8/30/13

And just like that, my “whelm” level has shot through the roof.  I've been thinking about the Sunny floor-panned Mini and… well, there’s the whelm.  Getting the floor lined up straight and zooked back in is scaring the hell out of me right now.  I know hillbillies have been doing shit like that for years and I really should be as competent as them… but, well, hell I don’t know.  I guess I need to stop seeing butt-welded joints where the floor meets the Mini’s unibody.  Overlapping… uh, lap joints are how the thing needs to go together.  Sure, there will probably be places where there is an incongruity leading to a butt weld or two… or several, but if we were to remove the Mini’s floor leaving a lip and cut the Sunny’s pan just bigger than that lip, they will overlap and the Mini will essentially sit on the pan.  Ok, now that I've “talked” through that, which was probably totally obvious to everyone else, I feel a little better about this.  Oh, we also don’t need to use the floor of the 210 after all.  We can use a 1200 pan… wait a damn minute!  I was going to suggest making ladder bars like I'm planning to do in the Chickenhawk to mate a four link axle to a leaf spring chassis but then I thought about the width of a Sunny axle.  We otter use that narrowed Toyota axle four-linked to the floor.  Hells bells, we might even be able to link that to the Mini’s existing pickup points!  We would need to make a tunnel for the transmission and driveshaft still.  Hmm.  Interesting.  Uh oh, I just thought about another potential engine for this… the Goldwing!  John poo-pooed the idea just now in a text conversation, but I'm not 100% convinced it wouldn’t work.  My thinking is thus: it is smaller than an A-series or at least a more convenient shape, I think it otter be a bit lighter than an A-series and transmission, and it should make about the same power although not as much torque.  Of course there is no reverse gear, but the car won't weigh much so unless Juan is stuck at the bottom of a really steep hill and the only way out is backwards, I don’t see a problem.  Ok, it is about 1120 h and I'm getting hungry.  I think I'm going to close up for a bit and go have lunch with Larry.  And I'm back.  John and I will be disgusting the Mini and various engine schemes tomorrow at the shop, hopefully while working on Lil' Wiggly.  I'm not going to press for the Goldwing idea, mainly because it isn’t a Datsun A-series to be honest.  Also, John has called “dibs” on the Z-20 for a 510 project I didn’t even know he had in mind so we’ll be backpedaling on the backpedaling yet again.  My plan as it stands now, which we all know means absolutely nothing since it will change a dozen times before a wrench ever turns, is for the Spit and the Mini to have A-series engines.  I don’t think we have enough five-speeds to go around so one of them will have to make due with a four cog tranny.  I'm thinking the Mini since it will have a 3.9:1 ratio Sunny axle while the Spit has a 4.11:1 Triumph punkin.  Now I will need to decide which one will get an A-14 and which will have to make due with an A-12.  I suppose I can weigh them and put the A-12 in the lighter chassis.  I can see it going either way.  They are roughly the same size, at least in my mind, but the Mini might wind up with more creature comforts.  I can see gutted doors and extensive lightening happening with the Spit whereas the Mini will have window glass and… well, I don’t know Yodas and shit.  They’re JAMMIES!  Oh, sorry.  I was channeling Nathan Arizona there.  Anyhoo, I guess I'm just about talked out for today if I'm throwing references like that about.  I'll let y'all know how things went over the weekend on Tuesday as Monday is an holiday.  Be seeing you!