Simultaneity Despite Serial Intentions Coalesces into Unitary System Focus

So after completing the fuel tank my intention was to complete the fuel system then proceed to wiring. I had every intention of sticking to the plan of completing one system then moving on to the next. But of course life isn't that simple, and it's especially not simple when one decides to undertake the unnecessary complexity of building a car.

I couldn't install the fuel tank without a trunk (boot) floor. Here (above) is trunk floor Version 2.0; marine plywood reinforced with fiberglass tape at the stress points and then layered with epoxy resin and black enamel paint. The shiny finish does highlight some of the surface irregularities (not to mention dust and paw prints) but I will not lose too much sleep fretting about the appearance of the floor of the trunk. If it really bothers me I could put down carpet. The right angle fuel filler neck on the right side of the picture is not in its final configuration, but I'm not cutting/trimming the hose until I have made the filler cap recess in the bodywork. 

Also making appearances above are the Lithium battery, sitting snugly in its recess, the whole-car circuit breaker (hiding behind the battery), starter cable (running across the top), fuel filter (silver, upper right), fuel pump relay (yellow, left side above the battery), and the remote ground interrupter (black, upper left corner). This is my plan for "locking" the car - I have a remote clicker to connect/disconnect the main vehicle ground. There won't be an ignition key in the cockpit: just an ignition toggle and a starter button.

Jumping Ahead

In anticipation of the upcoming wiring job, I have started work revising the dash. I know that doesn't make obvious sense, but there is a connection. A lot of the electrics stuff is mounted to the dash so I won't get very far in to the wiring before I need the dash in place. 

The original Replicar dash is an awkward fit because if you want the instrument hump lined up with the steering wheel, you have to shift the whole thing toward the driver side. This in turn leaves the passenger side a little too short. And then both ends of the dash terminate in this strange right angle thing that nobody seems to know what to do with. 

So in the picture above I have laid fiberglass over the existing dash to make a mold. Pops racer is a big fan of using wood in fiberglass or carbon fiber layups and there are some advantages to this.

After curing I pulled the mold. I think it came out well. I will need to cut out some of the side that faces the cockpit (horizontal in this picture) in order to continue the taper - the far end will be narrower when I'm done. 

I will definitely be cutting off the strange right angle ends. I'd like to terminate the ends of the dash in some kind of rounded shape. This may be something I can model in Solidworks and use 3D printing to make a mold for the ends.

The final step will be attaching the new mold(s) to the dash and laying in new fiberglass to add the new features.

Timing... Tim-ing... Ti-ming

On the Net Plus side, Rob and the folks at Quantum Sportscars have taken over the Replicar project. Nothing against the previous vendor, but Quantum seems to be better resourced and is developing some parts that I think will make for a more satisfying builder experience. 

Annoyingly, they already have some stuff that's nicer than my stuff. I was about halfway through my fuel tank project when Quantum started offering a bespoke fuel tank. The OEM Miata fuel tank can be used, but as previously belabored to death, there are advantages to bespoke. Not a real disaster, and I did learn a lot and improved my welding in the process of making my own tank.

But now they come out with a revised body shell and whoah it's beautiful.

The body shell I got will be satisfactory - or else I wouldn't have bought it - but the new one is so much nicer. The fender curves flow into each other much more fluidly and the car has a "waist" now (evident in the upper of the two pictures). It's still not exactly an Aston Martin DBR-1, but the new bodywork does, to my eye, a much better job of capturing the spirit of the original. Shipping another body shell across the pond would be brutally expensive so unless there are more US buyers and we can do some kind of group shipping deal, I don't anticipate ordering the updated bodywork.

Whether I use the body shell I have or not, there is benefit to having a more robust outfit developing the car. And I do think I will, at minimum, order a set of the wheel well liners that are said to be underway.

Change of Seasons

It is now officially Warm in Indiana. Which means time to open up the garage roof cupola. These things really do help cool the place, especially if I crack the garage doors to allow air to flow in overnight.

The Tunnel of Argh

The hard (cupro-nickel) fuel lines run through the tunnel, and since this was also my intended pathway for the battery cable, it made sense to do these all together.

Above: where the battery cable, fuel send, and fuel return lines go down through the trunk floor. I get disproportionate delight from finding just the right grommet for any job: they do so neaten up a hole.

My least favorite car jobs are usually the ones where I have to lie on the floor and with the work overhead. Copper/nickel tubing is so cooper/ative and easy to work with when I'm upright and out in the open, but once I cram myself under a car and move the job inside a long skinny tunnel, suddenly cupro-nickel has its own ideas which directly conflict with my ideas. It makes for a very slow day. I don't feel like I got much done, because I spent more than half the day inserting and extracting myself from under the car. Anyway, these lines are (finally) in place. I do need to put a few more anchors to secure them, but the cursing and shouting parts of the job are done. Probably. Mostly.

