vehicles.