Okay, I promise this will be the last KHF post for a while. I bought a bunch of plugs from Ace and tried them out tonight and I think I’ve found a keeper.

It’s a small nylon plug that normally leafs out when a nail is pushed through, but I removed the nail and tapped the hole for a bolt.

I’m pretty sure it’ll hold for now, but would pull out if I gave it a really good tug. The good thing about this plug is that the expansion happens at the top in side the aluminum KHF holding it snug.

I also tried a small metal wall plug, but it didn’t work so well and deformed when expanded in such a tight space in the tube. I’d probably have to replace it every time I took the hoses off, it also didn’t grip the hose so well as the nylon one.

More re-assembling tonight after painting last week. I did a mix of things from the feet to working on some skin panels.

I got the feet and ankles back together, and using the hex bolts worked out great. It was a breeze installing the ankle details.

With everything R2, there’s always a few steps back with a dozen forward. Today it was the braided hoses. I’d planned on using these expanding rubber plugs to hold the cables in place, but they didn’t quite work as I’d hoped. For some reason rather than bunching up and expanding the nut inside just moved/ripped up the rubber with minimum expansion as shown. The ‘bulge’ at the top being the maximum width.

Back to the drawing board and Ace Hardware tomorrow to look for an alternative. I was tempted to try Douglas Olson’s KHF System again, but space is very tight and they’ll not work for me with the JAG feet and drive system.

The other problem I had was once I tried to install the battery boxes they wouldn’t fit over the NPC motors. All the test fittings I did while filing down the tops of the motors was done without the ankle on the foot, so now I have less room to bend the box over and down onto the motors. An easy fix, but I was hoping to get the feet, ankles and legs back together tonight and now I can’t.

I also worked a little bit more on the frame and got the front vents installed and attached to the frame at last. Not sure how I’m going to fix in the blue surround at this point. Maybe silicon, but I want to be able to remove it easily with the skins. The fit is tight and I can see when removing the skins that it may get pulled off with little effort.

I’d posted a few weeks ago that I had a problem with the bolts on the Knurled Hose Fittings (KHF) hitting the drive wheel in the foot. Well I finally got around to cutting down the nuts and at the same time making some small nuts for the battery boxes.

For the feet I simply cut the nuts in half and filed them down. Here’s a before and after shot

At first I tried to cut the nuts with a hand saw, but it was slow going so I switched to the dremel

Here they are attached to the foot with the expandable rubber plugs which hold the hose in place

I also had to adjust the holes in the feet to get the foot strip to line up properly. I just used a hand file to remove some material

For the battery boxes I had to grind down the nuts to fit into the tight space.

Nice and snug fit

[edit 12-03-07 – see the following post about the failed rubber plugs on the KHF)