Strange late B-Day presents

Well the crazy lady that used to live in what is now my office came by with her birthday present, a Haynes Manual to a vehicle I don’t own, have zero expectations of owning, and don’t even know where to get fuel for on this planet.

I mean seriously, where did they even find one to disassemble for the pictures? Turns out it is not a practical private vessel even once it has been deMilled by disabling or removing the weaponry, because there are almost no owner-serviceable systems unless you keep an Imperial Klingon Fleet-trained engineer on board as well as a large supply of spares because the on-board machine shop is not equipped with the equipment to make parts much bigger or more complex than the brackets to attach bits and pieces together. Considering that most of that equipment is larger than the ship itself…

In other news I figured out another way to build a T-bucket designed to handle rather than drag race. Go down to Houston and buy a flood-damaged Corvette cut the front and rear complete suspensions off and build a compatible frame between them for literal Corvette handling combined with Bucket power to weight ratio. That’s one of the advantages of insomnia, you get a lot of thinking done. Inspiration from the Roadkill ‘vette cart and Leroy of the Cleetus McFarland YouTube channel, because the exoskeleton roll cages used would be enough to hold the cars together without the existing Corvette frame they are welded and bolted to. That would be a hundred to several hundred pounds less weight to cart around and result in a ‘vette cart with a real body that could be licensed much more easily that just building a bucket from scratch. And if a C5 or later Corvette was used there would actually be room in the foot box for 3 pedals to run a manual transmission.

Advertisement

It never rains but it pours, my luck

OK I was going to get the extension hose today so I removed the gauge from the pump to take the fitting to the parts shop to get the right sizes on the hose. After I got it off I thought just for due diligence I should leak test the unit to make sure of where the leak was. So guess where the leak was? The end of the hose where it joins the gauge. Now if the leak had been on the other end of the hose or the other side of the gauge I could fix it, but where the hose connects to the gauge is a crimped connection and not something I can fix at home. So now I have to do a warrantee replacement of the pump so I can ride my bike. Fortunately Amazon is sending a replacement pump assembly.

Getting back to the design of the pump, this pump was designed to be non-repairable. What I thought was a male pipe-thread fitting on the gauge turned out to be a self-threading fitting with a sealing ring at the top, sorta like the legendary self-sealing stem bolts of ST:DS9 . This means they didn’t need to worry about clocking the installation of the gauge because it would clock itself without leaking. That also means I can’t just stick another original gauge and hose in there because the threads are already cut and probably wouldn’t match up to the new unit. And to make matters worse the hose connection to the gauge is not one that can be done or undone in your average home shop. So I’m screwed, and not in the fun way. The only thing I can do is see if I can screw a hose into the pump and run the pump without a gauge. But I’m still going to see if I can fix this one because that’s what I do, play with busted stuff and see if I can make it work. I have a brand-new pump that just needs a hose and chuck to work. I WILL make it work.

On the hot rod front, I have sustained a setback but I’m only out about $90 including taxes because everything I bought since the design change to a mid-engine will work with the more traditional design except for the car cover for a 1990-2005 Chrysler Town and Country mini-van. The books on reprogramming the Chrysler PCM are generic enough that unless I end up with a carb instead of fuel injection I’m still good on that, so that brings it down to $45 for the car cover and tax. The steering arms will work because the front suspension and steering are the same for the front and mid-engine versions except for springs and shocks, which I haven’t bought yet.

Something all the design work for the mid-bucket has made me want to do is to use something like the engine and transmission to make a SCCA Solo racing A/Mod car. There are very few rules in A/Mod: 72″ minimum wheelbase, 42″ minimum track, 900 pound minimum weight with driver, roll bar minimums and maximums, and all 4 wheels have to be sprung. There are maximum wing rules, driver coverage body rules, but nothing that would keep me from doing my thing. I really wished over and over I had the budget to do both the hot rod and the A/Mod car. Towing the A/Mod car behind the hot rod would be doubleplus rad.

And I think I have gotten everything out of my system for today.

PSA, Opus the Unkillable