Australian Belly Tank

[Dr Goggles]

 Got outa there by about last 9pm night, I'm somewhere between the beginning and the very end, I hope I am closer to the end ......


I mounted all of the body panels, as part of the process of putting everything where it should be in order to do a "roll call" of parts .... I now remember the car dropping onto the tail when I was winching it onto the truck in 2010 and that may explain some of the trouble I had yesterday. We always had a little panel mismatch, but this time round it seems greater than before, ironically it seems that the worst places are on top of the body and each trailing panel seems higher than its partner.... , not by much but enough to notice. I improved the worst of it and also had a bit of a fettle of the parachute doors which are a slightly better fit now.....

I think 2013 will be the year for a repaint and some serious bodywork, Steve.....are you out there?....Some here may remember pictures of Steve Barnett's waterbottle with a full aluminium fairing, Steve has spent the last few years working with an old master who specializes in restoring pre-war race cars and has offered to help, we need to get in before he becomes unaffordable........donations welcome.

[Captthundarr]

WOW, there is a car in this build,  , getting there. this has always been an interesting read. soon?

[Milwaukee Midget]

It amazes me the damage that can occur to a race car that has nothing to do with its operation.  Putting it on the trailer/flatbed, knocking into it in the garage, trying to fix something.

A clean shed helps.  A LOT.

The sooner it gets on the salt, the safer it's going to be.

Press on, Doctor.

[Dr Goggles]

The only time I got annoyed yesterday was when I saw how FDUP some parts of the car were....the nose, that got slammed when I got the car airborne in 2010 had a hasty repair, the tail problem is less easy to fix.When you have between an inch and two of clearance things are going to get scraped.....then there are the scuffs, scrapes and gouges where things have fallen on the car......you don't drive two hundred miles over a rough outback road  without SOMETHING landing on or rubbing up against the car, then the pit shade always has to fall on it, the the cowl has to blow over from where someone helping you stood it on end.......and then some dill has to drop it of the jack at the back of the trailer.....yeah, racing is the safe bit.

Putting in a lazy day at work, ( New Years Eve tonight) and just noticing my right wrist is sore, and a little swollen, that would be yesterdays efforts in panel fitting.............Don't, folks, use your hand as a hammer, even if the panels are thin and soft

[Stainless1]

Putting in a lazy day at work, ( New Years Eve tonight) and just noticing my right wrist is sore, and a little swollen, that would be yesterdays efforts in panel fitting.............Don't, folks, use your hand as a hammer, even if the panels are thin and soft

You should have used your head   

[Glen]

Any sheet metal and structural repairs take a lot of thought. Good planning and trial fits before bringing the hammer in the shop. Good luck and Happy New year.

[Dr Goggles]

thanks for the tip but the panels generally need gentle encouragement, not the kind of one-way crushing blow that something with the mass of my head can deliver, we're talkin fine work here Bob

I can use my forehead for planishing, I need a cretin friend for shrinking and pick hammer duties though.

Any sheet metal and structural repairs take a lot of thought. Good planning and trial fits before bringing the hammer in the shop. Good luck and Happy New year.

Thanks Glen, our friend Steve may be just the guy. I don't have any pure argon at the moment and  am not getting any, If I had some I would have whacked a pleat or two in the top of the body and welded it up......but that takes time and so does paint......the signage needs to be redone soon so I figure and strip and straighten with a new scheme and signage will be the job for next year......

I just remembered that yesterday in the midst of it I realised that the casting on the ten bolt housing was fouling the fuel tank, fortunately I could take some off the base of the tank as the floor is angled and also take a bit off the pumpkin........

[wobblywalrus]

Goggs, sometimes it helps to build it to work OK, be safe, go fast, and pass tech.  Then, in the time remaining before you load it on the trailer, to go back and fix up the cosmetic stuff.  This takes a lot of the pressure off of a person.   

