You read right – we built it! Sorry for the gap but we were kinda busy actually, you know, using the damn thing.
Between the last update and this one we completed the build, got the car up to Pines, got through everything we needed to, and ran some stages….and man it was good to get back out there, even if we didn’t get the Hollywood ending of going out for the first time with the new car and cleaning up. However, look for a full write-up of our Pines experience in the next week or so, and when we sell the screenplay you can bet we’ll fix that right up.
Once we finished hauling it back we parked (ok, semi-abandoned) the car at ORF and spent the last week either relaxing with your children or stressing over your sick dog, depending on which of us you are. Went back up today briefly to clean up the mess we left at 2 AM Wednesday before we left (i.e. empty the garbage bin that had the Talon body cladding, pizza boxes, and off-cuts of HDPE in it, sweep up the fluid-catching spill material that was everywhere, vacuum up all the debris from around the drill press, and check out what progress others are making) and to take a look at the car.
And you know what? Apart from the issues with the fuel filter that you can’t see it looks remarkably good. We’ll put it up on the hoist to check out the underside once we get it running but in general it seems like we built a pretty solid car. Who knew? Some pictures are below and next steps are:
- Figure out cause of fuel delivery issue and fix (we think the fuel filter is clogged with crud we knocked loose from the tank so we need to order more filters and check it out; will also need to backflush the lines and probably either have the tank re-lined, get another tank, or get a fuel cell, plus get some other fuel pumps)
- Swap the turbo oil return line over to the oil cooler from the head, as we have a leak there that we know about
- Look for other leaks as we had a mysterious assortment of fluids on the skid plate. Coolant? Could be. Oil? For sure. Is that gear oil? Not sure. You get the idea. The leaks seemed small but also seemed to add up.
- Fix the fuel sender unit so the gas gauge works again. Part of the whole ‘do something with the fuel tank’ thing, but since we’re there anyway maybe we should attach it properly
- Update our list of stuff to do now that we’ve actually used the car. And also do the stuff that was on the FIRST list that we didn’t get to yet, but there’s not much of that.
- Sort through all the weirdo spares we have left and play the ‘scrap it, donate it, sell it, or keep it as spares’ game, depending on what it is
- Do the rest of the stuff on the list that we have in pencil on the back of the notes. We know we have to install the shift light, install the roof vent, fix up the headlights for the ‘sleepy eye’ look, some more wiring clean-up, install GoPro mounts, lube the window mechanisms, fix the hatch where it closes over the tires, fix the key/pull mechanism…
All in all it’s stuff that can and probably will wait until it warms up, but we’ll try to find some things to entertain everyone with in the interim. And now, pictures!
Skid plate seems to have a few new scratches. This is from the front looking backwards; that yellow bit is the tow hook which is dead center.
This is the gas tank cover. Front of it would be more interesting but that will have to wait until it’s on the hoist.
This is the passenger side where the center sliders meet the rear scraper/slider. No obvious problems…Maybe a couple of scrapes but those can happen unloading it from the trailer. We really should get longer ramps… Umm, the drivers side lost a zip tie? That’s about all the damage visible.
Just behind the front drivers wheel; you can see the skid plate and exhaust under there plus a mud flap. Not sure if that large dent was there before but it looks like it was… That’s a piece of loose rust floating around in the hole, too. The nerve!
More pretty clean slider material! This is looking forward from the passenger side. Yeah, that’s a small pool of oil. We’ll have to fix that.
This is where it’ll be for a while! You can see our collection of tires at the back, plus the misc rubbish/spares pile including a bumper cover. You can’t see all the crap we have to unpack still. Still…pretty cool!
And speaking of pretty cool, that’s the new Grackle Coffee logo. We’ll add some words to this when that graphic is ready, but Alliston Signs did a great job. Applying it we did, so they can’t be held responsible…