Well, Brad and Terry (Christina's dad) made it to Peachtree City on Friday evening for a short weekend visit. They were supposed to arrive in the afternoon, but Brad's flight out of Wichita had mechanical problems so Terry and I spent a couple of hours in the Atlanta airport food court waiting for Brad to arrive. Our big picture goal was to take this thing out for it's first drive before Brad and Terry had to leave on Sunday afternoon. On the drive back to the house we picked up pizza. While waiting outside for the pizza I received a call that Brian, a mechanic for Delta who has helped out occasionally, was in the area eating dinner and had his timing light we could pick up. So after getting the pizza, off we went to meet the mechanic to pick up his timing light. In addition to getting the light, Brian said that he would be happy to swing by the house after his dinner to help set the engine timing. So, to recap our adventure before even getting back to the house.....we spent a couple of hours in the airport food court, and then picked up a pizza and a mechanic. With barely enough time to drop off their suitcases when we arrived back at the house, we had the car out onto the driveway fired up. What a way to get introduced to the car! I've never timed an engine before, but apparently the process involves cranking up the RPMs a lot on several occasions. A whole lot of fun if you love listening to the rumble of a very loud engine. Apparently not a whole lot of fun if your trying to watch TV at 7:00 at night. Leslie told me later that a neighbor down the block jumped onto Facebook and complained that "some damn teenagers were revving up their car engines!" Revving up their engines, yes....teenagers, no. Saturday morning started early with Terry discovering the problem behind our misbehaving radiator fan. We had previously bypassed the dash cooling fan switch in luau of an automatic system and forgot to take the disconnected dash switch wiring out of the electrical loop. It's always great to have a mechanic/electrician on hand who understands wiring diagrams! And here's the best part....Terry was eager to jump right in so he took it upon himself to find the wires in question and fix the problem. All I had to do was take off the dash so he could get to the wires. With the cooling fan now operational, we were technically ready to take the car for a spin. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't cooperating and a series of storms had moved in. After watching the weather over lunch we decided to continue working on miscellaneous "to do" items on the car for the remainder of Saturday, and hope for the forcasted clearer weather on Sunday morning for the first test drive. So for the remainder of the day we put on the final pieces of cockpit aluminum, tidied up loose wiring, installed turning restrictor clips, seats, seatbelts and rollbars. And in between all of these tasks, we took time to check out some of the progress I had made since Brad was in town last. Oh yeah, and we stopped to watch K-State defeat ISU for the final home game of the season! Every Man a Wildcat!
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| Everybody's working on something. |
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| Lunch break. |
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On Sunday the weather improved a bit. It was still cold, but at least it stopped raining. At around 10 we wheeled the car out onto the garage for the first test drive. Eric, who is building a similar car and has helped out quite a bit with labor and advise, happened to be in the general area and called to ask if we would be working on the car at all today. I told him that if he could get to the house quick, he could watch the first test drive. He must have been close, because he showed up within a couple of minutes. Either that or he drove real fast. Everybody stood around with video cameras at the ready, Brad turned the key and......nothing! With flight plans looming, everybody jumped into action and reviewed everything that had been done since the last time the engine started. It turned out that in the course of correcting some of my wiring mistakes, Terry had inadvertently disconnected a wire. Terry fixed the problem within 10 minutes, and we had the engine rumbling. Have I mentioned how handy it is to have an electrician on hand?
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| Getting ready for first drive. |
Below are links to videos of the first and second drives. There were several, but they were all basically the same...up the block around the park and turn around in the driveway. Short but sweet! We started off slow in the first drive so we could listen for any unusual sounds. And I kept think about the thousands of parts and connections that all had to be just right to keep the engine or wheels from flying off. I didn't tell Brad that part, but believe me they were all going through my mind as I was strapping in. With each successive ride, we pushed the car a little harder as we became more familiar with it's driving characteristics. I have to say the car seemed to drive great. Everything seemed very solid and responsive. There's no way you'll enjoy these videos as much as I enjoyed driving the car for the first time, but here they are:FFR #7112 First Test DriveFFR #7112 Second Test Drive Interesting side notes about these test drives. First, you can't see it but a full-sized fire extinguisher rode between Brad and I during the test drives just in case. Keep in mind we've never done this before. I had a feeling the car would either drive great or explode. And second, the day was pretty cold so I thought it had begun sleeting just as we were heading down the road. It turns out we were being pelted in the face with all the gravel from the road being thrown off the front tires. Remember, no body or windshield at this point. Subsequent test drives involved safety glasses.
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| FFR #7112 Third Test Drive....just kidding |
Next Up....cockpit and trunk insulation and sound dampening material, replacing the small portion of brake line that I had mentioned in an earlier post, adjusting the clutch cable based on information learned in these tests, and Brad is beginning discussions with a body shop to take care of the final body work and assembly. This thing is VERY close to being out of my control.
