Lots Happening!

Everyone's been working hard on the car.

Iain finished building the magic box for the DIY Cool Shirt (link is in a previous post):

A Couple of Roll Cage Pics

I am  blown away by the work that Julius and John have done on the cage. It's the safest $500 car ever!

John working on the cage:

NASCAR style door bar, gutted driver's door, splined stub for quick release steering wheel.

New Stuff

Had a couple of things show up in the mail today from McMaster Carr:

On the left are the "dry break" pieces that we need to build our DIY cool shirts . On the right are the shaft collars we need to fabricate a seat back brace - both collars have an I.D. of 1.5 inches: - I figured we could use some left over roll cage tubing to make the brace.


In other news, looks like pressure testing and cleaning our radiator is not all that cheap - locally it's $70. $70 will also get the gas tank steam cleaned, which is probably worth it, since a rust flake could easily clog the fuel filter and end our race early.

Looks Like I Need a HANS

Big ouch on this one - the driver rolls and breaks a cervical vertebrae. Turns out the foam neck brace didn't work so well.

Brake Caliper Rebuild

One of the pair of twin piston brakes that Julius gave me have been rebuilt. They both looked to be in  good shape - a sticker on them said "remanufactured", the brake pads that came with the calipers looked almost new - I doubt they'd seen much use.. All the rubber seals were intact and looked  healthy, the walls of the piston and bore looked  smooth with no pitting or rusting. There was even a small amount of grease at the base of the bore from the original rebuild.

I gave the bore and piston of the first caliper a quick polish with some brake fluid and a 3M Scotchbrite pad, and put them back together. Start to finish was about 20 minute. The second side was not so easy. One of the pistons popped out no problem, but even with a metric ass load of compressed air the second piston took about 30 minutes of compressed air and C-clamp work to break free. Turns out a small section of the bore had been hit with something - looked like it had been knocked out of round and was making the piston stick. I'm glad we rebuilt them! Julius has another set or two lying around, we should still be able to get two good calipers.

(hard to read the red label, but it says "Remanufactured By ______"

L'Asino Rosso : Masters of the Hooniverse!

This is a blog to document our adventures in the 24 Hours of LeMons.