After registration fettling

Below are the most recent photo’s of my car , astute readers will notice that there have been a few changes the most recent of which has been the addition of a folded Lexan screen. This was not actually that hard to do . Firstly I made a cardboard template and then I had to go all of the way down to Brisbane to a crowd called “Industrial Plastics” having already ascertained that the lexan would cost me $118 I decided that a trip in that the car to Morningside to collect the lexan would be a very good test. I already new that the fuel tank is too small and the drive down soon showed me that the engine cooling clearly needed amendment when the car overheated in traffic. This showed me that I had made a poor design decision in placing the radiator overflow tank above the divers side foot well when scalding coolant dripped onto my foot. After a rest and a coffee and the replenishment of the engine coolant I got to Industrial Plastics and I at least got the lexan for a more reasonable price ($76) the drive home saw the car over-heat again and I worked out that to fix the problem I would have to ensure that the air that enters the nose-cone could only exit through the radiator because it was clear to me that too much of the air was going around the radiator. When I got home I went crazy with some ally and some rubber moulding from my engine donor until I had sealed up all of the gaps around the radiator. Subsequent drives have shown the temperature gauge hovering just above the half way mark in the “safe” zone even after a spirited drive up the mountain. To avoid cooking my foot again I also relocated the expansion tank to the space between the front of the engine and the forward engine bay bulkhead .

I had built the car without a windshield because fitting one would have required a couple of features that I did not feel were necessary , namely wipers and a demister/heater. Lexan can be bent using a sheet metal brake and as you can see from the pictures the result is quite pleasant with no loss of strength or integrity. What I had always planned was more along the same lines as a motorcycle screen that directed the air up and over the occupants but low enough that for the most part the driver looks over the top of the screen rather than through it, as the pictures below of the finished screen show the final result has a WW1 air plane feel to it that I find very pleasing, but more importantly taking my daughter to her Gym class today showed that the screen works exactly as intended and folding the Lexan removed the need for any kind of side pieces. The car now looks pretty good and the drivers side picture shows the new exhaust tailpipe exiting just in front of the wheel arch the sound is now more of growl but it is still inaudible over the wind noise for the occupants of the car at present this is made out of mild steel but I would like to eventually change it to a piece made of stainless.

The project for today will be to make a cardboard model of a new bigger fuel tank, one that is a s big as possible. because nothing spoils your fun more than having to look for a petrol station after just 100 k’s…

An associated problem that I also intend to address is to simplify the fuel filler neck. At present It has the “unleaded fuel doverlacy followed by a cut and shut 80 degree bend and this has the unfortunate effect of triggering the pump shut off when I am trying to fill the tank which requires a very careful use of the nozzle trigger I plan to make the spout on the new tank at an angle and to make a new spigot on the filler neck at the same angle with just a short piece of flexible pipe between them which should make filling the car with fuel a much faster and more pleasant process.