[Dr Goggles]

Hey Bo ,cosmetic flows to structural on this thing*aero is the only card we hold and crap panel fit kind of ruins that.....with a few small changes and a couple o dings I needed to get the body on as a practise run. This whole procedure goes together like a chinese puzzle.......I am just wading through the housework and then dummy fitting EVERYTHING because those last few days are when the real stuff happens and when the motor is going in I want everything to have been trialled, no claggy threads, no missing bolts, no "how come this doesn't fit" scenarios, in the next week, when everything opens again I will be out buying the needed bits I have found to be missing......lookin OK so far.......




* on it's second year at the salt Simon Davidison the photographer was standing next to it and a guy walked up and asked how old it was

"it's the second year it's been here"
"yeah, but when was it built?...in the sixties"
"no, it was new last year"
"how come it looks so old"

as Simon said he looked over at it and it was bleeding dust from the trip in and like the guy said, it looked fifty years old, not one..........

[SPARKY]

My Good Dr.---I so look forward to following your thrash with hair dryers- --thats what the 2.14s are for---recall!!  Happy and Safe New Years EVE tonight--over there!!

[Dr Goggles]

I spent yesterday in and out of the shed, to the untrained eye it wouldn't seem much was done, to the trained eye it was fairly obvious that small victories had been achieved....I got the gear shift in. I'd had to cut the end off the gearshift arrangement in order to pull the cables through the firewall when I dismantled the car for blasting so in putting them back I wanted to make sure they needn't be cut again... there are still plenty of parts in the car that are the prototype. Weird, mangled, cut three times and welded bits that look like a test piece in a welding booth.....the ends of the shift cables were like that, adjusted ,adjusted and never remade once we got them to work. The bracket that holds them at the other end the clamp of which holds a heat shield was a little rough...I cleaned them up,deburred them ,remade a few parts and got some paint on them.

I spent a bit of time clearing threads especially in aluminium parts, I went over the canopy, cleaned and lubed the catches, cleaned , painted and remounted the catch handle.

I spent time the day before having another look at some of the body mount points and realised that where I had taken the rear superstructure off when the diff centre was set up that I had removed a small tack weld on each side, I drilled and tapped a hole in each side so that the height of the mounting bracket could be tuned... that'll make it a bit easier to match the edge where the tub meets the cowl.

I also changed my mind slightly with the padding around the helmet, the way I worked it I end up with no pieces left over, so more padding around the cage. It involved not bothering with full coverage at the back where the helmet can't reach it due to the tightness of the corner and more in the cap of the cage where it could in extreme circumstances.... I think it's a better solution.

[Jon]

Detailing before the thrash 

Got more helmet area pics?

Cheers
jon

[Dr Goggles]

Na, not "detailing" before the thrash.... Once you've had your bike at the lake once or twice you'll know what I'm doing. Due to the long down times you end up losing the mental map of so much that goes on inside these special construction things..... and I know that when the motor turns up we will be in full thrash, at that time I need to be able to completely strip and re-assemble the car in a couple of hours, then is not the time to need a helicoil, ezy-out or some rare bolt, hose, union or whatever........... Right now I'm "dress rehearsing" every part, re-familiarising nooks and crannys and dusting off that mental map of what goes where, when. In the meantime things are getting "detailed", sharp edges that have cut me a few times, gone, snags that have stopped body fixtures going home properly....gone....... flimsy , dodgy, dubious....gone..... Things get busted, seized by red dust, rotted by bimetallic corrosion( helped by salt), butchered by tools using the wrong tools (?), beaten by 200+miles of poor excuse for a road........I'm performing an obsessive compulsive routine because I'm bad at systematic, I am finding it harder to find( nice) things to do other than chuck the motor in it and fire it up.....

[grumm441]

Yep, and that's not going to happen this weekend.
G

[Jon]

Sounds like your detailing to me

I haven't even made it to the lake and already forget why I made some bits that way.