In one pic I have measurements written on the shell itself. Others show various stages of completeness.
And the Video update itself can be found here:
Saturday, February 18, 2017
Feb 18 - passenger seat
Here's how I did my passenger seat in my Diablo kit. I've got a good update on the video that describes it well. Here are a couple of pictures from the rails modification that I made. I took about a half inch out of the height in the back of the rail. The front is pretty much flush. I did trim some of the diameter away from the rear outboard rail, the inboard rail fit without any trimming needing to be done other than the height change.
In one pic I have measurements written on the shell itself. Others show various stages of completeness.
And the Video update itself can be found here:
In one pic I have measurements written on the shell itself. Others show various stages of completeness.
And the Video update itself can be found here:
Thursday, February 9, 2017
Feb 9 - Coop. Keeping it real
So today I got my son out to help me with another test drive in the Lambo. My bright idea was to have him manually switch the power off and on to the heating element to try and regulate the heat to some extent. You know what? People have a good ear for things if they're tuned into them. We let the heating unit run for a minute to a minute and a half and then tried to crank the car.
It was 48 outside with a wind chill much colder than that and it fired right up. We let the car run for about 9 minutes so it was good and warm on the water temp. Shut it off and then I started to make the video you can now see on youtube.
This video needs some explanation though. There is a bit in the description but it doesn't do some things justice that occurred. Something you can't see on the video is how rich I got the thing. I actually flooded it!!! I have done this on the go-kart before. Got the fumes so hot and rich that I didn't have enough air and I killed the motor.
So once I could finally get it to start up again, I had it rolling the smoke from being rich. I shut my injector off and drove back up the hill (driveway) and into the road. After I was up there it finally acted like it wanted to stumble and I added the injector back on! Wow! You know how much fumes it had to make from that small puddle of fuel it had to back all the way up the hill? Amazing!
As usual you can hear the brake dragging. I hadn't figured that out yet. Sorry. Gotta deal with it on my videos until I get that sorted. Sorry too that the phone fell under my seat but you can still everything going on in the video and the commentary at the end.
Thanks for watching. I hope this is as exciting to watch as it is for me to make the history of making it happen (all over again)! :-D I don't mean this specific video, but the series of what it takes to make this happen! I'm sure I'll eventually get a turbo and do the Smokey thing totally, but this baby step to getting there is a great lesson and fun thing to do. Just driving on one injector normally aspirated is fun as all hell. :-D Enjoy!
It was 48 outside with a wind chill much colder than that and it fired right up. We let the car run for about 9 minutes so it was good and warm on the water temp. Shut it off and then I started to make the video you can now see on youtube.
This video needs some explanation though. There is a bit in the description but it doesn't do some things justice that occurred. Something you can't see on the video is how rich I got the thing. I actually flooded it!!! I have done this on the go-kart before. Got the fumes so hot and rich that I didn't have enough air and I killed the motor.
So once I could finally get it to start up again, I had it rolling the smoke from being rich. I shut my injector off and drove back up the hill (driveway) and into the road. After I was up there it finally acted like it wanted to stumble and I added the injector back on! Wow! You know how much fumes it had to make from that small puddle of fuel it had to back all the way up the hill? Amazing!
As usual you can hear the brake dragging. I hadn't figured that out yet. Sorry. Gotta deal with it on my videos until I get that sorted. Sorry too that the phone fell under my seat but you can still everything going on in the video and the commentary at the end.
Thanks for watching. I hope this is as exciting to watch as it is for me to make the history of making it happen (all over again)! :-D I don't mean this specific video, but the series of what it takes to make this happen! I'm sure I'll eventually get a turbo and do the Smokey thing totally, but this baby step to getting there is a great lesson and fun thing to do. Just driving on one injector normally aspirated is fun as all hell. :-D Enjoy!
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
Feb 8 - fails are learning devices
So I found out that it takes about 2 mins for my charcoal heating element to get hot enough to explode a gasoline puddle. :-D
So here's my heating element. I bent it up tightly to fit inside the 90 degree elbow. I have multiple views so you can see all of the stainless steel ties that I used to make a web for helping to heat the air and make it behave more like a heat exchanger, instead of the element itself getting really hot and not mixing that with the incoming air.
In the youtube video you can see the make shift air filter blow out and hear the pop noise from the small explosion. I did drive the car right after this, I just turned the heat off and drove like I used to. The new thing being that I have is the heat from the water in the engine block that I am spraying against, so I was able to keep the injector turned down from where I used to have to keep it when it was ambient temps only.
