So. I threw on the 25mm spacers that I had in the garage and although I had previously dismissed it I’m now wondering if I can get the guards to stretch enough to clear the tyres??
January 10, 2012
Crack
The damage sustained at Desert Storm appeared relatively easy to spot and not as much of an expensive exercise as it first appeared. Wheels were cheap, tyres were reasonable and the ladies who made the new nerf nets were awesome. However I was somewhat dismayed when upon reassembly i found this…
While I was waiting for the new swingarm I took all the plastics off and gave it a bloody good clean.
It has taken much longer than I expected to get this fixed, or rather source a new swingarm and completely replace the bearings in the rear end! While I was waiting for the new swingarm I took all the plastics off and gave it a bloody good clean.
October 23, 2011
Desert Storm
Seriously, that’s what the ride was called. It was quite apt though as there was both a desert and a storm, the weather is incredibly changeable in the central North Island. It was very fine to start out with though – this is the pit area on Saturday morning.
Then right up near the mountain…
There wasn’t much mud, but where there was it was deep and concentrated – straight up mud pies. As it happens I went from warm and dry to cold and freezing a couple of seconds after this.
October 22, 2011
Amazing
September 12, 2011
Clean Quad
It amazes me how after being almost completely caked in mud how clean this comes up! I realise how much better this would be if I had a before photo…
August 16, 2011
Bolted On
Just as I had hoped they would look. Please excuse the flames on the jack, it was like that when I bought it…
I hope I’m going to be surprised with the amount of movement I get from those guards when it comes time to panel beat them.
And one underneath
August 14, 2011
Diff, Part II
So a while ago, a little over a year to be more specific, I started the clean up on the diff housing.
http://super86.wordpress.com/2010/07/13/diff/
Before
After
The inside took a lot of cleaning but now looks brand new
July 31, 2011
Tow Away
This is more a case of pictures over words as it’s quite obvious what’s gone on here I think.
Original, original, paper and aluminium.
The finished articles, front and rear. The front is very similar to the original, with only the size of the tow hole being different, this is so it can be used without cutting the original bumper. The rear uses the original towing eye hole through the bumper.
June 25, 2011
Under Tray – Part 1: Front Splitter
In an effort to keep the Silvia on the ground and to make it more stable through corners, we will be developing an under body tray system, starting with a front splitter.
Given that we had already given the car a facelift conversion as part of the radiator support build we selected an aftermarket bumper to suit the new headlights and something that we could easily install a splitter below.
By the time that I got to the workshop Nick had already cut out the shape for the splitter out of a sheet of high quality marine plywood whilst getting into the beers.
We fabricated the first of our mounting brackets from some aluminum angle and made tensioning rods from 8mm stainless bar which we cut a thread at each end. We were wanting to go for left and right handed threads but the costs of LH rod ends and a LH dye outweighed the benefits.
It was quickly worked out that we needed a third, static mounting point at each side in order to stop the splitter moving back and forth. This was built again with angle using one factory mounting point and requiring the addition of a couple of riv-nuts. The side tension rods were then mounted to the angle bracket enabling the splitter to require only 3 bolts per side to be undone for removal.
To give the plywood more stiffness we cut strips of plywood and edge mounted then to the bottom board, gluing them on with resin and then covering with another layer of plywood. The whole lot was then covered with a layer of carbon which both added stiffness and sealed it from water, oil and other fluids.
We also added a jacking point so that we didn’t need to remove the splitter to get the car in the air and as with most of the composite parts we have constructed this turned out to be amazingly stiff and probably overbuilt.
