{"id":179,"date":"2007-01-28T18:31:58","date_gmt":"2007-01-28T17:31:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sonicpenguins.com\/blog\/2007\/01\/28\/galvanised-steel-under-ramp-protector\/"},"modified":"2007-01-28T18:31:58","modified_gmt":"2007-01-28T17:31:58","slug":"galvanised-steel-under-ramp-protector","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sonicpenguins.com\/blog\/2007\/01\/28\/galvanised-steel-under-ramp-protector\/","title":{"rendered":"Galvanised steel under ramp protector"},"content":{"rendered":"

As you may recall, last Tuesday my under ramp finally cracked<\/a>, after I fired the ball into the start mission hole.<\/p>\n

At the time I was cutting up my exhaust to make a shuriken<\/a> and I thought that I could use the exhaust metal to repair the under ramp. That was a crap idea, so on to Plan B!<\/p>\n

Using the chrome exhaust metal was a crap idea for two reasons:\u00a0<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Exhausts are bloody thick! Bending that T piece I made is nearly impossible.<\/li>\n
  2. Exhausts, although shiny on the outside are filthy on the inside… and I really didn’t fancy giving myself asthma, grinding out the inside to clean it.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    So, plan B! Pop over to B&Q and what do I find? A lovely chunk of 0.6mm galvanised steel! Awesome stuff!<\/p>\n

    Random Trivia:<\/p>\n

    Galvanisation (crikey, I actually spelt that right first time!) is a chemical process that coats the steel in a layer of zinc. Zinc doesn’t break down like iron when it oxidises, which means it’s pretty much rust proof. Also of interesting note (and I just found this out by googling to check my spelling of galvanisation) is that the size of crystallites in galvanized coatings is known as spangle! How cool is that?! \ud83d\ude42<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Anyway! Back in the garage I surveyed the damage:<\/p>\n

    \"Snapped<\/a><\/p>\n

    The end bit of the ramp has cracked off right next to a bolt that sticks out from the ramp. Above the broken bit is the under borg lock opto set. Their bridge is attached with two bolts coming out of the ramp. I decided to use these three bolts to hold my ramp repair\/protector in place.<\/p>\n

    To find out what size I needed everything to be, I got some paper and cut it roughly to size, wrapped it around the broken bit of plastic and put it on the ramp. I pushed the bolt through the paper and marked all the key points on the paper like the position of the opto holes in the ramp. Next I removed the opto bridge and put another piece of paper over that and marked up where it intersected.<\/p>\n

    Then I made up proper sized paper parts from my notes and checked they all fitted. Once I’d confirmed that all I had to do was flatted them out on my nice sheet of galvanised steel and cut everything out \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

    Bending the steel into shape wasn’t too hard. It’s 0.6mm thick, so it’s thin enough to bend without breaking your fingers, but plenty strong enough. I bolted the broken plastic on the steel T then pressing gently but firmly, bent the steel around it. For the opto section I marked where it should fold with a pen, and bent it on my workbench over a wooden block.<\/p>\n

    The result is a pretty kick arse customised ramp protector!<\/p>\n

    \"Protector<\/a><\/p>\n

    The bottom bit in the picture bolts to the opto bridge. The holes in the side are for the opto to shine through. As you can see in the picture, I also grinded down the heads of the screws, used to connect the two pieces. I made them as smooth and flat as possible, so not to damage anything, or bend the metal out of place.<\/p>\n

    When fitted the broken end piece is held firmly in place with the metal wrapped around it and doesn’t move at all \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

    Here it is installed:<\/p>\n

    \"Protector<\/a><\/p>\n

    I’m rather proud of this, it’s a perfect fit \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    As you may recall, last Tuesday my under ramp finally cracked, after I fired the ball into the start mission hole. At the time I was cutting up my exhaust to make a shuriken and I thought that I could use the exhaust metal to repair the under ramp. That was a crap idea, so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pinball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sonicpenguins.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sonicpenguins.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sonicpenguins.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sonicpenguins.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sonicpenguins.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.sonicpenguins.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sonicpenguins.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sonicpenguins.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sonicpenguins.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}