So here's my heating element. I bent it up tightly to fit inside the 90 degree elbow. I have multiple views so you can see all of the stainless steel ties that I used to make a web for helping to heat the air and make it behave more like a heat exchanger, instead of the element itself getting really hot and not mixing that with the incoming air.
Then of course I drilled a hole into the 90 and allowed one tie to hold that heating element in the elbow pretty well. So it isn't moving around so much while driving.
In this last pic you can see the inverter and the intake elbow. I've got a solid state relay that I will be using to power the element on and off in a slow pulse fashion to keep heat temps up but not too high to avoid another loud noise again. :-)
In the youtube video you can see the make shift air filter blow out and hear the pop noise from the small explosion. I did drive the car right after this, I just turned the heat off and drove like I used to. The new thing being that I have is the heat from the water in the engine block that I am spraying against, so I was able to keep the injector turned down from where I used to have to keep it when it was ambient temps only.
Tuesday, January 24, 2017
Jan 24 - that didn't work
So between my last post and this one I did try some stuff. I'll tell you about it here so if you get that idea, you know what to expect.... not much. :-)
So this was around the fumes part. I had the idea that I was going to warm up the vaporizer box by putting heat on the outside of it and the aluminum working like a big heat sink would draw that heat into its interior and warm the whole box up. Umm, no. That's not what happened. It wouldn't draw in heat as it was dissipating the heat too quickly to be useful. The cool thing that I was using, because I wanted it to work so badly, it would have been cool to say I have a magnetic induction heater as a heat source. Complete with a Tesla pancake coil. But it wouldn't come to pass.
So what I did do was go back a re-read all the Smokey Yunick stuff and realize that I was already about 50% of the way there previously just missing the turbo. (Overall)
I have decided that I would go back to Smokey's work and replicate that in a new way. He did carburetors on his, I'll keep my fuel injection. He did all mechanical controls, I'll keep my digital ones. But where he used a turbo as a mixer instead of a turbo, I'll be having me some of that please!
So now I'm back to working out electrical heat. I want it as a pre-heater for the cold starts and I want it to be my primary heating unit until I do the turbo/mixer thing. This was another fail. I tried again to put heat on the outside of a tube and heat the inside. During a test run of the temps it could reach, I found that even with wrapping header tape around it, it lost too much heat to the outside and didn't bring enough heat to the inside. Plus I melted a perfectly new air filter in the process.
Now I know the heat HAS to go on the inside. I also know this element will get hot enough to cause an explosion. But I'm betting that the cool air of the intake will keep this device from getting too hot. I'm also considering how to put a K-type thermocouple on it to see how hot it does get and do some smart switching of this resistive element off and on to regulate its temperature inside the tube. Initially I'll just hook it up and spray (with a fire extinguisher handy) and see how it goes. The controls will come in as more of a precaution for a hot day than what you would worry about when it is cold outside.
So here are some pics of the fail of the external electrical heat.
So this was around the fumes part. I had the idea that I was going to warm up the vaporizer box by putting heat on the outside of it and the aluminum working like a big heat sink would draw that heat into its interior and warm the whole box up. Umm, no. That's not what happened. It wouldn't draw in heat as it was dissipating the heat too quickly to be useful. The cool thing that I was using, because I wanted it to work so badly, it would have been cool to say I have a magnetic induction heater as a heat source. Complete with a Tesla pancake coil. But it wouldn't come to pass.
So what I did do was go back a re-read all the Smokey Yunick stuff and realize that I was already about 50% of the way there previously just missing the turbo. (Overall)
I have decided that I would go back to Smokey's work and replicate that in a new way. He did carburetors on his, I'll keep my fuel injection. He did all mechanical controls, I'll keep my digital ones. But where he used a turbo as a mixer instead of a turbo, I'll be having me some of that please!
So now I'm back to working out electrical heat. I want it as a pre-heater for the cold starts and I want it to be my primary heating unit until I do the turbo/mixer thing. This was another fail. I tried again to put heat on the outside of a tube and heat the inside. During a test run of the temps it could reach, I found that even with wrapping header tape around it, it lost too much heat to the outside and didn't bring enough heat to the inside. Plus I melted a perfectly new air filter in the process.
