Monday, May 23, 2011

Well that is not the problem

So we final had a chance to work on the car.  At the end of the race in October it was misfiring, and refused to start when hot.  The general consensus from our friends at A-Body.net and other people we talked to was to pull the ICM & Coils and have them tested.

 Here is what it sounded like on Sunday,




After removing the fan we were able to get some better, but not great access to the ICM. 

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We did remember to lable the spark plug wires so we connect them back up in the correct order.

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Some spiders decided that the space between the coils and the ICM would make a good home. Also all that cracking on the ICM is just grease or silicone and cleaned right up.  

So we took the ICM to O'Reilly's to have it tested. They ran the test 3 time and it came back good everytime. We also ohm out the coils and they were within spec.

Hopefully we have time this weekend to put it all back together, and try the next thing on our list which is replacing the crank sensor.

If anyone else has any suggestion, we are open to hear them.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Be afraid, ideas are bouncing around my head

Just a bit of fair warning to the rest of the team, but ideas are popping around my head.

I even think I've finally figured out how to do something that I've been thinking about since we first got the car.

Now to just work out the details.

Hmmm, what would I need to get a color made in house paint.  Could I just give rbg or hex# or do I have to find something else.

Friday, May 13, 2011

New Camera Test

A couple months back I had to buy a new set of tires for my daily driver. With the set of tires came a free Flip Ultra. Its the 1 hour one, and has the Tire Manufacture write on the back, and most importantly its free.

So after submitting the paperwork a month ago it finally came in the mail. Now I don't have all that many uses in my life for a video camera, in fact the only use I could think of it would be to mount in the car for LeMons.

Now being that it is a free HD camera smaller than my first digital camera, I wasn't sure that it would work that well in a noisy car with a bunch of fast moving objects so I decided I should test it out. So with a cheap old digital camera case with a built in stand and some scotch tape I mounted the camera on the dash of my Legacy and took it on a quick spin on the highway.



Well it seemed to do pretty well. Even with the windows down I could hear the radio(a little Buddy Guy). The video is plenty clear, and while video ain't all that exciting you get to see the Illinois State Troupers hard at work at 2:20 and at the end at 6:30.

So now I just have to figure out where Patrick got the base that he mounted for the last race.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Twisted, the rubber band powered streamliner

The last post ended with the Bonneville Rubber band powered car.


I did spend a little time looking up stuff on this on the interwebs. It seems like it was brought to the salt flats in 2008. It caused a big stir at the tech inspections even got written up in Popular Mechanics. They built it with the intentions of reaching a top speed of 30mph in a mile run. Unfortunately it seems it never actually ran.




The specifics of the car are a bit of a mystery. as best as people could tell half the rubberbands powered one wheel while the other half powered the other wheel.

All those bands where wrapped by some kind of ratcheting method, and the power was transfered to those skinny rear wheels by chains


No idea how much tension they were putting on each band, or how much all those bands weighed but there sure looked to be a lot of them.


While there were rumor of it showing up other places I can't see any information of it ever running anywhere.  I guess it could be an elaborate joke and never would actually work,  but it seems like alot of work to do that.  Either way it was a pretty novel dream and looked pretty cool.