Grunt work
Ok. Got started properly on the car itself on the weekend. There were a couple of spots we cleaned up and repainted.The salt is really hard on things , and it doesn't just sit there dry, it attracts water.....so as long as there's some SOMEWHERE the rust continues unabated..... Maybe next year we'll get the frame sandblasted and spray it again but the last three years we've just brushed it, heaps of cold zinc and then a slop over the top with safety yellow tractor paint. No, don't tell me ..." mate, you should get it powder-coated, or do it in 2pack".....powder coating isn't worth sheet , the moment it's chipped it's game over rust starts everywhere under it, as for two pack it'd be good but not really that much better at preventing rust than what we're already doing and when it comes time for a repaint it's harder to get off......so yeah, it gets a paint job like a five year olds finger painting.
I started putting the fuel system back together . We have a 10 litre tank, a high volume steel canister filter and then a Bosch 910 . The tank is full of foam and there is a baffle where the return line enters to stop agitation. We cooked our last pump from what we think was cavitation, that was why the foam went in. Last year just gone the remains of the motor showed signs of a high rev lean out ....when I went to put the line from the tank to the filter on I noticed that it looked as though it had been sucked flat where it took a 90 degree bend from the tank.... I replaced that with a curved right angle bend of steel. Underneath the fuel tank sits a piece of 6mm gal-steel channel which covers the tail shaft...and prevents an ugly outcome if the tailshaft( which is only 100mm from uni to uni ) lets go... I bulked up the way the channel is secured just for piece of mind.....
Up the front I was never happy with the way we had set up the steering column , I ditched it from the two knuckles back and got a fresh one( early Laser) , put another support bearing in and made another hanger for it, now it's possible to mount the tach lower, the whole arrangement is tidier AND it's stronger with less play.The problem with the way the tach was mounted is that it was difficult to find a spot where you could see over it, and not be touching the helmet against the roll bar padding, when that happens your eyes "grey-out" from the vibration and you can't see anything , not blurry, just grey nothing, it's pretty scary the first time it happens. I used to drive the car looking at the track markers about 20 degrees off centre......
Because the car will be going over 200 this year we needed to fit 1 inch wheel nuts. Same size stud but just 1 inch hex instead of 13/16......now you can buy buckets of wheel nuts for SFA, standard ones. The inch jobbies cost me the measly sum of $6 a pop , that hurt buying 22. I can only figure that they have seen wheels pulled over the wheel nuts in crashes to mandate the bigger ones.
Helmets are certified by Snell and need to be within ten years of their cert date , ours is a SA2000 bought in 2006 , so we need another one of them even though ours is immaculate, never dropped or scratched and only worn about fifteen times in anger.
More soon.2roo.
