Saturday, June 19, 2010

U PULL IT Price List

Thought this link was worth adding. I'd say they are f#cking high asking the prices they do, but hey! Supporting your employee's raging meth habit is not cheap. So let's just let it be, eh.

http://www.picknpull.com/part_pricing.aspx?LocationID=108

Friday, June 18, 2010

Post Race

Back from Lemons North Dallas Hooptie 2010!

Came 57th. Had a great time.

With the exception of the rear differential approaching meltdown on two occasions (and successfully doing it once) the car ran flawlessly.Oh, and the brake booster went out which meant the brakes were unassisted. They still worked fine, just required a heavy right foot.

Some of my pics are posted here: http://s115.photobucket.com/albums/n296/squirrelgripper/2010%20Dallas%20LeMons/

The DIY Cool Shirts worked great! A lot of other teams were rocking the same outfits:

n the subject of the rear diff, I commented on the Lemons forum about how much money went into one of the Taurus SHOs ( the one with the fake boobs all over it) - they had about ~$700 worth of transmission coolers in the trunk! (and a $200 Optima battery):  http://forums.24hoursoflemons.com/viewtopic.php?id=5222

Anyhoo, "The Heckler" (who was running the Lincoln next door to us) suggested a power steering pump. So I picked up an electric fan motor on ebay tonight for $10 shipped and I already have a power steering pump from a VW already (leaky, needs to be rebuilt). Maybe a pump from a bigger vehicle (eg. F150 truck) would pump more volume?

Anyway, a pulley on the power steering pump, a pulley on the electric motor and a fan belt between the two and we have a $10 - $20 electric pump for the diff cooler. A $10 ebay oil cooler, some hose fittings, hose and an electric radiator fan for the  cooler and we should be in business.  We probably need a reservoir in there somewhere to allow the hot oil to expand and to add capacity, but that should be pretty easy to find in a junkyard or on a parts car.

I had read that the diff oil (actually, all oil)  needs to be cooler than 250F - once it gets that hot it really starts to break down and no longer works well as a lubricant. So, combined with all the other fixes this should help our overheating problems and keep us running. Maybe we'll get a Jalopnik best engineered award?.

Tell me if I'm way off base before I start building this. It should be real cheap (like $50 or less for everything), pretty quick and easy to weld the pump pieces onto a small metal plate and mount in the spare tire well.

Iain

Monday, April 5, 2010

Recent Progress

Johnny and Julius have been going at it. Here's some updated pics from Johnny. The tach comes with an integrated shift light and was $45 on ebay. The gaugues are either original or came in a pack of 3 for $20.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

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):

Monday, March 15, 2010

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.