Slowly moving towards the goal...

Ken from Swede Lil Pigs dropped by to lend a hand last night and we were welcome to have him there. We got the kill switches sorted out. One inside where the driver can reach, final location to be determined when the dash is put back in. The other on the drivers side cowl where emergency personnel can reach. Both tested good. I need to add a hold down for the key so if it comes off we don't lose it.

I installed the heater core bypass. I did not get the core removed, but that's next on the list.

I'm still dreaming of getting the cage installed. It looks like I'll buy one and have someone local weld it up.

Newly Used Battery

Dropped in a slightly used new battery from CL and got the car to crank on the 3rd try. Still having to use starter fluid and the idle is bad. If I don't keep the gas on, it will stall. But it's a promising start.

I'm not going to gloat about my nut loosening ability.

Last night started a bit slow, but it sped up after I clobbered my head getting out of the car. It came with a nice bong sound and cartoon stars floating around. It wasn't enough for tweety birds though, so no 911 call. We have the cowl mounting point for the first cutoff switch drilled. Then we started pulling the AC. This will reduce load on the engine, lighten the car and allow firewall access for the kill switch cables. We got everything out except the heater core. That will be pulled at the next session and the kill switch finished.

I've had a lot of good response to the CL and Lemons forum post. I hope to see everyone that's responded soon. I sent out an email that details the costs and the schedule. My only expectation is that if you want to race, you need to come work on the car. I would rather race with people that I've worked with and have that shared experience, than selling seats at race time.

No pictures from last nights work session, so here's a picture of a old Desoto. I'm just happy we're not working on it.

Porsche Sidebar

I scrapped the left exhaust pulling out of an inclined parking space and it dropped the muffler. I'm not sure what's managled, but I've pulled it apart to get a better look. Hopefully someone on the Renn Tech forums will have an answer. They know everything.

Right side, the good one.

Left side, the bad one.

Sway bar, what happened here?

Plates for the Car

I would like to put plates on the car to drive it around. Here are a few options from the DOT.

Donate Life

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Secular Humanists

Special Olympics. I think this may be the one. Comments?

New site layout

Well the new site layout completely screws up the already screwed up picture layout I had. I wish there were an easy way to put the pics where I want them to go in posts. I just let them land wherever they feel like it at this point.

Car pics

A few shots of the car's current state. Mostly its immobile.

Welding and descuzzification

I installed battery tie down mounts. I cut up an old rusty license plate holder from the Datsun and bent and welded it into place. Not a professional job, but it's solid and works. Couple that with the battery holder I found at LKQ and I have a good solution. Now I have to get a decent battery. I have 3 dead ones at the house.

I also removed the headliner from the car and the remainder of the interior trim. Looks more like a crap can with no interior. The Sparco seat is just a bit too tall, but I'll address that next. It was mounted in a mid 80's Mustang. I can't put it on the Celica seat sliders, as those have the seat angle adjuster build into them. The Sparco seat certainly contains the driver. I wonder how hard it will be to get out of it with a full cage installed?

Welder transport service

After the PCA meeting last night, we went by Ken's house and picked up the welder. Luckily, it's small enough to fit in the Porsche's trunk with the bottle stowed behind the passenger seat. Well, it fit in the trunk with no spare tire. Who needs a spare tire anyways?

More stuff coming...

I ordered four 5 gallon fuel jugs this morning from ebay.

I also ordered a 6 point Racequip harness to go with the Sparco seat I found at LKQ. Did I mention I found a race seat at the junk yard? Oh yes, I did indeed find one.

And Unofficial work session

So I cleaned up the battery connections with the junkyard cables. It looks better and there won't be a chance of anyone mistaking the red wire that lead (past tense used here) to the negative terminal as the positive terminal. That would have been bad.

Now I need to get the battery hold down and shut off switches installed and I'll be done with this checklist item.

Yeah for junkyards!

I really cleaned up today at LKQ.

I found the battery cables I needed, plus some heavy duty amp cabling with fuse. And I picked up a battery hold down bar.

I found two tachs, a speedo and fuel gauge from a 74 fiat. I'm trying to figure out how to mount a tach on the hood like the late 60's muscle cars. Can you have 2 tachs on a car? I guess I would need some sort of cable multiplier.

The big find of the day was in a mid 80's mustang:

Carbon fiber like speed shifting knob

Hood hold down pins

K&N Filter

and a Sparco seat!

Safety is Job One

The tires and brakes are done! Finished replacing the rubber hoses for the brakes last night. Bled them and put a check mark next to Brakes. The tires are all new, so they're done too.

Next on the agenda is to fix the fuel delivery issue. That includes replacing the coil wire. It doesn't really want to stay connected to the distributor. Not saying that's the problem, but it's gotta be fixed.

After that, we'll tackle engine cleanup, cage (!!!) and theme. There's tons of other things to do to, but that's the major stuff. Don't worry, I'll still post the useless stuff like when I install a kitchen timer to let the drive know how long they've been out. Or when we get a set of walkie talkies that Eric keeps promising, that I won't mention to him until it's almost race time.

We may move our work day to Tuesday to accommodate our recruit. More on that if it happens.