Stuff my dog says; on second thought I'll just build a race car

Technically the bolt was a little under 10 dollars from McMaster Carr, but the shipping is what pushed it to 20. I think I see what's wrong with the radiator and it's something that is hopefully easily taken care of. There is a spot where I tacked the bracket originally that didn't meld but you can see melt on both pieces. I'm thinking I just need to go back and extend the puddle through that spot.
 
Technically the bolt was a little under 10 dollars from McMaster Carr, but the shipping is what pushed it to 20.
I understand shipping can be a big part of the price of some things. I was all set to buy a replacement pad for my Bosch sander from Amazon, they were only asking about $9.95 but when I got to the part that showed total including shipping it was close to $17.00. A little more looking and found I could order it online from Home Depot and for the same $9.95 and they only added on $0.80 for sales tax and shipping was free!

Good luck with the radiator repair!
 
I probably could've found the bolt cheaper on Amazon or something with free shipping, but I like to avoid them when I can. I'll pay the ten for convenience. At the same time I used to go in to Cycle Gear here to get gear with the thinking that keeping the money at least somewhat local is worth the few extra bucks. Then they quit stocking anything that wasn't straight house brand junk and I've not been in in a few years.
 
I probably could've found the bolt cheaper on Amazon or something with free shipping, but I like to avoid them when I can. I'll pay the ten for convenience. At the same time I used to go in to Cycle Gear here to get gear with the thinking that keeping the money at least somewhat local is worth the few extra bucks. Then they quit stocking anything that wasn't straight house brand junk and I've not been in in a few years.
I have never done business with Amazon and never will. I buy indy when at all possible regardless of price.
 
Interesting day so far. Chased the leak all the way around the bracket. Didn't fill the radiator back with water after finding the leak the first time I was just pressurising the system and listening. So after I had welded all the way around the bracket I was still hearing a leak and getting frustrated so I wet a rag and ran it around the welds looking for bubbles and didn't see any. It was at that point I realized there was a pipe thread fitting on the cylinder head leaking.
20220820_120424.jpg
Long story short the car can hold its water now and I drove it to the next stall with plans to lift it and seal the transmission/transfer case adapter after lunch so I can actually have gear oil in the transmission. I did more work on the arch above the radiator too this morning taking a picture with the flat panel tacked in. It's welded to the arch now but not welded to the car yet.
20220820_120155.jpg

Then it sounded like the shop got struck by lightning. We've got several lights out and our compressor is flashing an error. Plus we have no phone cable or internet.
 
Congrats on fixing the leak!

What's in that space between the firewall and the forward cockpit bulkhead?

If I'm reading this correctly I'm thinking you're asking about between the firewall and dash bar. That's got the master cylinders and throttle pedal in it. There will be an access panel in the bodywork there when it's all done to be able to fill the reservoirs.
I have actually thought about making the airbox in there and just running the intake tube through the firewall. The safety of that seems dubious though with a carburetor.
If in not reading right, then I'm not really sure what you're asking about?
 
Got the alternators sorted. Took the two apart and swapped the modified front cover onto the new everything else. Had to mess with the pivot mount a little where it was contacting the new case which was more difficult than it needed to be because with the electricity in the shop gone nutty we had no compressor.
20220820_161057.jpg
Speaking of things being more difficult than they should be, I took the tailshaft adapter out and trimmed the parts of the mounting flange that could easily get smaller. That would have been easy with the plasma cutter, but no air so that wasn't an option. It got done though and I got it back together with the gaskets so I should be able to fill thebtrans tomorrow.
20220820_192304.jpg
It looks so tiny in the air it's weird. The springs showed up tonight too, so I can make that happen tomorrow.
 
Various pictures today. Got the springs installed, filled the transmission, tightened important bolts and did some odds and ends. Tacked the arch piece to the radiator support as well but didn't take a picture of it until I had pulled back in the shop.
20220821_175818.jpg

20220821_153059.jpg20220821_151943.jpg20220821_151918.jpg20220821_151805.jpg
I was able to drive it out of the shop and in the business part here a quicknlittle bit but more on that later. My wife filmed some but I don't have access to those at the moment and will post them wife a more detailed account of driving after a while.
 

So driving videos, which aren't great as far as videos go. And there is a stupid watermark because I don't know any free video editing stuff. Impression from the video is I don't know why the blower whine is so incredibly loud on the video even drowning out the exhaust noise.

The actual driving of the car cropped up some issues which obviously isn't the least bit surprising. The brakes are spongy which isn't a huge surprise considering all that's every really been done is a gravity bleed in the front. The car stops OK and it never felt like it wasn't going to but I need to get a hand at some point and do a better bleed. I just went a few hundred yards and didn't get past second gear, the car ran progressively worse as things went. I stopped across the street to see who was over there and shut the car off to be able to chat and it didn't want to fire back up which is a first. It acted like it was flooded and had started to cut out under throttle before I turned in there. It was Jeff who was there and he pointed out while I was getting out of the car that the carburetor was leaking, so I'm betting that the carburetor from the Jeep that I haven't done anything with may have given up. Or alternatively this was the first time the car had run any length of time with the charging system working and I haven't actually checked the fuel pressure so maybe with the extra voltage now the pump is overwhelming the float? I pulled the spark plugs once I pulled it back in the shop, the plugs which I've never changed, and they're half rich fouled.

