Racing Gear

It's official now. Mr. Unruly is ready to hit the tracks in the latest in trackside fashion. The race suit has arrived, along with the gloves and shoes. Mr. Unruly is stylin'!! He is so cool in his blue and black, coordinated outfit. He must be fast! Look out Thunderhill!

And now here is Mr. Unruly with his red hot gloves added to the ensemble! Just the right accent to the perfectly tailored raceday outfit.

Everyone is asking, "How did he do it?" Just how did he get himself into that suit and take pictures single handled? Must be the Magic Rabbit!

More electrical and the Wink Mirror Saga

Sunday Rye worked on the rabbit, below is the Wink Mirror being installed. The mirror spans all the way across the car and you get a complete picture of everything behind you. No blind spots at ALL! Took Rye about 45 minutes to get to this stage, figured out how to mount it and left side bracket is screwed into the roll bar.Ooops, the last turn of the last mounting bolt and the head of the sheet metal screw pops off. No problem, drill it out, the sheet metal screw is soft. Well, Murphy is lurking big time! You got it, a drill bit breaks off just when the screw was almost out. OK, now how to get the drill bit out. Well, look at the pic, all you need is a comfy position on your back and all your tools on the nifty chest shelf!
Well, Rye was working on this little twist from Murphy for almost two hours. Finally I suggested, abandon the hole and lets just use a nice strong, wide hose clamp to finish it off. Rye said, "If I knew that solution I would have stopped two hours ago." Well, I didn't want him to miss out of all the fun there on his back. Mirror is in and looks great, and you can see everything.

While Rye was battling Murphy I was doing more wiring. Below you can see the big power cable from the master cut-off switch next to the windshield running down to the starter. Along with that big red cables are wires to the radiator fan, re-located coil and the alternator.
Rye did install two things without Murphy interrupting. Above you can see the black stress bar installed between the two strut towers. This keeps the top of the suspension from moving in or out under load.

Then below is a picture under the car, look at that nice clean transmission! Sure hope it works, since we never have had it under load or power. That brown bar under the transmission is another stress bar that ties the bottom of the front suspension together so it won't flex or move under load. These top and bottom stress bars were two very nice Neuspeed aftermaket parts that came with the Magic Rabbit. Very lucky to have these additions.
OK, packages were waiting at my door. I have now moved closer to a real racer. I now own racing shoes and gloves, along with my helmet. Almost there, the suit is supposed to arrive on Wednesday. Pics of the my total outfit will be posted then.

Thats all for today, now down to the garage and the Magic Rabbit!

Got Skillz?

This is what you can expect from the DDR Drivers on Aug7th...



LOOK OUT!
-Sreddet

Start of the Electrical Stuff

Got a package today from UPS, its like Christmas. The five panel Wink mirror, the red roll bar padding to protect our heads, the hood pins so the hood doesn't open up and cover the windshield due to our supersonic speed, and also the safety power cut-off switch. I first tried to fit it in the existing windshield wiper hole, but it won't fit. the angle of the hole made the switch hit the metal of the inside dash. So I drilled a new hole in the cowl in front of the windshield, plenty of room. Here is a pic of it installed with the off-on decal in place, cool!Next I start working on the dashboard, enlarged the hole for the Jegs switch plate so I could fit all the wiring through it. I wired all the switches up with the required jumper wires, a pic later. Then put it in the "Not a Through Street" aluminum custom dashboard and put some power to test the switches. Man was I surprised and so impressed when I found out that the end of each switch is lit with a colored light and its red when it off and green when the switch is on. Yep, it has two led's inside, that is so cool. Didn't know that when I bought them off Ebay, nice surprise.

Here is the panel with the first two switches on the left powered, ignition off with a red light and fuel pump on with the green light. Above the switches are from the left, water temp, oil pressure and oil temp gauges. All three needles moved with I powered them, that's good!
OK, now turn on the ignition switch, it turns green and also lights the big red light to let us know that ignition is on, turned off the fuel pump switch so it is red in this picture.
Her is a picture of the back side with the ground wires and power wire jumpers all made and in place.
OK, another option of the car number. Had Mike, at work, make a red number with an oval background. Also, a black number in an oval background. Which to you like best?

I think I like the red best, but I would add some black drop shadow to it. Or maybe use the black with a red drop shadow.

OK, that's it for tonight. Off to bed and hit it hard tomorrow. But will take a short brake to watch the World Cup match with USA and Ghana. Go USA!!!!

