June 6th 1998:
Time for the most important event in the construction of the Panda….the kick-off barbeque!!
The weather held out pretty well, although it wasn’t the warmest of occasions, it must be said. The picture here shows Chris with the sacrifical sausage. This is the sausage which must be sacrificed to the god of barbeques before real cooking can take place.
Following a few beers and burgers, design seems to come so much easier!
June 7th 1998:
Following the social events the night before, Sunday is straight back to work. As we all know, Sunday has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with car boot sales! That is where we headed. The first one we headed to was a bit of a wash out, but the second one was a bit better. We got hold of an old chest expander which may have some useful components.
Next, back to the workshop for more cutting, grinding and bending. The twisted metal is slowly starting to look more like the design we first produced. We spent most of the day working on the Panda. We finally got to the time for welding, starting with the front forks. Neither of us has done any welding for some years, so the first few welds were strong, but rather messy.
June 8th and 9th 1998:
The following two days were just more of the same. Our welding has got better and we now have the grinding and bending down to a fine art. The next thing was to attach the base plate to the skeleton.This is done making use of the hinges which were already on the back of the frame. This should mean we can raise the body like a car bonnet to get to the electronics.
The last thing of the night was to cut out cardboard body panels to be used as masks for the real polyprop. panels. This has made us realise that the frame is not quite equally dimensioned, but it shouldn’t matter.
Having finished the skeleton, we celebrated by climbing on it and jumping up and down…..amazingly it held!! We also tried pushing and pulling the chassis in different directions, and it works exactly as we had discovered from the model. This is very encouraging!
June 13th 1998:
Went to Brighton to collect a couple of motors and loads of batteries. This finally starts the electronics side of things. Chris is in Cheshire getting the body panels. We’ve also had ideas for more weapons. I don’t want to say too much, but you would never think a Panda would have a sting in it’s tail!!