Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Long time since last post

But there has been a lot of progress.

There was the go-kart going through all of it's updates:

Running on fumes in the shop.


Then I got it out onto the road and had a little more progress.


Then I removed the bubbler and got it running using the on-board fuel tank.


Next I added a heater and then this thing really came alive!  I had so rich a mixture it was killing the motor!  And I had to turn the fumes down.  It was running like a bat out of hell then!


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So then I moved on to the 78  Trans Am. . . .  :-o

I have had this car off and on, forever.  It was my first car and I've got it back again.  It's been through hell and back already a couple of times over.  It is in the process of getting fixed up again (I'd say for the 3rd time)  my first time of fixing it up was in 1986, then mother took it for a cleanup in the interior last time she had it (fresh motor build and tranny build too then), but now it's back to basics and body work again.  Anyhow.  I had some buddies come over and help me get it out of the trailer and into the shop.






Here's some pics from that night.


Had a blow out in earlier 2000's and the tread cleaned the right front spoiler and center spoiler out from under the car.  I recovered the center and it could be reused with some repairs but that right front, we never could find it.  I'm sure it was in a thousand pieces after it left the car.

 Not the proper bird for the hood but was all I could afford when I was 18 and getting it done on E-1 pay.

Bill had to put some air in the tires.  We still scraped bottom letting it roll down into the shop.


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So then I got to thinking about some dual bubbler action like I've done in the 355 LT1 videos.  Where I've shown that V8 motor on the stand running.  Well.  I've went and done it now.  After some trial and error on the air/fuel mixture and ways of enclosing that chamber above the carb so it only gets fumes..... I've made it happen.



So I took a 2" high, 10" diameter air cleaner from Edlebrock.  I took an old kick panel (it used to be on our front door of our house) and I tossed out the air filter.  Sandwiched the kick panel in between the top and bottom cover pieces from Edlebrock.  Drilled and pop-riveted that piece together. Used electrical tape to cover all the screw holes that originally came in the kick panel.  Taped up the top and bottom and join locations so I didn't get any air leaks.  Then I used my unibit to drill out holes to pass the bubbler tubes into the chamber (which is way too big and filled with nothing).

I tried to get the car to start but there was too much vacuum in the big black bubbler and it was imploding.  I unscrewed the drain cap at the one end of that bubbler and this relieved the negative pressure in that tank.  Damn that 400 is hungry.

So there you go it's another case of there you have it.  The car ran for a little over a minute as it was running before I started the video.  But as it was warming up there was smoke coming out from under the car.  Then I remembered that I didn't have hardly any tranny fluid in that TH350.  So I quickly ended the video and will be replacing the tail shaft seal and putting fluid in there this weekend (hopefully).

Y'all take care and stay tuned for more updates.  Thanks for your support.  :-)

Coop

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Fuel now being heated

Now that I'm heating the fuel, it ran so rich I had to turn the fumes down. I was riding around and killed the motor from it being too rich.

I've made a couple of minor tweaks since this video to tighten up some vacuum leaks. Also made the line going into the fuel tank a traditional bubbler intake tube. This was the last tweak that caused me to run too rich.

That's not a problem of course because I can always turn the fuel down, not making enough is the problem you don't want to have.

Enjoy!

Coop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5PJUnI3M3k&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Friday, July 26, 2013

Running on bad gas

Most of the fuel in the tank, during this run, was more than six years old. I ran the cart for two days on this fuel with about 8 ounces of fresh fuel added to it.

I'm fabricating a steel box to act as a heater for the gas tank. That will be in the next video.

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Fab up some heat

I'm cutting some steel to make a flange adapter for the exhaust to heat the fuel.

More pics will follow.

Kart running down the road

I've now got the kart running well enough that I took it out into the neighborhood.  Plenty o' fun and more to come.  Thanks for watching!

Saturday, July 13, 2013

Go kart runs now

Got the go kart running today finally. All I had to do was open the throttle a bit more & I would have had it running the other day when I was messing with it. I made a short video of it running for a short time. But earlier I did have it running at such high RPMs  it was spinning the tires while sitting on the jack stands.

Thursday, July 4, 2013

Been a while

I've been busy with the aquaponics project lately. Once I reach a stopping point with that, then I'll get back to the fumes.