Because fuel line pressure in fuel injected cars is non-trivial, the factory hard lines are made with swells on them. If you run the rubber connector hoses past the swell and put the clamp on there, the swell helps prevent the pressure from blowing the rubber lines off. So for the lines I made myself I borrowed Scott Graham's trick of soldering brass compression rings on to the hard lines. I found this trick to work too well: either the compression rings were too thick or my rubber lines were too inflexible, or both, so I couldn't get the rubber lines on past the swells. So I had to go back with a Dremel tool and sand the swells down smaller, stretch the rubber lines from the inside, and use wax lubricant plus all the strength I could muster and some choice "engineering terminology" to get the hoses on.

So here (above) is the other end, in the engine bay; final destination for the the fuel lines, brake lines, and battery cable. It's really tight trying to work under that manifold, so I had to remove the fuel rail, install the rubber connector lines on the fuel rail side, then reinstall the fuel rail and join the cupro-nickel hard lines and rubber lines together.

This is the kind of thing that will drive you crazy if you let it. Too cheap to buy a cable terminal crimping tool, I installed all the battery cable terminals using a small blunt chisel to crimp on the terminals. And this worked perfectly for five of the six large gauge cable terminals needed. It's a bit of a struggle and holding small things in place while I hammer them makes my hands hurt, but I got away without buying the tool just fine... until I got to the very last one. Which was incredibly stubborn to install and then fell off randomly the first time I turned my head. So today I ordered the crimping tool... just for the one last #&$*^@!ing terminal. It was $13 that would have been well spent before I started making the cables.

And Onward to Wiring

So I have my schematics all together and I've calculated the amp draw and wire gauges needed for every circuit. In advance of the cursing, I went ahead and placed an order for a machine that makes labels on heat-shrink wire sleeves, like below:

It hasn't actually arrived yet: the picture above is an example from the Amazon page. But everywhere I keep hearing about the importance of labelling every single wire; even (especially) the ones I'm sure I won't forget. Having the ability to label all the wires clearly, legibly, and permanently seems likely to obviate the need for a large number of future curse words, so the heat shrink label maker is on its way.

Back to the Dash

Progress on the dashboard extension mold: in order to keep following the narrowing taper of the passenger side dash board, I had to cut a slice out of the center of my mold then re-join the upper and lower parts. 

This in turn required smoothing over the join lines. This SuperFill stuff is a favorite product of Pops Racer's - finer and therefore closer to a finishing product than regular body filler, but it's epoxy-based and so extremely strong. I have only ever found this product from aircraft supplies vendors but I think it's worth the cost and effort.

Sanded, primed, and painted. Will let this cure thoroughly then apply PFA release agent, attach to end of dash, and start laying in fiberglass for the extension. To the casual observer, working on the dashboard might not seem to fall under the heading of "wiring." But in order to do the wiring I need the parts to be wired more or less in position - and there is a LOT of stuff on the dashboard that has wiring attached to it. So, at least according to the definitions I am using, I am now truly working only on the wiring. This expanded definition of "wiring" also encompasses some sheet metal work, because wherever wiring passes through a panel I need the panel in place before running the wires.

Therefore, I hereby declare the cockpit sidewall sheet metal (pictured above) to be an electrical wiring component. I really do appreciate the suggestion from the Quantum/ANC/MEV/Replicar gurus to go over sheet aluminum with red Scotch Brite on an orbital sander. It makes a nice matte finish that doesn't show scratches or fingerprints too badly. A note about the cockpit sidewalls: if you look carefully you will see that the smaller angled frame tubes are inset from the larger horizontal frame rails above and below. This leaves the builder with the two options: 1) rivet the sidewalls to the larger tubes and leave a gap between the panel and the smaller tubes, or 2) engage in creative sheet metal bending. Regular readers, familiar with my propensity to over-complicate, will be able to guess which I chose. On the plus side, the panels sit flush with the smaller tubes and this technique leaves a nice clean neatly folded edge along the upper and lower frame rails. On the minus side, it will not escape the attentive reader's notice that I am NOT showing pictures of the other side of this panel. "Nice clean neatly folded" does not apply over there. However, the other side will only be visible as the inside of the door sill lock boxes so a key will be required to view the side that isn't so nice clean and neatly folded. It's not butchered/hideous, but I'm glad I won't have to see it very often when the car is complete. 

The corresponding passenger side panel is ready to install - and apropos of wiring, that's the one the wires pass through. A stickler could therefore argue that the driver side panel isn't a wiring component if so inclined.

'Til Next Time

I have no idea how long the wiring is going to take. I expect the two options are 1) it takes a long time because it's done in a painstaking and organized fashion, and 2) it takes a long time because there are a lot of mysterious bugs to sort out. I'll be aiming for the former.