Australian Belly Tank

[Rex Schimmer]

A quote from Dr. Gogs post of yesterday, "f knows why I have or keep SO MANY jagged mangled, rusted and for all intensive purposes useless pieces of steel lying around......" James its call INVENTORY!!! As soon as you throw it away you will need it. That is someone's rule.

Rex

[Jon]

Nice design, I wondered if the Sunshine was in any way connected to the harvesters.

Axle shopping and bluing crownwheel and pinion engagement today?

Cheers
jon

[grumm441]

  Nice start there on the car -- who's the artist?

That would be the Reverend
It's part of what he does for a real job
G

[Reverend Hedgash]

Sunshine Harvester? Absolutely. The spirit of sunshine was built in Sunshine Victoria, which is a town named after the sunshine company located there which designed and built the harvester. It's logo was a rising sun.

It is considered a great Australian invention so we were proud enough of our efforts to say that we built it in the same spirit of invention in the same place. (also it is a suggestion of our method of keeping the black dog at bay)

The company was also involved in a serious legal case about working conditions which lead to improvement in local laws about working hours etc, . So a little bit of that too... Goggles, do you even own a safety guard for any of those tools?

[Milwaukee Midget]

This the idea for the background?



That's a killer logo, boys.

[Dr Goggles]

that's the one.......

A bit about HV McKay and his manufacturing works.He was a great philanthropist. Yes , the car is right here in Sunshine...thus the Spirit of Sunshine......too easy really.

[Dr Goggles]

Spent the last two days in axle-land, Subaru just got real. I've taken the rear end off the car, the whole lot will be going to a diff whiz to set it up, THEN we'll work out what length axles we need.....this morning I spoke with a human encyclopaedia of Ford axles, there is no cheap option here because we want to keep the same track.We have to decide on bearings and then once we've done that the shanks will need to be machined as the offset varies from model to model.Were we building the car now we could choose the track width and use stock length axles but we ain't so we cain't.I envy your method Sparky, we're hooked into this now so that's it.

That means we won't make it to the rain date meet at Gairdner, if I had money I could throw at it we'd be a better chance but I just don't at the moment.

Ideally we'll get the set up of the diff to include setting up the 2.41:1 centre as well as the 2.56 we intend to use so we have the shims and spacers we need if we ever want to change ratio at the lake, at this stage we don't have a 2.73 for the ten-bolt and were hoping we don't need it . The car used to run 2.77:1.

The back came off easily, nine bolts on the frame members and a couple of little welds on the latter framework for the body.




Nothing had rusted too badly and I'm glad I used anti-sieze copper on the bolts.You'll notice the the plate that the piece is made from is half inch, it's got some weight.


It's time for a bit of a clean up and paint.....I'd rather be racing.....

[Reverend Hedgash]

What you could also do is make those freakin'n holes for the exhaust wider while it's off the car.

I still very much want us to get that exhaust exiting the car straight too...

rH+

[grumm441]

What you could also do is make those freakin'n holes for the exhaust wider while it's off the car.

I still very much want us to get that exhaust exiting the car straight too...

rH+

Or more to the point
Get them out so I can get them ceramic coated
G

[Stainless1]

If you are trying to control heat inside a closed car ceramic is almost useless... we were "convinced" one year that once we coated the pipes we would never wrap pipes again.  After melting most of the wiring  in the engine compartment on the first pass we temp fixed everything and wrapped the pipes.  In small enclosed compartments wrapping is required. 
Doc, good to see you back in the shop

[manta22]

"This the idea for the background?"

It looks a bit Japanese, doesn't it? 

Regards, Neil  Tucson, AZ

[Milwaukee Midget]

My thought ws they could use it as a paint scheme.  Start with the nose, and follow it through like the old MG Humbug.

http://stefanssketchblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/mg-ex135-humbug.html

By the way - this guy's working for the Bloodhound team.

[Reverend Hedgash]

I share the Japanese concern Neil, but then again I think we all share the same sun and it has been represented that way in many cultures for a long time.

The flag is red and white and the harvester sign is deserty yellow and red which helps separate it a little. On a tee shirt it will be a single colour on a tee colour so some control there.

I do like the MG. one new livery we have been discussing is painting it in a range of metallic coppers and golds, and using the sun motif seems apt for this. I do like the current paint job but it is also a bit too derivative of SoCal and others for my liking.

The salt environment is such a good background for the car to photograph but some colours seem to work better than others. Yellows seem to go well at Gairdner, I think because of the cobalt blue sky. The off primary red we used (sting red) works well, and we chose a cream instead of a white to separate it from the lake surface and because I think cream gives more depth to the surface of the car than white (I also fell in love with bandage yellow Mercedes when I was young...)

