Happy Star Wars Day

May the Fourth be with you 😄! Yes I know I have used the same corny joke for years, think of it as a tradition. After all traditions are just stupid stuff we do over and over.

I’m still working on the details for the Sprint-T. Right now I have a detail that’s kinda important, but not easy to find out: How far below the input shaft does the oil pan of a 4l80E hang? This determines if I have to redesign the front hoop or the engine oil pan, and how high the engine will sit in the frame. Because I’m pretty sure they don’t make a low profile extra capacity pan for this transmission, and the distance from the input shaft to the bottom of the pan determines how low the engine can go in the frame, which sets a bunch of other things. The most important thing is will the bottom part of the front hoop clear the front of the flex plate that goes between the transmission and the engine. Because this is kinda esoteric I’ll explain that the flex plate attaches to the crankshaft on one side, and to the torque converter on the other and the torque converter sends the power to the transmission and also drives the pump on the transmission that powers the bits that allow the transmission to shift and drive the car.

Now the ¹/₂₅ engine I have has a manual transmission cast into it, but as explained earlier I only have room for 2 pedals in the footbox, and a manual requires 3, a clutch pedal in addition to the gas and brake. This means I need to alter the bang box to have the same height as the slush box so the engine fits the frame as in the full-size version. Also the intake manifold on the model engine is the LS7 version and the one on the real car has a 99%+ probability of being the taller truck version because that’s the likely source for the engine, and that manifold has better performance in the RPM range I’m going to be racing in. That means I’m going to be modifying the Corvette engine cover to resemble a “shaved” truck manifold to get the height right. Basically I’m just going to remove the script from the cover and narrow it a bit to get the width of the truck manifold, and fill in under the sides to get the look like a shaved truck manifold. Since I’m using this ECU I’ll have to use the older drive-by-cable gas pedal and throttle body which is NBD for the model but a major consideration for the real car. Also, another reason for the truck manifold is better gas mileage for freeway driving than the car-type manifold. And the real reason for the model is to have a 3D reference for building the full-size car since solving these problems in plastic is way cheaper than solving with multiple mistakes in steel or fiberglass and carbon fiber.

And Mrs. the Poet wants me to get to bed “early” because we may need to do the grocery shopping early today, so it’s time to put the post and the author both to bed.

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May the Fourth be with you! Happy Star Wars Day

And a belated happy Beltain as well. There is a bawdy couplet that is both inappropriate and inaccurate for TX to mark Beltain: “Hurrah, hurrah the First of May! Outdoor (fornication) begins today!” There’s a different word that goes inside the parentheses, as even married couples can take part in this activity. And we’ve been doing it outdoors (or could if we wanted to) since the middle of February around here. Twenty-first century TX is much warmer this time of year than England in the Dark Ages. But once it got warmed up outdoor sexual activity was much easier to hide what with it being dark all the time. [ba-dum tssshh]

Also with today being Star Wars Day, that makes tomorrow national Get Drunk on Mexican Beer And Mangle Spanish Day, AKA Cinco de Mayo. I suppose we could add Insult the French Military to that as what is being celebrated was the defeat of the French by the Mexican Army. Thus beginning the poor reputation of the French in the US.

And I have a bunch of things I need to take care of, so I’ll see you later.

Opus the Unkillable