The Unfathomable Depths of the Propulsion Conundrum:

The recklessness of my youth returned on this one, with results that would make a grown man weep. Upon finding that the fast idle function wasn't working on the remote engine/gear controls we'd bought, I set to work on them a bit too vigorously, and in the process broke a vital piece of plastic. A family of gears, linkages, bearings and splines depended on this plastic matriarch, for her stoic leadership and resolute equanimity were the thread that held together their uneasy seams; and without her they quickly descended in anarchy. Not threats, nor sobs, nor pleas would restore order, and I was forced to dismantle with the hope of rebuilding a more harmonious system in the future.

Throttle level on the right, gear lever (grey thing, barely visible left of throttle),
and linkages inside

Since they refused to work under the guidance of one lever, I resolved to add another one. This way the throttle could be controlled with the original lever, and the gear with another. The gear-change system was very simple, based around an M10 bolt running through the remote casing, connecting the lever on the outside to a shorter lever on the inside, the shorter lever was then connected to the gear-shift cable. The levers were made from flat-bar steel, and both were threaded, so their position could be adjusted, and then locked to the central bolt with a locking nut. In the end, all this threading and locking business proved pointless, since they were prone to coming unlocked, even with all the torque on the nuts we could muster, and were thus welded.

All cable clamps/pivot things I make are of the same type, as this is the best I've come up with given my lack of fancy tools. They are made by grinding a small flat spot just under the head of a bolt, then drilling a hole just bigger than the cable through the flat spot to the other side. The cable goes through this hole and has a washer each side, then a nut can be tightened towards the head of the bolt to clamp the cable. These were made on the other end of the cables in M8 (stern leg gear linkage) and M6 (throttle control). In testing so far they seem totally satisfactory, hooray!

I was inching ever closer to D-day, stay tuned for the haps and mishaps that followed!