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Progressing on the sheet metal, replaced the left cage bar
above drivers helmet (too close to helmet), and removed and rebuilt the fuel
cell and battery area (too close to wheelie bars). These were the only two real
mistakes made (so far) in the designing / building of the chassis. We will be
very happy if they stay the only two.
Strong mount for parachute attachment has been made (below
fuel cell), much more welding done on chassis, etc. etc.
We then took the whole thing apart, and after MUCH more work
prepping the chassis, had it powdercoated.
Finally, now we can begin assembling for real !! |
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| Oct 2, '98 |
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Sheet metal progress. |
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Battery and fuel cell raised up to clear wheelie bars.
Parachute mount is vertical bar, with diagonals to it, below cell. |
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Tow hook was an interesting problem. The nose structure would never
be strong enough to tow from, so we built a bolt-on aluminum hook (not finished
yet) that will protrude up through the grille in front of the windshield. |
|
| 10/17 |
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Stripped car down to bare chassis, built "spits" so we could rotate
it 360 degrees. |
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After 2 weeks of adding gussets, finishing welds, grinding,
drilling, and building the NHRA mandated foot well bracing, it is now ready for
painting. |
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| 11/13 |
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Turned out we had a lot more to do than we thought, but here it is
back from the powdercoaters - we decided it would be a lot better than
painting. |
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Here is a shot of the Ford 9" ready to go in. |
| All of the bodywork pieces (there are
many, since we are using original RX7 parts) are primed on the outside, and
final black on the inside. The majority of the suspension is ready to bolt on.
About half of the interior aluminum sheet metal is ready. It will be
interesting to see how long it takes to put the car together.
For those of you who never assembled a race car for the first
time, it can sometimes (always?) go very slow. All of those bolts you just
stuck through the holes now have to be the correct ones -- meaning "the great
bolt search", with many trips to the local specialty places to get "that"
bolt/nut/washer. Correct length/diameter spacers need to be machined to replace
the stack of washers used for initial design, and EVERY piece going on the car
needs to be cleaned, sanded, de-burred, prepped, painted, coated, or some combo
of those.
Another probable delay we are looking at is that the compression
is low on some of the chambers on the 3-rotor. It is a used engine, that has
now been sitting a long time, and has had a car built around it. We were hoping
to initially "dial-in" the car without having to go through the engine. That
initial "setting up" of the injection and the nitrous is where the chance of
engine damage is greatest, so we were hoping to not have to spend the time and
money to overhaul the engine before that. We are going to run the engine on the
dyno to see if the compression will come back -- if not, then it comes apart
for porting and rebuilding. |