Project No-Flight Update
September 2004
It has now turned the corner and gone into ASSEMBLY mode. What a major milestone. I ca now install a part without planning to take it back off again. First step will be to get the chassis back on wheels so I can move it to the other side of the garage and get at my work bench to begin making the rest of the carbon fiber panels.
The first thing back is the rear suspension. With the aluminum center section the rear is "just" light enough that I can pick it up myself to move it back under the car for reinstallation.
Here you can see the contrast of the light gray suspension parts with the dark gray frame. I like the way it turned out. This is intended to be a driver not a show car, but I still want it to look fairly nice underneath.
The next parts back on were the steering rack and the radiator support, which also now provides the forward body support brackets (they aren't heavy enough to actually call them a body mount).
Once the new bolts arrived the remainder of the front suspension components could be installed. Since the front suspension bolts were the only old bolts in the entire car it didn't make much sense not to replace them too.
Next was to install all the brake lines. The brackets for the brake junctions had been installed previously, but not the brake lines themselves. I also ordered the braided lines to the calipers, and will install them when they arrive. I may shorten to loop line to the left front brake to make it a little more esthetically pleasing.
I also began laminating the carbon panels for the lower firewall. I need to install them before I can put the steering column back in to be able to easily move the car around. Here I'm borrowing some "weights" to hold the panel stack flat.
Well, if at first you don't succeed ... The weight method turned out to not be consistent enough and also not enough pressure. I could never get rid of all the pin holes in the corners of the cloth weave. I tried using a (transparent) overlay of a layer of very light weight, and thus very tight weave fiberglass, and this worked ok on the rear cockpit panel but had voids on the firewall panels. So, biting the bullet and spending more money (as usual) I got all the stuff to vacuum bag the panels. Since I messed up the first firewall panels, I had to start over with new cores. Here they are in the bag.
I was able to get them up to 15" of vacuum, which is about 1000 lbs per square foot, so each panel no has the equivalent of about 1500 lbs of weight on it. I sure wouldn't want to load up my saw horses with that.
It's hard to take a picture of something that black, but here is an attempt at a photo of the firewall installed. It hasn't been caulked yet, but shows the basic look. I'm still not as good at making the panels as the guys in our shop, but I'll keep working on it.
