October is somewhat early for this

But what the heck.

I’m doing a wish list of what I need to finish the Sprint-T, with markers for get it running (R), Nice to have (N), and ultimate race car (U). Now some items will cross over and get 2 or more tags (U, N, R) or (U, R) or (N, R) or (U, N) so if you want to mix and match as long as the item has at least one tag in common with other gifts it won’t be a wasted purchase. And I will also update this list with items given or purchased. So I will post a link to this post when the list gets updated.

I’m going to start the list with the tings I already have and where they fall on the list.
Body with no doors or floor (U, N, R)
Windshield posts (U, N, R)
Front axle (U, N, R)
Spindles (U, N, R)
Steering arms (U, N, R)
Steering wheel (U, N, R)
Wilwood 12.2″ disk brakes and calipers and brackets to fit spindles (U, N)
Brackets and heims for the axle (U, N, R)
Swing arms for the rear axle (U, N, R)

Now the stuff I don’t have is much longer.
Category engine:
Junkyard 5.3l LS architecture engine (R)

3.26″ stroke LS crank and matching rods from a 4.8l LS (U, N) with an aluminum block 4.0″ or larger bore (U) or a iron block from a 6.0l LS truck engine (N) a set of 862 casting number LS heads (U, N, R) and an aftermarket “Truck intake” that matches the ports on the heads (U, N, R) and this cam (U, N)

Microsquirt ECU and LS harness (U, N, R)

Category transmission:
Junkyard 4L80E transmission (U, N, R)

Junkyard 6L80E transmission (R) This one is heavier and has more loss in 1st and 2nd gears compared to the 4 speed, but gives better gas mileage highway.

Category rear end:
Junkyard 8.8″ ford axle and disk brakes in 5 X 4.5″ bolt circle (R) Found in 1983 and later Ford trucks and Ford Rangers and some Mustangs and SUVs until replaced by independent suspension. They still use the 8.8 as a center section for the independent suspension, but it won’t work for my car.

Winters or Speedway Engineering quick change with magnesium center section and aluminum tubes set up for GN or Superspeedway hubs with 1° negative camber (spindle up) and 60″ hub width (U, N)

Aluminum 5 X 4.75″ bolt circle hubs to fit the axle above (U, N) If you’re wondering the front hubs can be either Ford pattern (5 X 4.5″) or Chevy (5 X 4.75″) and the aluminum GN or Superspeedway hubs are available in 5 X 5″ or 5 X 4.75″, so they need to be the 4.75″ circle so I don’t have to buy as many kinds of wheels.

2 X 11.75″ X 0.81″ vented brake disks to fit the calipers (U, N)

Speedway emergency brake calipers Part # 91031046-L and -R and brackets BSB Manufacturing 7070 Steel Bearing Brake Floater Part # 91045534 (U, N)

That’s the current list as of 10/19/19. Watch this date to see if I update the list because I know there is stuff I left off the list of things I have, and I need much more stuff but don’t know what to get yet based on what I have and have room for in the car.

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So many ideas, so little resources to execute them with

Right now I’m staring at my laptop writing a post, but last night I was staring at various bits and pieces of T-Bucket waiting to become part of a whole. And I discovered why I was $75 in the hole last week, so that first.

It turns out when I tried to get out of the free month of Amazon Prime I got after cashing all my gift cards in from Christmas it didn’t go through, and my checking account got dinged for another month. I got it turned off this time but not until Amazon took almost every penny left in my account after Mrs. the Poet twisting my arm to get me to pay for the dinner for the kids pretty much drained my balance down under $20. Bus fare took care of the rest and instead of having $14 in my account when I bought my comic books I had less than $1, “earning” me $70 in overdraft fees. So that dinner ended up costing me $150 for hamburgers and pizza, and my Barbecue sandwich.

The deal with the car is much harder to relate. Not hard to explain, “I ain’t got no money!” pretty much covers the explanation. But emotionally it is much harder, because this build has been starved of resources from the beginning back in the late ’80s when the first iteration was conceived in a Nashville TN quick dining restaurant during a particularly creative bench racing session after the TRSCCA business meeting, right before I got the job in TX. Basically the new job paid for a nice apartment and covered food and utilities and some stuff for the kids, but not enough for the race car, and I had another ADHD thing going with homebuilt aircraft so the bucket went on the back burner again for about a decade. I have a drawing from winter 1997 of a version made with a riveted aluminum monocoque pontoon structure that acted as a frame and also housed the cooling system(s) for the engine and transmission. That version was dropped because of construction difficulties (I didn’t have the tools or space needed to build such a structure then) and because I got fired when word got around I was a witch and some people started messing with my work whenever I went on break, causing misprocessing. Technically I was fired for the misprocessing, but I wasn’t misprocessing it was the people doing things to my equipment when I was on break. That’s long ago and already litigated so that’s enough about that.

