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I was up again at 4 am. This was my last (planned) stint and running with the sunrise was absolutely amazing. It started out just as dark as my last stint. Then after a little bit, there was a touch of red on the horizon. It slowly got higher and changed to a combination of red, orange, and yellow. It was absolutely beautiful.
Congrats!
I was so disappointed that I didn't get to see this or the night racing.
@smote I saw that It happened right in front of our pit area. You doing alright? What's the plan with the car?
In other news, we got the first piece of a CNC plasma puzzle this weekend. Aidan picked it up for me last week and dropped it off yesterday. I'm still blown away by how tiny it is. Stayed with a 30xp since I was able to find them used but in good condition for significantly less than new. I also don't have the breaker for a 45, since the big breaker in the shop is wired directly to the compressor and I don't have any other outlets bigger than 30a. We'll likely upgrade to something bigger down the line, but the number of times I've made something with 1/4" in the last 5 years I can count on one finger lol. The duty cycle is the main bummer about the 30, a bigger machine would definitely be nicer in that respect, but we'll manage fine with this guy. Either way, we're both very excited about this because cutting brackets and **** by hand gets so old.
I also bought a tire balancer at an auction. I was hoping to get a changer as well at the same time, but the bidding went too high for me. Once the plasma table shows up and I get a tire changer, I'm officially out of room in the shop and garage for big tools which is a bummer. But I guess that means I have to actually work on the car lol.
I'm fine, thanks. The tank of a car took the majority of it. The LS is a good-handling car on 295s with decent power, but pushing 3450lbs around on 255s doesn't work out so well (obviously). We're moving on.
You should've let me know you're looking for CNC plasma stuff. I just got a Torchmate 4x4 set up in the spring and I'm still looking to keep it busy.
BTW: sorry about the 5+hr. video link. It was supposed to start at 5:23:26.
And the Torchmate is a nice setup, that's definitely awesome! The cnc plasma table wasn't super planned haha, I was talking to a friend's dad about it one day and he mentioned them and I started looking into them. I mentioned it to Katy and she was all for it. Then a couple of people I know bought the Langmuir crossfire pro ones, so I asked them, hoping they'd tell me not to get it and instead told me it was the best thing they bought haha. So, here we are, waiting for it to ship in. The torchmate is probably levels nicer, but I think/hope this one will do for what we've got planned! I'm very very very much looking forward to not cutting brackets and things by hand anymore. And I can make ALL the taco gussets without picking up a set of shears haha
Hey, I bought a trans jack to do things. Looks like I need to cut the side of the trans tunnel out next since the shifter is still interfering with things. I'm gonna attempt to get my pedals mounted this Christmas/New Years time. I'll likely pull the trigger on dry sump things soon as well.
I'm currently waiting on the new plasma table to make the 8.8 mounts. It's supposed to ship sometime in January, pretty excited!
I buttoned up Brad for the time being this weekend and moved over to Audrey. First thing I wanted to get done was get the transmission bolted on to the engine. This required more cutting. The bolt on the 3-4 gear linkage still contacts the trans tunnel, but it currently moves and the trans fits. Feels pretty great to have the transmission in the car. I also verified that the mount is the same style as the t56 mount, so looks like the spare poly mount I have can be used. I maaaay try to get a trans mount made up in the next week or two.
After that, I moved on to the pedals. At the start of the weekend, I printed this master cylinder that Tilton kindly provides the solid models of on their website. Based off of how tight things are, I think the 76 series masters may be my move since you can use a banjo bolt up top for the reservoirs. I wanted to somewhat sandwich the assembly instead of just bolting it to a plate, so I decided to use 1"x.120 square tube with some spacers. My thought was that I could keep the center part of the square tube to add rigidity to the setup although, I later realized that it needs to be cut out so that the pedals can be slid out. So at the end of the day, tabs on top and bottom probably would have been best. I haven't welded this in yet though, so there's still time to change it if I feel the need. Anyway, square tube had gets welded to tubes, tubes get welded to dash bar. The pedals sit pretty much where I want them. I did have to cut the left side steering column support off, so I need to do something there to add extra support, but it was just hanging in air without the old pedal assembly anyway.
