The Flags

Last night I had a thought about the flags on the side of our car. Knowing the ones I did off hand I started to wonder if they were the NATO countries. Although I soon found out while most are in NATO not all (I wasn't sure what to do with a NATO theme anyway) but I still wanted to find out what they were so from left to right as best as I can figure since I think some of the colors have changed over the years

United states
Canada
Belgium
Finland
Italy(although it might be Ireland)
United Kingdom
Holland
Switzerland
France
Portugal
Sweden
Maybe Spain? (might be but it is a really old flag if it is one that hadn't been used since the late 70s)
Denmark
Ireland(although it can be Italy, they are really really similar looking after years of fading)
Germany

Thrill of Victory

Here is a picture of a triumphant Pete and Duff having freed a oil cooler from an old 4x4 pickup.



Of course shortly after this we were quickly defeated by bolts that were larger than anything we had with us. Since then the guys at A-Body.net have been good enough to tell me that we need a 24mm socket.

On a side note we really should fix their link on the side bar so it actually works. Update the link has been fixed.

A Trip Up North

Since Pete lives up in Lake County, Bob and I took off to the north, but not to the Great White North even though it is a beauty way to go.


We visited two Junk yards and came away with a radiator that we will use as and engine oil cooler, and looked for some newer front struts. We discovered that before we can get some new front struts we need some larger sockets and/or wrenches, since the bottom bolts on the front are quite large.

We also put the numbers together on where we are on our $500 limit and found we still have a nice chunk of money we can spend on upgrades.

More Pictures and Work Update

So since we have a lot of new pictures to share, we will updated on this last weekend and then get to the pictures

So on Sunday we installed the new beefy sway bar and replaced the rear shocks, that gets us through most of the parts we picked up so far. We still need to install the new temp sender, and the transmission cooler, but most of the suspension upgrades are done. Though after we installed the rear shocks, we are going to look in to doing the front since they are now not as good as the rear.

Now for the Pictures: 

So here are the old rusted lug-nuts that were a pain to get off the car.

Here is the new beefy sway bar

Here is the new beefy sway bar sanded and painted

 

Here is the new beefy swaybar and the old swaybar

 

The old rear shock and the newer rear shock

 Some Pictures of Bob and Duffy working on the car

 

The new and old upper motor mount or dog bone

The front tires with the car badges on them

And lastly our new favorite parts maker

Leaf Blower Forced Induction?

So in one of the many e-mails the team has sent back and forth some how a leaf blower came up. We briefly talked about doing some sort of ghetto-charging using a leaf blower and how we could most-likely could get one for cheap at Harbor Freight (They seem to have just about everything).



I did a little googleing and found this video;


I also found a product called the e-ram that is an high powered electric fan that activates at WOT (wide open throttle) providing about 1psi of boost.  http://www.electricsupercharger.com/products-eram.html

The e-ram is way out of our budget, and what fun is it to install some pre-made system like that when you can try and build your own.

There are then two options that I have come up with;

1. find a cheap leaf blower and find a way to power it.
2. find a high powered DC fan that would fit in the existing air system.

I'v not ever opened up an electric leaf blower but I don't imagine that the motor inside is a DC motor so we would need a transformer.  Not that big a deal but would increase the cost of the project. While the leaf blower would be cool and we might even need to cut a hole in the hood for it. The DC fan solution I think would be easier.
Since the car electronics are 12v DC a 12v fan would be the easiest to wire-up, but we could make or buy DC to DC up converters to get us to 24v or greater.  PC case fans might be the best place to start looking for 12v DC fans,

The problem might be finding one that creates enough air flow to make a difference.

So something like this;

Might be better and provide enough air flow, and still require us to make a hole in the hood to get it to fit.

Getting the whole system to work electricly in the car is something  I will get into in a later post.



 

Some Forward Progress

So we made some steps forward this weekend. Saturday we removed the rusted out power steering line, Bob cleaned up the new beefy swaybar, we removed all of the bad lug nuts, and cleaned up some of the rust under the car.
Sunday, with the assistance of Pete we installed the new power steering line, filled and bleed the system and luckily didn't create and new leaks. We also removed the existing wimpy swaybar, and put some new lug nuts on the tires.
We also got the parts we need to install the new beefy swaybar, and the temp sender, so the gauge on our new cluster will work. Hopefully we should be able to install the beefy swaybar, the temp sender, and the rear shocks next week.