The work goes on apace. I've welded in the plates which make up the well tank. Although the drawings show welded seams, I have not welded all round but just tack welded. Weld is such a crude form of joining and the quality of my weld in long, thin seams is not what I would like! The tack welds are very strong, and instead of the seams being water tight via the welding, I have sealed all joints with glassfibre matting and resin on the inside. This can be seen in the second picture as it appears with a reddish tinge. This seems to be perfectly OK, but I will finish of the sealing with bitumastic paint. This second picture also shows some car body filler in the welds. Not only does this hide any gaps in the welding (and any bad welding!)but its real function is to stop any ingress of dirt and water, for this won't actually be seen on the finished engine.

The valve lay shaft support casting comes in two parts which are then cut in half to make the pair. These are machined to size and bored with a half inch hole. Having made and fitted them, there is always the worry that bolting down tight will distort and clamp down on the shaft. However, the test bar, a tight fit, still turned, albeit rather stiffly.

This now completes the frame. Rather long and narrow to photograph which doesn't really show off its 51-1/2" overall length.

I've decided to paint the frames now. This might seem a bit premature, but it is becoming too heavy to handle and I don't want to have to strip down the whole thing when finished to paint it. There are a few more holes to drill, but once the wheels, axles and boxes are fitted, it will be far too heavy to lift by hand. So I will now have to start thinking about some kind of stand as I won't be able to lift it off the bench.

Next job will be to cut and fit the axle boxes.

I'm not convinced these are the right castings for ROMULUS. The casting has a circular boss on the inside and these don't figure in the drawings. On top of that, they weighed in at 3-1/2lbs and finished at 2lbs. Rather a lot of milling! And I haven't bored them yet. Cutting the joined pair in half proved to be slow work. I used my horizontal, bench band saw which went through one casting like cheese but the other two pairs were much harder and took an age. Milling one box wore out two 3/4" cutters and I had to resharpen them for the second. It's a slow business and the 6 boxes are going to take a good few hours. I'm not looking forward to the wheels! This time taken(about 3 hours per box) explains why there isn't a lot of information on this page.