Numbers

We have numbers! Well not exactly, but starting to look like a real racecar!So, I had the CAD guy at work make 16inch high number "83" and I told him I was looking for classic race car number font. He rides a motorcycle and his father-in-law races at the Monterey Historics in a very old Lagonda, a pre-war Bentley historic car, so Mike knows racing. I like his choice.

Mike printed it out on the large ink jet plotter and I cut it down to size and taped it up on the door. Next is to get a few more and make a stencil out of them for the white paint. I plan to stay with the square background, easier than trying to make the big circle around the numbers.

This weekend will be work on the wiring, hope to get enough done so I can fire it up again. Master cut-off switch should be delivered tomorrow. More parts ordered, O2 sensor and sandwich plate so we can add an oil cooler.

Trying to dream up a classic Lemon's front air damn, maybe made out of the plastic sides of a garbage can and maybe add a NASCAR type splitter at the bottom edge!!

That's it for tonight.

It's running!

Spent this weekend with Paul working on the Magic Rabbit. Friday I worked to get all the temporary wiring done so that we could attempt to start the GTI on Saturday. Here I am working on the wiring and Paul under the car working on the fuel line. Paul first was removing an extra fuel line the previous owner had added as part of the NOS system which was never finished. Then Paul was replacing the hose from tank to fuel pump when he discovered that the fitting on the fuel tank had been bent when the car slipped off the jack stands when the engine was being installed. At the bend there was a hairline crack which required the use of JB Weld to seal up the crack!
Now it is time to put the fuel injection system back in, Paul cleaned it all up. I am holding the fuel distributor in my right hand and all the fuel lines to each cylinder in my left hand. Paper on the engine is my wiring diagram drawn just for the Magic Rabbit.

In this picture you can see the temporary controls bolted to the front fender. The controls has ignition switch, starter push button, fuel pump switch and radiator fan switch. Also a switch to open up the cold start fuel injector which acts like a choke, adding more fuel to get started.
Notice the fine and detailed craftsmanship in the temporary batter hold down, bungee card works perfect!
Time to bleed the brakes, make sure we can stop before we can go. Here is Nancy helping Paul bleed the brakes, "down, now hold, OK up, down again and hold, OK up". Many times, but we have nice firm brakes and clean fluid.
Check out those pedals, and those shoes. Red to stop, green to go! KISS principle, keep it simple, stupid.
OK, here is the best picture of the weekend. Victoria found these hats on line, I ordered them through Amazon last week. Just perfect, look at those two loons! Rabbit ears, magicians hat and the checked flag bow tie! Nothing could be more Lemons than those hats. Thanks Victoria for the perfect find!

OK, now for what we have all been waiting for, firing up the beast. Here is video of one of our first runs, loud but running smoothly after we discovered we had the plug wires for #2 and #3 reversed!! But not before we checked compressions, checked the spark plugs, checked for spark, could the timing be way off, bad valves, .....we where running through all kinds of disasters before going back to basics. What was the last thing we did, install the spark plug wirings, are the correct, we thought so, but no we found a mistake. Fixed and now it runs nicely, here is a video of the a running engine!

OK, that took me a long time to load the pics and write this blog, after 11pm on Sunday night. Very productive weekend, but so much more to do. Thanks to Rye for the pics and video. Now off to bed and dreams of the Magic Rabbit.

GTI Updates

I was able to remove the old, broken rear rubber brake line on the driver’s side last night! Put the new braided line in. So now our decision is whether to even attempt to remove the passenger side or leave well enough alone.

Also learned a lesson, don’t support the rear of the car on the rear suspension, only use the body seam as the jack point. The car slide off the jack stand because the suspension is a nice smooth steel beam and as I raised the front end to slide the engine underneath the back end slid off the jack and hit dead center on the rubber brake line. I am just glad it didn’t hit the steel line!

I decided cut back the number of circuits. And I would like to cut out the oxygen sensor system entirely, but a little afraid to at this time. So that system and the ignition control system are little“black boxes” I don’t want to screw with now. I agree with wire size, nothing smaller than 16 gauge. And as we talked last night, I will arrange the fuse box to up mounted right up front and easy access.

Also, after getting the engine in, we got the exhaust and intake headers on and also installed all the shift linkage and adjusted it. We think we have all the gears, but not sure where 1^st or 5^thgear are located. Need to find a shift pattern pic.

Speaking of pics, here are a few recent pics.