So yeah, that's pretty much where I'm at. 1/4" and 5/16" spacers are coming in this week and then maybe I'll move to the trans mount. I was going to run a friend's EPS system he was putting together, but I think the master cylinder area may make things too tight. Either way, I probably won't fully weld these in for a little while even if I settle on this design. Obviously, this area is pretty important and I don't want to miss anything. I still haven't fully figured out master cylinder sizes for the brakes. Tilton calls for a 3/4" bore master if you're using their clutch and slave, so that makes that an easy choice for the clutch.
I've been moving really slow on this car because I don't want to cut brackets by hand with the plasma table so close to being here. I know, I'm being lazy. I literally have the trans-mount tube made and the flat pieces drawn up, I just haven't cut them lol. I did however pick up a Racepak IQ3S the other day. Turns out, as far as I've been able to figure out (I called Holley as well) it's actually an IQ3SL. So that's neat, since that's like a $450 option. I've wanted one of these for like 4 years, just never pulled the trigger. This one came up for a decent deal though, so I couldn't pass it up.
I also finally got a new helmet. Pretty pumped on this guy. My current helmet is heavy and hot/doesn't breathe at all. I generally drive with the visor up because it sucks otherwise which is pretty meh from a safety point of view. I probably spent more than I should have, but I went to the local safety equipment store (425Motorsports) and tried a bunch on and this was the only one that I really really liked. I was also able to add options that I wanted like the drink/radio system and forced air inlet. I don't think I'll be using any of the extras in the LS car, but they'll certainly come in handy at LD. Anyway, excited to finally have a decent helmet and getting some use out of it this year.
I've been working on this car on and off on the weekends. We also got the new plasma table in, so I've been messing with that a bit. Man, **** is awesome. I ******* love it. I officially have the transmission mounted. The new mount is significantly lighter than the old setup and has a ton more clearance for the exhaust. I've still got work to do on the plasma settings to dial it in, but I've made some improvements already. This table is a total game-changer, so glad we bought it.
As you can also see, there's still more trimming to do on the trans tunnel. As it sits, the sheet metal still rubs the shifter. Next up is the rear end mount. I'm probably going to solid mount the diff. I'll see if I can convince Katy to turn me some aluminum bushings for the front of the diff at work and then I'll just bolt straight to the mount in the rear. I've seen a lot of rear mounts fail, HAZ and fatigue need to be paid attention to there.
I've worked a little bit on this car. Mainly on getting the pedals in. I cut some more brackets out to add additional clearance and then welded up the assembly. I got some small aluminum spacers from McMaster so that I could sandwich the assembly. Overkill? Probably. Whatever, I wanted the pedals solid as they could be. I tacked the spacers on.
Btw, the unit has different thicknesses for the mounting bosses front and rear, I have no idea why, but it does. So the spacers needed to go in specific locations. The bolts also need to go in from the bottom for two reasons. So that you can get them out, and also to give a touch extra clearance to the MC boot. The idea here is that the entire assembly can be slid out of the channel for maintenance or whatever.
It's currently tacked into the car until I get the master cylinders and 100% verify everything is where I want it.
I had to order a single fitting off of summit this week for the shitshow nitrous car that is brad. Since paying for shipping is a foreign thought, I added a single $100 3/4 76 series MC to my order so I wouldn't have to pay $8 in shipping. Stonks. That MC is for the clutch because I'm 100% sure that's what I need because tilton flat out tells you that's what you need. I still haven't fully decided on front/rear MCs, I'm currently leaning towards 5/8 as front and .7 as rear. I'll probably order those with other minor orders whenever they come up.
Katy is telling me I need to buy a dry sump with my stimmy/tax money, I just haven't had the ***** to actually pull the trigger yet. Maybe if I actually sell my oil pan to someone then I'll finally do it. It just means things are permanent once I do that, up until this point, I've been largely working off of the money I made from selling the other parts.
Last but not least! We painted the interior of the BMW! It's smoke gray rustoleum and we're contemplating painting the cage a slightly darker gray to offset it a little bit. We'll decide this weekend, we also kinda need to get the car back together lol.
Also, completely forgot! I picked up another e46 from @gesso last weekend! Well, picked it up from Eric, but Geoff left it at his house. It's a former gambler car, and I'll likely use it for that this year before I start stealing parts off of it for the LD car
10-31-2020, 12:59 AM
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It happened right in front of our pit area. You doing alright? What's the plan with the car?
But yeah, definitely not going in Brad
