10/20/09

In case I haven’t told y'all already, I'm taking nine days of vacation starting Thursday. Why am I telling y'all today? Because I might not send a rant to Spiderman tomorrow. Hell, this one is taxing my patience already and might just get deleted out of spite. No, I'll fight through it. I may send in a rant or two while I'm off, but don't hold your breath for it. I'm not sure what I'm going to do while off, maybe I'll go to the shop and play with... no, probably not. I don't know, we’ll see. So, I told y'all the plan for Shichi, right? I think I'm happy about it. Of course I'm not happy about the wasted summer without the car, or the detour down the "Screamin' Demon" road, but I think I'll be happy with the outcome. We shall see. Like I said yesterday, but feel the need to elaborate, I think I was happiest with the car when it was running the stock A-15 bottom end and the $1,000.00 cylinder head, when the engine was hot. Huh? OK, when we put the $1k head on there, we installed a 160 degree thermostat. The engine never ran more than 155 degrees. It ran well, but, if you shut it down and let the thing sit and heat-soak up to say 180-190 degrees, the sum-bitch friggin’ flew! Well, until the thermostat and aluminum radiator sucked the heat back down to 155. Again, it still ran well, but not like it did when at the proper temperature. We have a 190 degree thermostat in there now, by the way, so it ought to be really fun with the stock cam and SU carburetors. No, it won't be as fast as it is now, but it will be drivable. I've always said I wanted it to be fun, not the fastest Seven on the road. Besides, even as it sits, it wouldn't be the fastest Seven on the road, so it matters very little. Oh, as an aside, John and I had a little discussion about making the car electric. Of course we won't do it because it would turn into the heaviest Lotus Seven in existence. No, the Honduh N600, Roku-Hyaku, is beginning to look like my electric car. The site I found (www.electroauto.com) has a neat little tansaxle thingy for use with an AC motor which ought to work well. We could even use two of them, one in front and the other in the rear! They are single speed transaxles so linking the shift mechanisms is unnecessary. And, being electric and all, I would think that one controller could drive both ends of the car. I could be wrong though. They might pull way too much amperage for a single controller. Besides, the addition of the rear motor and transaxle would cut into the already limited battery space available in the car. No, I think a single AC motor up front driving the thing should suffice. Damn, now I'm getting excited about converting Roku-Hyaku to electric! Of course, if we did want to use DC power and a four-speed, there are some options. We could convert it to front motor/rear wheel drive using a Datsun transmission (under a modified floor of course) and rear axle. We could make it mid-motor/rear wheel drive with a front wheel drive transaxle. Or we could make it rear motor/rear wheel drive with a Volkswagen four-speed transaxle. Hey, wait! I have a Volkswagen four-speed transaxle in the small storage unit! (Of course we could make it mid-motor/front wheel drive if we put the VW transaxle in the engine bay and ran a driveshaft forward from the motor in the back, but that would just be silly.) I think I like the “VW transaxle in the rear” idea the best. I just sent John a text about that. I think that would be a hoot and a half. Well, it is rapidly approaching 1700 h and I have to pee. I think I'll call it a rant and go home. Toodles.