Rod Hadfield's Bronze Aussie was a metallic copper/gold which worked well but I think we may still need another colour to keep it looking clean.

I cannot remember seeing a successful green. (I cannot wait to see Big Gaze' toxic green ford powered Jaguar XJS on the salt. I believe he chose this colour to annoy the purists and it should be a site to see...)

An early idea we had was following the colour of some local fauna such as the more colorful reptiles such as Aussie snakes and crocodiles in the area. This pallete would naturally tie in with the Gairdner environs and add an innate meanness to the scheme. It would also help satisfy our Desire to keep it a local design rather than borrowing a foreign colour scheme.

Getting the local aboraginal tribe to do an x-ray painting or dot painting scheme wouldbe pretty cool too!

rH+

[grumm441]

If you are trying to control heat inside a closed car ceramic is almost useless... we were "convinced" one year that once we coated the pipes we would never wrap pipes again.  After melting most of the wiring  in the engine compartment on the first pass we temp fixed everything and wrapped the pipes.  In small enclosed compartments wrapping is required. 
Doc, good to see you back in the shop

Nope
It's just to make it look pretty
G

[Dr Goggles]

What you could also do is make those freakin'n holes for the exhaust wider while it's off the car.
I still very much want us to get that exhaust exiting the car straight too...
rH+

Haha. Here ,people, is an insight into the high tech world of the Spirit of Sunshine and crew.During the build a few years back .....six maybe, when we had the bulkhead cut two three inch holes were thought to be adequate for the collector pipes to run through to where they would merge.....they weren't really and with a million other things to do I just whacked a flange on either end and welded them up making them captive.This has been a constant source of aggravation for the Rev.He is also more than a little interested in having the exhaust leave the car straight too.....straighter than it is here



Now there's over four feet of that pipe unsupported heading out through the tail of the car, by laying a bead around one side it can be coaxed either way but it is an imprecise science. We could also make some struts to attach the tailpipe with pipe adjusters or turnbuckles but each adjustment would involve taking the tail-piece of the body on and off, that sounds easy but it involves removing the 'chute bucket every time, probably 20-30 min turn around.Meanwhile I keep seeing parts of the car that could have weeks thrown at them. As I have mentioned in the past a good solution may be to use the bulkhead as the union for the collectors and the merge/tail-pipe so that they all bolt to it, it's either that or a slip fitting I figure.

"This the idea for the background?"

It looks a bit Japanese, doesn't it? 
Regards, Neil  Tucson, AZ

I've been waiting for this to come up, like the sun every day. The Japanese don't own the imagery and if some people are offended by the sight of it then I hope they can accept that I respect their personal views and that they understand that the image is in no-way redolent of the Japanese Imperial forces. My grandfather spent three and a half years in Changi which affected a lot of people in our family, having said that the Sunshine Harvester Works image is from an implement factory who played a large part in the country's history and that they were just around the corner from where the Spirit was built.

If you are trying to control heat inside a closed car ceramic is almost useless... we were "convinced" one year that once we coated the pipes we would never wrap pipes again.  After melting most of the wiring  in the engine compartment on the first pass we temp fixed everything and wrapped the pipes.  In small enclosed compartments wrapping is required. 
Doc, good to see you back in the shop

There is a flat heat baffle that sits on top of the pipes as they merge behind that bulkhead it is a piece of fibre-cement sandwiched between two pieces of polished aluminium, it fills the whole space and is caulked around the edges. Above that sits the fuel tank, pump filter and lines, behind it the 'chute bucket.There is a slot gap in the floor just ahead of the merge, we hoped that a small amount of air would be picked up and take heat along the tail and out around the tail-pipe.At the end of a run there are only a few small places on the car where the body is hot, when I got a push from the emergency guys after stalling off the far end with a bat flattery in 2010( yes by hand) I was quite surprised how cool it all was.The ceramic does stop it rusting though. Our main heat concern is the area around the headers where we have the clutch line and shift cables running past, there I have a polished piece of stainless as a reflector in the closest places.


Darn it!!! the Rev beat me in......... Hey, kill the spell-checker you're running Rev, it sets you up for all the standard homonym/homophone stuff ups.....nativity indeed....

My thought ws they could use it as a paint scheme.  Start with the nose, and follow it through like the old MG Humbug.
http://stefanssketchblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/mg-ex135-humbug.html
By the way - this guy's working for the Bloodhound team.

I really like the current scheme but agree with the Rev.No , we ain't gonna paint it like a boiled lollie.....read humbug, there is an off color suggestiveness to that that I'm not even going to delve into......