Fun Jobs, Job Jobs, Done Jobs

The latest pattern is that I have two or three fun jobs I could do, and some other job that's more complex and possibly more urgent (although I'm not sure how urgent any job can be on a toy car). Unsurprisingly I have frequently chosen fun jobs.

Currently on my list of bigger not-as-fun jobs: wiring, coolant plumbing, brake and clutch lines.

More fun/decorative jobs: dashboard, seating, interior.

Most of these jobs are really job clusters. Like coolant plumbing, which includes cleaning and installing the donor car hard coolant lines, installing the heater core, and installing the new soft coolant lines. Or, dashboard: complete instrument cluster, laminate cherry wood onto dash, engine turn stainless steel dash plates, cut and drill dash plates for switches and gauges, assemble. Sometimes the jobs interfere with each other. Like, if I haven't done the under dash sheet metal, it's going to be impossible to install the heater core or plumb it in. 

So I've been doing isolated fun stuff, like the shifter knob and parking brake lever handles. Which are extremely satisfying. Did I mention cherry is my favorite wood?

Shift knob and threaded insert. Bro Ray says Miatas shift better if the shift knob is heavy, so I made the insert out of steel and quite a bit larger diameter than really necessary. Bro Ray's birthday is coming up and I am thinking maybe his Miata needs a wood shift knob and parking brake handle.

These came out lovely. I did use a bit more stain on these than I usually would, but I wanted them to match the tone of the steering wheel.

Speaking of the steering wheel: the donor car steering column has an unfinished end that is not entirely aesthetically pleasing - and really doesn't mate well with a 6 bolt steering wheel adapter. Also, I needed some way to make the electrical connection for the horn switch.

So I made this flange - designed in Solidworks and 3d printed in ABS. The brass screw with its head filed off has a spring soldered to its base and the other end of the black wire is soldered to the spring. So it should maintain a nice electrical connection with the brass disc on the steering hub adapter and thence to the steering wheel's horn button.

I like the appearance of the steering column now. The black parts are the modern hub adapter and quick release, so not really vintage-looking. But the flange reminds me of old pickup trucks with column mounted manual shift from when I was a kid. I think it does a nice job of bringing back the vintage vibe to this part of the car.

I have been plugging away at the wiring schematic and reading a book on best practices for aircraft wiring (book loan courtesy of Pops Racer). There are a few things pilots have to worry about that I don't, but I'd guess 80-90% of it will be applicable. 

My problem with these kinds of books is usually in the first couple of chapters. How to read a schematic. Ohm's law. Safety Earth. I've built tube (valve) amplifiers from scratch, so I am very familiar with most of the material from the introductory chapters. But inevitably there are one or two things about vehicle wiring that are different than tube electronics and if I completely skip the intro chapters I will regret it later.

I was feeling a little bit guilty about doing the fun decorative jobs while mostly ignoring bigger jobs like the wiring schematic. But then I watched Superfast Matt's wiring video, and on his page I found the video above. 

This video is mostly psychological, about what keeps you plugging away at the project and what makes you want to avoid going in the garage (which risks transforming your project car into Perpetual Garage Obstacle). One of Matt's points is that the fun jobs that feel like accomplishments help keep you moving. 

Then I noticed that making the horn switch connections had somehow magically caused the horn wiring to appear, complete, in my wiring diagram. Similarly, designing the dashboard switch plates has prompted progress on that part of the wiring schematic. So the big not-so-fun job is getting chipped away at by my little fun jobs.

So I've decided to just enjoy the fun jobs and ride with it.

Not a super fun job, but a done job. The kitchen re-do is complete. As evidenced by replacing the electrical box covers. Which was kind of a PITA because the boxes are now offset by the thickness of the tiles. Fortunately, this is a problem for Past Me. Present Me and Future Me don't have to stress about it.

My lovely and longsuffering wife has been helping me with the cherry laminate for the dash panel. Did I mention cherry is my favorite wood?

Also apropos of the dashboard, I have been experimenting with a new engine turned finish technique. This involves using stainless steel (which is a colossal hassle to cut) and valve grinding compound (which is far less messy than the abrasive grit + cutting oil mixture I was using before).

Practice with new engine turned finish technique. This isn't quite right, but I think I know how to get from here to where I want to go.

My plan is to have three stainless panels on the dash - speedo, tach, ignition switch, starter button, and a couple of lights on the driver side; fuel, oil pressure, and temp gauges plus more toggle switches on the center panel, and a rally style stopwatch set on the passenger side - with the cherry wood showing between and around the stainless panels - like so:

Options for cutting the stainless include: 1) drilling and cutting out the shapes myself using band saw and drill press - messy, error prone, tedious; 2) order laser cut stainless panels from sendcutsend.com - easy, not as expensive as one might think, a bit awkward to do the engine turning if all the holes are already done; 3) local laser cutter or waterjet cut out panels I have already prepared with the engine turned finish. I have sent out for quotes from two local outfits. Sometimes this can be surprisingly expensive compared to sendcutsend. 

In general, I really like sendcutsend. If you can create a CAD file for the parts you want, they will cut them (they can also bend and tap) and ship them to your doorstep, and the prices are surprisingly reasonable. Even if you can't create your own CAD file, you can make parts from simple shapes right on their website.

The Replicar transmission tunnel as it comes from ANC is a little bit of a strange shape, and I have seen numerous different ways builders have handled this. The front half of the tunnel is a fabricated aluminum sheet part. The back half of the tunnel is steel. It's welded to the frame, and has a kind of stair-step on the passenger side to accommodate the parking brake lever, mechanism, and cables. 

Rear steel part of tunnel with stairstep for parking brake lever and cables. 
I might use the square rubber accordion boot for an extra barrier between the people compartment and the heat dirt and noise from below, but I don't plan for it to show. I have a matching set of leather boots for the shifter and p-brake lever.

The aluminum front half of the tunnel is kind of a parallelogram shape, with a four corner cross section in the front and five corners on the rear - to accommodate the p-brake step.

I wanted the back half of my trans tunnel covered in aluminum to match the front half and to hide the parking brake gear. I could have carried the five-corner profile all the way to the back, but that would have required modifications to the parking brake cable stops (which come welded to the frame) and would have mated awkwardly with the interior panels at the rear of the people compartment.

So I decided to try this:

I may have seen this done on someone else's build, or maybe it just popped into my head like this. But I think the rear-pointing triangle on my part and the front-pointing triangle on ANC's part kind of balance each other out. 

Pops Racer has a hand operated brake for bending sheet metal, and sometimes it's easier to use than the hydraulic one. But for this job, where I needed two bends at the exact same angle, the hydraulic machine is really nice.

The other big accomplishment since my last check in was a more thorough garage cleanup. Putting the car up on casters really helps with this.

These are just cheap moving casters from Harbor Freight, but they seem to be adequate to this load. It's also nice to have the car a little bit higher so my creaky old back doesn't have to lean over so far to work on stuff.

I don't have my wiring schematic done yet, but I'm making progress. Right now I am going through all the oddball bits and pieces from the donor car and deciding which ones I need to keep - then finding the wiring connector that mates with them, and working that part of the electrical system into the schematic.

The part on the left is the ignitor, which I will certainly need.

The part on the upper right is the vapor cannister purge valve, which I don't need.

Not sure what the thing on the bottom is. It doesn't seem to go anywhere or attach to anything - just two wires going in to a small block. Possibly a noise filtering capacitor of some kind? I will keep my eye out for this as I work my way through the wiring schematics in the Miata shop manual.