This is my Minimax, a wood and fabric single seat tail-dragger type aircraft that's powered by a Rotax 447 air-cooled twin cylinder 2 stroke engine.
The photo was taken just after I'd landed at my home airfield at London Colney. I'd just flown back from the Isle of Wight, where I'd been for a fly-in in 2018.
This is a hybrid aircraft using a Medway Raven wing and a Pegasus Q trike. This aircraft is powered by a Rotax 462 water-cooled twin cylinder 2 stroke engine.
The photo was taken just as I landed at Eshott airfield in Northumberland during the Fly-UK Round Britain Tour in 2016
Hi, I'm Bob, and I live in Borehamwood, Herts. From the photos above you can see what my hobby is. Others like to race, or to walk, or to cycle, or go canoeing, I like to fly, and to do this I own a collection of microlight aircraft. I do all my own maintenance on these aircraft, and as you can see from the photos at the top of the page, I rebore and hone the engines when necessary. To do this I have three different sized portable boring bars and matching sets of honing equipment. (See the 'Workshop Services' page for further details)
HOW I CAME TO OWN BORING BARS AND HONING EQUIPMENT
Years ago I worked for a motor re-engineering company in Bristol called Hartcliffe Engineering. Sadly they no longer exist, but I worked there from when I left school at the age of 15, until I was 21. During that time my main occupation was reboring and honing car, commercial, motorcycle and small industrial engines.
Most of this work was done in the workshop, where I used a collection of Van Norman portable boring bars. The one I normally used was the 944, and I had two of them, but I also had a 905 and a 777S for larger bores. For some engines, such as Gardner diesel bus engines, the bore size at either 4.75" or 5" diameter, and with a bore length of over 8", was so large that the Van Norman's weren't big enough to rebore them. For these I used a pair of huge static Paddon-Thomsen boring bars, and centred the block under the cutting head instead of centring the boring bar over the cylinder as I did with the Van Norman bars.
When working in the workshop I used a Delapena Beam Stroking Honing Machine to finish the cylinder blocks I'd rebored. The picture on the right shows what they look like, and the one in the picture even has a Delapena honing head at the bottom of the honing shaft that hangs from the end of the beam stroking bar.
This was a very good tool, and was not only easy to use, but very safe as well, due to having a trigger next to one of the handles on the beam head. So if the honing stones jammed in the cylinder for any reason I could let go of the trigger very quickly to prevent injury to myself, and damage to both the cylinder I was working on, and the honing tool.
I wish I had one of those today for honing out cylinders in my workshop, but instead I use the hand tools you can see on the 'Workshop Services' page.
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