Other things I haven't actually done yet, look at the valve lash or ignition timing. So these things should probably get done. Nothing seems to have fallen off the car and I survived the drive though and teething issues aren't a shock with something hand built making it's first run so I'm not super worried yet. Oil pressure looked fine the whole time and the coolant temperature never even topped 150 so I know it didn't get hot enough to mess anything up. I did notice when it was misfiring the AFR went down to 11 so more evidence it's too rich for one reason or another.

The positive thing is I think it sounds good inside the car going but the dominant thing is the thing feels like it's a roller coaster car. It's not like I was going fast, MAYBE 30 but every slight input in the steering wheel was felt as a direction change in the car. I was expecting the tall soft sidewall tires to blunt steering input and was really pleasantly surprised. At the same time I've been expecting to have noticeable body roll given the lack of any anti roll bars and again the soft tires but it was completely unnoticeable. Obviously it's a cliche, but go kart like feels accurate. Even having several custom cars with full aftermarket suspensions and tiny sidewall tires the steering is way more direct, again given the extremely small sample size.
 

So driving videos, which aren't great as far as videos go. And there is a stupid watermark because I don't know any free video editing stuff. Impression from the video is I don't know why the blower whine is so incredibly loud on the video even drowning out the exhaust noise.

The actual driving of the car cropped up some issues which obviously isn't the least bit surprising. The brakes are spongy which isn't a huge surprise considering all that's every really been done is a gravity bleed in the front. The car stops OK and it never felt like it wasn't going to but I need to get a hand at some point and do a better bleed. I just went a few hundred yards and didn't get past second gear, the car ran progressively worse as things went. I stopped across the street to see who was over there and shut the car off to be able to chat and it didn't want to fire back up which is a first. It acted like it was flooded and had started to cut out under throttle before I turned in there. It was Jeff who was there and he pointed out while I was getting out of the car that the carburetor was leaking, so I'm betting that the carburetor from the Jeep that I haven't done anything with may have given up. Or alternatively this was the first time the car had run any length of time with the charging system working and I haven't actually checked the fuel pressure so maybe with the extra voltage now the pump is overwhelming the float? I pulled the spark plugs once I pulled it back in the shop, the plugs which I've never changed, and they're half rich fouled.

Other things I haven't actually done yet, look at the valve lash or ignition timing. So these things should probably get done. Nothing seems to have fallen off the car and I survived the drive though and teething issues aren't a shock with something hand built making it's first run so I'm not super worried yet. Oil pressure looked fine the whole time and the coolant temperature never even topped 150 so I know it didn't get hot enough to mess anything up. I did notice when it was misfiring the AFR went down to 11 so more evidence it's too rich for one reason or another.

The positive thing is I think it sounds good inside the car going but the dominant thing is the thing feels like it's a roller coaster car. It's not like I was going fast, MAYBE 30 but every slight input in the steering wheel was felt as a direction change in the car. I was expecting the tall soft sidewall tires to blunt steering input and was really pleasantly surprised. At the same time I've been expecting to have noticeable body roll given the lack of any anti roll bars and again the soft tires but it was completely unnoticeable. Obviously it's a cliche, but go kart like feels accurate. Even having several custom cars with full aftermarket suspensions and tiny sidewall tires the steering is way more direct, again given the extremely small sample size.
Sounds awesome!!!
 
Well this probably explains the shitty running. Pulled this from the fuel cell tonight. It ran OK just filling the float bowl from a bottle of good gas.
 

Attachments

  • 20220823_175440.jpg
    20220823_175440.jpg
    287.5 KB · Views: 41
A bottle of piss? I don't think it will run on that.
Yeah, I had let the car warm up and run a while Saturday after moving it over to the lift, probably 7 or 8 minutes but I wasn't clock watching. It ran the same way it had run when filling the carb from a bottle previously. I had only put 2 gallons of fuel into the tank though not knowing at the time how well anything was going to work. So planning on driving a little while Sunday I had stopped and got another gallon which I put in right before taking the car out. Sunday it only ran for 5 minutes or so after putting that gallon in before it started running bad.

So now I get to try and empty the fuel cell of everything I can and put good gas back in. I did have it run off a bottle this evening and it smoothed itself out once it got all the crud out of the float bowl. The other stuff still needs done too, and I bought some spark plugs tonight to that end.
 
Running good now. Change the spark plugs, adjusted the valves, set the fuel pressure to 4.5 pounds, set the base ignition timing to 10 BTDC, and drained the fuel and filled it with 5 good gallons of gas. After that it fired right up and idles and revs a little better than it did before. I also tried just tightening the float bowl screws on the carb to kick that can down the road a little while longer and it's at least a smaller leak. Hopefully it's almost time to just pitch that thing in the garbage anyway.
 
20220827_153959.jpg20220827_152005.jpg20220827_152005.jpg
Good times today. I made a rudimentary crash structure behind the fuel cell for at least some rear impact protection. In the middle of TIG welding the second vertical bar to the existing chassis though I found an impurity in the metal and had a little eruption. A piece of slag from that however landed on my chest and set my shirt on fire. Small fire thankfully but enough to burn my chest and make the shop stink for the rest of the afternoon. And ruin my shirt.
20220827_122645.jpg
 

Attachments

  • 20220827_151957.jpg
    20220827_151957.jpg
    399.2 KB · Views: 38
Back
Top