Ruby chassis central brace position ?

[John Cornforth]

Greetings

I am in the throes of setting up a Ruby semi-girling cross shaft.  To help me get the multitude of bits all in their right positions before I start making felt seals, I need to know a critical chassis dimension.  What is the offset from the closed face of the fore-aft central brace (the one with the row of big holes) to the centre line of the car ? 

I have already had a couple of goes at getting this information:

Approach 1 was to grovel underneath and get a faceful of black oil.  This resulted in a measured 2 3/8 inches, the brace itself has an upper and lower flange which I measure as 1 inch wide.

Approach 2 was to look at the A7CA archive, but the dimensions on the drawing I found were too fuzzy to read, unless I am doing something wrong.

Suggestions welcome !

P.S.  I make the distance between the centres of the outer bearings  20 5/32 inches, but if anyone disagrees I'd be interested.

[Colin Morgan]

Looking at the A7CA archive Ruby chassis drawing, I can see the dimension you need, and it is fuzzy, but it looks like 2 7/8 when blown up?  

One dimension I can read on the drawing is 15".  If I scale off the drawing, with that area magnified, then 2 7/8" seems reasonable for the offset dimension.  (15" is 5.25 times longer than that dimension.)

[John Cornforth]

Thanks Colin

A bit of lateral thinking !

I suspect that A7CA drawing is one of the ones in line to be re-digitised with better resolution.

Time to jack up the car a bit higher and dive in again with the tape measure.

When I finally get the cross shaft together I plan to share the detailed assembly drawing I an currently preparing.  There does seem to be conflicting information about the number of felts and their positioning.  If anyone knows for sure where the single cup shaped washer/felt ( 1 inch ID) goes, I would be interested.