Build Update – 9B. Progress all round!

Cage, prep AND motor progress? You know it’s all true, kids, because you read it on the Internet.

 

So in case you didn’t see it elsewhere, we made motor progress (check link here). Ryan at Rally / Race made wicked cool cage progress (pictures below), and we, well, we continued the prep for seam welding. Not quite as glamorous, sadly, but well within our skill set.

The first thing is the cage. You can check out Race / Rally’s Facebook page but we took a few of our own. Our favourite part is the way Ryan figured out how to make it stronger AND get us more head room. Awesome possum.

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So assuming you already looked at the motor pictures, you’ll (hopefully) be amused to see what we got back in the ‘we didn’t need this stuff you amateurs’ boxes from the motor builder. For extra points, identify the stuff IN the boxes! (And if you can help with the bolts send an email – we’ll need a hand during re-assembly).

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And finally…seam weld prep. If you look at the picture below you can see that goop that gets smeared on where seams of metal meet. That’s what we’re removing so we can then spot weld the pieces of metal that make up the front end to make it extra strong. That way, after soaring like an Eagle (or lawn dart) the landing won’t snap the front end off. In theory.

The goop is like putty when you hit it with a wire brush on a grinder or drill, but it’s also all over the place and hard to get out of spots. Where it’s white (painted as part of the original colour) we haven’t hit it yet. Where it’s what Crayola used to call “flesh” (before realizing there is more than one colour of that) and we call ‘baby crap brown’ is where some is gone but not all of it. And in the second picture you can see a mostly cleaned up seam, but there’s still little bits in the corners that will have to come out if possible. Whee!

We’re only doing from the firewall forward but even that will end up taking probably 20 person-hours to finish. And you get it all over yourself, kind of like shredded eraser.

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Which leads us to this update’s Pro Tip: So far the best tool we’ve bought is coveralls. Seriously. For $40 you can not even think or care about what you’re getting all over yourself, then get changed at the end. It’s pretty awesome.

bryce

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