Now I know the heat HAS to go on the inside. I also know this element will get hot enough to cause an explosion. But I'm betting that the cool air of the intake will keep this device from getting too hot. I'm also considering how to put a K-type thermocouple on it to see how hot it does get and do some smart switching of this resistive element off and on to regulate its temperature inside the tube. Initially I'll just hook it up and spray (with a fire extinguisher handy) and see how it goes. The controls will come in as more of a precaution for a hot day than what you would worry about when it is cold outside.
So here are some pics of the fail of the external electrical heat.
Here's what it is looking like now that I have the cooling system of the motor plumbed into the box. This is more like what Smokey did do, just on a lot larger scale than he did. The way I look at it, I'm doing a V8, he did this to 3 and 4 cylinder motors, so I need more area to heat (because, more air flow coming in).
 |
| This is where I Tee into the line running back into the water pump. |
I did do my EGR delete again as I will not be using this method to introduce heat into the cold side anymore. I will do that via the turbo once it gets here.
I managed to get the contactor switch installed for disconnecting power from the batteries to the 2kw inverter I'll be installing tomorrow.
I put it in the fuel door that the Diablo of this year would use. thought it was a clever way to hide it and have it outside the car in case of fire and need to disconnect the twin Opti red-heads.
Here are some additional pics of where I was checking out the wild and varying temps I was getting with the external electrical heat that failed the air filter.
Should be another post tomorrow. I plan on working on the car more then.
Friday, October 28, 2016
Oct 28 - catch up entry
A lot has happened in the last 10 days since my last blog up date for the build diary. I got the car wired a little bit further along with adding in the f-body wiring harness from the 95TA so I can add things in like cruise control. :-) Right up there with tunes in my book. Got to have the tunes and the cruise for me to be a happy guy. Power everything and A/C can come much later. I'll get to them. :-D
So I did install the cruise module and cable to the throttle, but have a long way to go to get it to work. I don't have everything wired to power the computer through the harness so I'm still using my old power connections that my buddy made for me.
I do have the car running on one fuel injector! So that's pretty exciting. Especially because most of the fuel hasn't become fumes yet (due to the cold) and it still runs and makes good power. When you have a solvent (gasoline), in a vacuum (the intake), it wants to freeze. So it needs heated so that all of the fuel can become fumes. This was the Smokey Yunick 400 to 440 degrees F that he talked about. And what I need a pre-heater to do. I'm cycling exhaust gases around the box to make it warm, I'm just not doing it enough yet.
I have a couple of Arduino computers running the system so far. Just enough to get it going. Of course there will be more updates as I make it a bit more complicated to deal with part throttle drivability (making it smooth). Both of those report data to a RasPi2 which then makes their variables available via some node.io javascript. That gets pulled by another RasPi2 which acts as a client and shows the results on a screen so I can see what the system is seeing and what it is generating for an output. Bar graphs and such. that output to view friendly hasn't been done yet, but I'm using the same two Pi's that I started a drone POC (Proof of Concept) for a customer that Microsoft eventually took the reigns on. So of course I haven't heard boo about that since. So those Pi's were already doing this job with node.io and sending data and updating a browser in real time. So I'll just change the inputs for the variables and away I'll go.
I did get a backup camera installed and a screen on board to see it with. I leave it on all of the time right now so I can see behind me better. Hard to see out of this car. It is the same screen that the Pi will use to show me engine info about what it sees and is doing so I'll swap between them as needed once the graphs are available for me to look at.
There are videos to catch up with seeing the progress. One is of the 2 arduinos and what they do for their jobs. Most of the others are of the car running and me loading it up for the conference or driving it around the block once we were there, twice! One video is form inside the car on the 2nd run.
I did get to enjoy driving down my road once I got home. That was fun because I got to do 2 things I haven't been able to do yet. One was to adjust the knobs between rich and lean and find my magic number on the EGTs to know where I make power and not too lean to hurt the motor. The other was.... I got to get in third gear! That was fun because I haven't been that fast in this car yet. It needs an alignment and all sorts of dialing in on the suspension before I go out onto a public road. I'm just fortunate to live on a private road that is about a half mile long so I can get a lot of testing done here before i go out there. :-)
That smell I was talking about in the video from inside the car was smelling like burning rubber. But we got out and checked it over and couldn't find anything. I think it very well may have been the asphalt that I was pulling up with those big tires and slinging it out my intake vents on the quarter panels. I found lil pieces of gravel and blackness from the road up there. Couldn't find anything wrong with the car. Other than it needing a pre-heater. Once that goes in all of that wasted gas will be a thing of the past. :-)
Thanks for your time,
Coop
p.s. be careful, it's a jungle out there! ;-)
So I did install the cruise module and cable to the throttle, but have a long way to go to get it to work. I don't have everything wired to power the computer through the harness so I'm still using my old power connections that my buddy made for me.