After the monocoque bucket I was riding bikes and building recumbent bicycles and trailers and working as a computer help desk operator until I got hit with the truck and lost my job. Then years of recovery and rehab, and eventually my fire to build this project flared back up, and I bought an actual bucket body. I thought I had a much larger budget when I bought the body, by about $50K, but life happened and here we are. I have a tiny budget of about $150/month before I take care of everything I need to take care of like phone and meds and toes and haircuts and massages to keep my neck working and Unbeatable Squirrel Girl comics. Of the listed needs I can live without the $4 comic book, and toes and haircuts are not every month things although they really need to be. So by neglecting my appearance I can sorta pay for parts every now and then. My next purchase is scheduled to be front brakes that will work with just about any rear axle I can buy, or the front heim joints for the four link between the front axle and the frame. I can afford the heims quicker than the brakes, so I might be showing those off earlier…

A good race, and a good game

The Rolex 24 hours of Daytona was quite the race. There were 2 out of 3 classes that were separated by seconds after more than 2000 miles of racing over 24 hours, and the leading class was only one lap apart. And every class set a new class record for speed. I mean what more could you ask, tight competition at record speeds, and the reason they set the records was there were very few wrecks, so more tight racing and less wrecking. It was perfect, or as perfect as it could get.

Then we played Shadowrun. We finally finished the run to take a magic artifact to be analysed. My character, “the Old Man”, doesn’t do much, and that’s good. When I go into action during a run, I’m pulling asses out of fires and people are getting hurt. I’m armed to the teeth even in my sleep, there is a thought-controlled shotgun in my left arm, the one I lost fighting to save my TI pension when TI called up the troops to fight off a really hostile takeover. Someone from the other company threw a grenade into my machine gun nest. Like I said, really hostile takeover. Anyway, I spent the whole run standing in the door of the chopper ready to literally drop into the battle, while our tech people did their sneaky tech things sneakily avoiding conflict so I could only kibbitz over the commlink. That’s my role-playing part of the RPG.

And I got paid from one of my gigs today, the gift card came in the mail, $100 I can spend in literally dozens of places, but not everywhere in compliance with the tax law that just expired. I think there might be a buck or 2 left in my account, but not enough to cry about if Trump takes it away. First place I’m going to spend it is the Red Robin a bit over the way when Mrs. the Poet and I celebrate 40 years of wedded bliss(?) over burgers and shakes. Plus I have the app that gets me discounts and free food from Red Robin. So spending money there is not like spending somewhere else. But it still pisses me off that the new tax scam takes away my compensation for this job. Damn you, Donald John Trump! I get paid little enough, almost nothing, but now you’re taking that away from me. I average $6 a month on this gig, but the new tax law makes that illegal. Not because it violates minimum wage laws, but because they don’t take taxes out of it. I mean how much tax are you going to take from $6/month? The accounting costs are going to be more than I get paid on average.

I have been looking at the weight for the Chevy 7.5″ rear end compared to the Ford, and the Ford is like 30% lighter than the Chevy rear. I mean the weights between the Chevy 8″ 10 bolt and the 7.5″ are within a few pounds of each other and the 10 bolt is so much stronger, the 7.5 must have been a ton cheaper to make, because otherwise I can see no justification for building it otherwise. I mean the reports are that it sheds teeth from the ring gear from a 200 HP 305 SBC smog motor with a 2 barrel carb on street tires. Not what I’m looking for when I can get stronger for less weight. I’ll keep you posted as more information becomes available.

Still no engine or transmission so now what? continues

I was hoping I would get the corpse of a RWD car or pickup to use as a donor vehicle for a Sprint-T, or maybe a dead minivan for a TGS2. But, alas, such was not to be. I still have no powertrain to use building a hot rod.

All I need to do to keep Mrs. the Poet happy is find a perfectly clean engine and transmission and not spend any family money buying it. Yeah, and to quote my elder daughter, “And maybe flying monkeys will fly outta my butt”. To say the least, keeping Mrs. the Poet happy will be a challenge.

So if anyone has an old car, pickup, or minivan that has a good engine and transmission and a wrecked or rusted-out body, I will give the engine and transmission a good home.