Work continues on TOW now that SW's T/A is wrapped up. Eric is in the process of repairing the hood. This weekend he built a form to clamp the hood to, then cut out the damaged fiberglass support areas that buckled (1 side at the time). He then epoxy bonded in some aluminum channels which he bent to reinforce the support. Those will be set tomorrow, and the fiberglass work will begin. Hopefully that's going to solve the problem without requiring a hood replacement!
Yesterday, I spent the afternoon installing the Vaporworx PWM controller for the fuel pump. What seemingly should have taken me an hour took me 5, because I was trying to hide the wiring. And working in the front part of the trunk is a real pain! But, it's installed, wired, and plumbed (except for tightening all of the fittings). We'll test it out next weekend.
Eric and I discovered last week that my alternator had died. No idea why, it was new with my Wegner drive kit. So I ordered a replacement, except I missed a digit on the part number, and received the wrong one. I'll be ordering yet another tomorrow to solve that problem.
Now on to the big task we've had to take on. When we put the car up on stands last week to determine where the banging sounds under the car were coming from (had to be exhaust, but we couldn't determine why, since it's so solid), Eric found that the torque arm / locating bars on the rear axle housing had allowed the housing to rotate. It's a bit hard to explain without seeing it, but the torque arm had rotated to the point where it was touching the bottom of the housing, and I'm guessing that the torque from the housing trying to twist actually caused the bars which come off the side of the TA to bend.
After Eric and I starred at it for a while, we could see why this might happen based on the original JRS design. Jake has since changed the mounting points of the 2 arms from a single shear that is in parallel to the rotation of the axles to a double shear setup that is perpendicular to them. Additionally, rather than using the 2 bars from the TA to the top of the housing to control the pinion angle, he now uses a mount from the TA directly to the pinion support. That mount will actually triangulate the support instead of having points top and bottom which can allow rotation (my analysis, not Jake's).
So anyway, Eric called Jake on Tuesday, and Jake got the pieces together which we needed to convert to the newer design on the way to us. As of yesterday, Eric had cut out the old arms and tacked up the new ones along with the pinion support. It's all coming out this week to be final welded on a table instead of upside down installed in the car.
If all goes well, everything should be back together this week, and we'll get her back on the road next weekend.
Oh, and we also found our noises during this. Two separate ones actually, which correlated to what I thought I was hearing. The first was from one of the over-the-axle pipes rubbing on the Watt's link crossmember, when the axle housing moved backwards. It pushed the pipe into the crossmember, because there is very little space under there. The second is one of the pipes running through the tunnel is hitting the seat belt bolt. D'oh! Easy fix, just didn't see it coming when we assembled it all before the belts were in.
I don't have any pictures of the hood work, but here are some pictures of the PWM controller and the torque arm work...
Eric built this shelf which folds up and is bolted in place vertically to hide the speakers, canisters, and amp. It was a perfect mounting spot for the PWM controller:
Plumbed into the fuel line near the tank:
Wiring through the floor:
Replacement arms:
Pinion support mount:
Back together, ready for welding:
Brian Hobaugh SCCA National Tour June 2014
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