I do have the car running on one fuel injector! So that's pretty exciting. Especially because most of the fuel hasn't become fumes yet (due to the cold) and it still runs and makes good power. When you have a solvent (gasoline), in a vacuum (the intake), it wants to freeze. So it needs heated so that all of the fuel can become fumes. This was the Smokey Yunick 400 to 440 degrees F that he talked about. And what I need a pre-heater to do. I'm cycling exhaust gases around the box to make it warm, I'm just not doing it enough yet.
I have a couple of Arduino computers running the system so far. Just enough to get it going. Of course there will be more updates as I make it a bit more complicated to deal with part throttle drivability (making it smooth). Both of those report data to a RasPi2 which then makes their variables available via some node.io javascript. That gets pulled by another RasPi2 which acts as a client and shows the results on a screen so I can see what the system is seeing and what it is generating for an output. Bar graphs and such. that output to view friendly hasn't been done yet, but I'm using the same two Pi's that I started a drone POC (Proof of Concept) for a customer that Microsoft eventually took the reigns on. So of course I haven't heard boo about that since. So those Pi's were already doing this job with node.io and sending data and updating a browser in real time. So I'll just change the inputs for the variables and away I'll go.
I did get a backup camera installed and a screen on board to see it with. I leave it on all of the time right now so I can see behind me better. Hard to see out of this car. It is the same screen that the Pi will use to show me engine info about what it sees and is doing so I'll swap between them as needed once the graphs are available for me to look at.
There are videos to catch up with seeing the progress. One is of the 2 arduinos and what they do for their jobs. Most of the others are of the car running and me loading it up for the conference or driving it around the block once we were there, twice! One video is form inside the car on the 2nd run.
I did get to enjoy driving down my road once I got home. That was fun because I got to do 2 things I haven't been able to do yet. One was to adjust the knobs between rich and lean and find my magic number on the EGTs to know where I make power and not too lean to hurt the motor. The other was.... I got to get in third gear! That was fun because I haven't been that fast in this car yet. It needs an alignment and all sorts of dialing in on the suspension before I go out onto a public road. I'm just fortunate to live on a private road that is about a half mile long so I can get a lot of testing done here before i go out there. :-)
That smell I was talking about in the video from inside the car was smelling like burning rubber. But we got out and checked it over and couldn't find anything. I think it very well may have been the asphalt that I was pulling up with those big tires and slinging it out my intake vents on the quarter panels. I found lil pieces of gravel and blackness from the road up there. Couldn't find anything wrong with the car. Other than it needing a pre-heater. Once that goes in all of that wasted gas will be a thing of the past. :-)
Thanks for your time,
Coop
p.s. be careful, it's a jungle out there! ;-)
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
Oct 18 - front tire doesn't leak
I've been fighting with a front tire that had a flat spot in it from sitting too long. I took it to Discount Tires where I bought it from and they hooked me up. It no longer leaks now.
I've been doing some other things to the car that I haven't posted any updates on. I added in the 95TA under hood wire harness in the rear of the car. trying to get it power where it should and ground. Hopefully that'll be done tomorrow. Then I can test cranking the car and seeing what I have. I've also discovered the tach out wire from the PCM so I'm working that out of the harness and sending it to my tach and testing it. If that comes out good then I'll add in my rpm sense to my computers to make sure my fuel injector does what it should do.
I've got the hot lead from the battery over to the 95TA fusible links and power distribution point that was original for that harness. So this should power on the PCM now instead of my buddy's make shift power for the PCM. It has worked and I can switch back to it if I have to, but we'll see what this brings.
I installed a back-up camera and an always on monitor in the car so I can see behind me. I know these things are hard to see out of, so I'll take all the help I can get. I put a Gadsden flag lic plate (tag) on the back of my car. What's really funny about it? The head of the snake is the backup camera!!! Talk about big brother watching! I thought it was pretty funny. I'm sure the group I'm going to see in Bremen, OH will think it's pretty funny too.
So you can see I've been plenty busy, just not johnny on the spot with the updates so soon after, lately.
I took my 24' enclosed trailer out for a check out drive today. All I had to do was air up the tires and I found one hub that wanted some grease. I don't know what you all do, but I take it out for a lil trip at about 45 mph and then I pull over and check the hubs temp with my fingers. If they get too hot or one is definitely hotter than the others, then I grease that one (in this case). If all of them are hot (based on current temp conditions) then maybe all of them get some grease. I go about 10 miles for a distance before I check. My first check is done about 1 mile away and only to see if everything is still good (connections/lights/elec brakes/etc) and that they're all cold (the hubs).
