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Here's
something that went a little smoother. I bought and installed a new thermostat housing which is made by
Billet
Specialties.
It has a straight neck in place of the 45 degree swivel model that I had
on previously. By using this straight style housing, the radiator hose doesn't have as many bends
in it like my old
one did and works well with my new angled radiator. The new one has
an O-ring on the bottom like the other one had which is a much better way of
sealing than a gasket. I also had to cut a new length of radiator hose
because the new one had to be 2" longer than the old one. This hose is so
strong that I don't think I'll need a top radiator bracket to help
support it. I guess I'll see how this treats me and add one if I need
it.
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This is my brake pedal that I was
waiting to see if I needed to change the end on or not. I was undecided
of where
the brake pad that screws on the end should be located. What I mean is, I couldn't
decide how much clearance I wanted between my throttle pedal and brake
pedal. After trying my foot in several locations,
simulating various positions, I cut the end off and then welded
it back on so
the pad would be on the left side of the arm. This would give me more
foot room between the throttle pedal and brake pedal. The end was only
tack welded on from awhile back so cutting the end off was very
easy.
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Here is what it looks like installed.
Now this car doesn't have much foot or leg room but this setup should
provide enough clearance between the two pedals for comfort and safety.
With the pedal to the left of the steering column now, it also gives my
foot more clearance too. The hole size in the firewall ended up twice as large after shortening
the arm sometime ago but it's just the right size at this point to get the pedal in
and out now that the new tab is on the opposite side. Funny how things
work out sometimes.....I mean....I planned it like that :-]
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Here you see some 1 1/4" PVC pipe that
I picked up at the hardware store. Can you guess what I'm going to use
it for?
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This should give you a better idea of
what is going on. I'm mocking-up a roll cage that I'm trial fitting at
this point. This 1 1/4" PVC is 1 3/4" diameter on the outside
which is close to the 1 5/8" diameter steel tubing that I'll be
using. This will be an eight point roll cage when I'm done and should
pass the NHRA tech because any car that runs faster than 10:99 has to
have a cage. Now I'm not sure how fast my car will go but I think I'll
be happy that I added it. The picture below is of the main hoop that
will go right behind the seats. The reason I'm mocking up a roll cage is
because a car like mine doesn't have much room behind the top of the
main hoop and rear of the car where the down-bars have to go through
into the trunk. I'm allowed to put the down-bars within five inches of
the top of the main hoop according to the NHRA rule book which would
give me some much needed clearance. The down-bars also have to be at a
30 degree angle or more from the vertical which is the problem. The
angle of the down-bars as the pass through the rear wall into the trunk
gets to close to the body and tries to cut into it and would show from
the outside. Now I'm not going to let that happen so this mock-up should
provide me with the best way of running the bars down into the trunk and
when I have a working solution, I'm then going to have the tubing bent
to my specifications. This way I won't be trying to engineer it when we
start bending and have something I'm not happy with in the end. Every
point at which the cage comes in contact with the floor or trunk is
suppose to get welded to the frame. You are allowed to use a 6" X
6" X 1/8" steel plate on both sides of the floor and then use
four 3/8" bolts to sandwich it together. The tube then gets
welded to the plate on the inside of the car but I have a different way
that I'm going to attach the tubes to the frame. I'll talk about that a
little later so for now, I'm going to start planning for a
cage.
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