I'll post pics and updates about the car on the Ohio trip. I'm sure it'll be a hoot. That's a great bunch of guys and gals I'll be seeing.
Take care,
Coop
I've been doing some other things to the car that I haven't posted any updates on. I added in the 95TA under hood wire harness in the rear of the car. trying to get it power where it should and ground. Hopefully that'll be done tomorrow. Then I can test cranking the car and seeing what I have. I've also discovered the tach out wire from the PCM so I'm working that out of the harness and sending it to my tach and testing it. If that comes out good then I'll add in my rpm sense to my computers to make sure my fuel injector does what it should do.
I've got the hot lead from the battery over to the 95TA fusible links and power distribution point that was original for that harness. So this should power on the PCM now instead of my buddy's make shift power for the PCM. It has worked and I can switch back to it if I have to, but we'll see what this brings.
I installed a back-up camera and an always on monitor in the car so I can see behind me. I know these things are hard to see out of, so I'll take all the help I can get. I put a Gadsden flag lic plate (tag) on the back of my car. What's really funny about it? The head of the snake is the backup camera!!! Talk about big brother watching! I thought it was pretty funny. I'm sure the group I'm going to see in Bremen, OH will think it's pretty funny too.
So you can see I've been plenty busy, just not johnny on the spot with the updates so soon after, lately.
I took my 24' enclosed trailer out for a check out drive today. All I had to do was air up the tires and I found one hub that wanted some grease. I don't know what you all do, but I take it out for a lil trip at about 45 mph and then I pull over and check the hubs temp with my fingers. If they get too hot or one is definitely hotter than the others, then I grease that one (in this case). If all of them are hot (based on current temp conditions) then maybe all of them get some grease. I go about 10 miles for a distance before I check. My first check is done about 1 mile away and only to see if everything is still good (connections/lights/elec brakes/etc) and that they're all cold (the hubs).
I'll post pics and updates about the car on the Ohio trip. I'm sure it'll be a hoot. That's a great bunch of guys and gals I'll be seeing.
Take care,
Coop
Monday, October 10, 2016
Oct 10 - screwing around
SO today I was driving the car up my driveway and was not able to get more than an idle out of it. Good thing it makes killer torque, I was pulling this steep assed hill on idle!
My left rear disc is still staying stuck and not relaxing completely. It's dragging pretty good. just makes it a pain for now, I'll want to get it freed up before I start making serious test drives in it.
I did put in the parking/turn indicators up front and the reverse lights out back. Nothing wired yet, just looks cool. :-)
I've got plenty more to do of course so I'm just nibbling away at it, like a 1541 drive on half-track patrol. ha ha old C= 64 hacker humor there. Don't worry if you don't get it, most people wouldn't.
So one of the other things i kinda poked at was aligning the front tires with one another better. It rolls better now without the toe out or toe in whatever it was, it was horrible. I forget which it was now after all the screwing around I did with that late in the day. but now my steering wheel is way off of center while the front tires are centered up pretty good. I'll tackle the straightening out of the steering wheel when I have more time for such things.
Just trying to get this thing ready for Ohio. Just the main things to do that are still left. I did the lights to give it more of a completed look and they were quick and easy to do. I'll probably hang the doors back on the car for the same reason. When I put the nose on, if it fits when I go to pull it up into the trailer, then I'll set it with the bolts that close up that gap between the body and the nose. So it'll look better and stay in place for a while. Re-Train the fiberglass where its shape is supposed to be. You can see the big warpage look in the top pic. It is not supposed to look like that of course. Easy enough to fix wiht some 1/4-20 hardware.
I think I'll work on cleaning out the passenger's side and fixing both my bucket seat shells in there so they'll quit moving around while i'm trying to drive. :-)
I'll get the trailer out and cleaned out/checked out to make sure it is ready for the road. pull it around with all the stuff that is in it for now to see how it does. Put some air in the tires. There's a ton going on between now and time to hit the road.
Y'all take care and keep the rubber side down, I'm 10-10 and on the side. ;-)
CB humor for those that get that, due to the date of course. I couldn't pass it up.
CB humor for those that get that, due to the date of course. I couldn't pass it up.
:-D hee hee
BYE!
Coop
Coop
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