When your turbo is forcing 25 psi through your engine at 6000 rpm, there is a fair amount of air being drawn through your Mass Airflow Sensor. If the honeycomb breaks free, it will eventually find itself lodged against the insides of the sensor, causing your vehicle to run quite poorly. I haven’t checked yet, but I don’t believe any pieces made it past the sensor and into the turbo’s compressor wheel. Fingers crossed….
We left off the last episode with a freshly fabricated trunk floor, and I had a new tail pan and taillight surround on order. A few days later, they arrived, and work commenced. If you are curious, I would imagine that at this point in the story, I must have had about 75 hours into the removal of the quarter, and the repair of the wheel house, filler neck surround, trunk drop off, and trunk floor. It is easy to see why car restorations add up fast. The labor factor is huge. Moving on…
I began this round with the test fitting of the tail pan and the left taillight surround. They were both perfect, except my trunk floor wasn’t. Everything needed some TLC with hammers to align it all. Once I was happy with the tail pan, I drilled a million holes in it and spot welded it all the way down just like when the car was new. I then coated it in ugly reddish primer because that is what was within reach.
The taillight surround was much more challenging to align than the tail pan was. I used a variety of clamps, and cleco’s. If you have never used cleco’s you are missing out. They are cheap little devices that hold metal together like a champ. Every tool box should have some.
Yesterday, over on LS1Tech.com, “Fastdriver1992” posted up some pictures of his engine… err… what was left of it at least. When it was in one piece, it was a beautiful, all aluminum LS6. Today it is a pile of aluminum which once resembled a 5.7L Corvette / Cadillac CTS-V engine. These engines are light, make gobs of horsepower, are fuel injected, and are nice to look at. Did I mention they make gobs of power? Oh yes, I believe I did…
Fastdriver1992’s LS6 is typically being used to rocket his 1975 Corvette down the 1320 at 119mph in 11 seconds flat. It was making roughly 450 horsepower at the top end of the track, around 6000 rpm when all hell broke loose. After some detective work, the theory is that his engine broke a valve, which danced around the combustion chamber, bent the connecting rod, ate the piston, and exploded the block. 5 seconds later, ouch.
You can see the Full Thread Here.
In 1911, if you were driving a motorcar, it would likely be a Model T that was sitting on wooden wheels. They were probably between 21 and 24 inches tall, and had a speedometer gear on the back side. Inflatable tires were still very new to the automotive world, but added huge comfort to the vehicle because of the rough, turn of the century roads. Wooden wheels like these were the norm up into the late 1920’s when steel took over. 100 years later, this 1911 Model T is running like a top, still rockin’ the wooden dubs, and still wrapped in black paint, like when Henry’s workers originally made it.
That’s the noise that team owner Tony Stewart heard as Ryan Newman crossed the finish line ahead of him during Sunday’s Lenox Industrial Tools 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
Both Newman and Stewart ran an excellent race yesterday. Tony Stewart has had one heck of a bad year at the beginning of the season. This was a great shot in the arm for Stewart- Haas racing. Ryan Newman is now 8th in the Nascar Sprint Cup points chase and team owner Tony Stewart is pretty close behind in 11th.
Sitting in row 22 on the start/finish line, it was a little toasty on the metal bleachers up in the grandstand. Temperatures were into the 90’s on race day. I was listening in on Dale Earnhardt Jr. as he said it was so hot inside the car he could feel his face blister. Read More
There has never been, nor could there ever be, a more suitable zombie apocalypse survival vehicle. Technically speaking, this is a Tucker armored snow vehicle. It has what appears to be a Dodge V8, a manual transmission, and 1 spare seat for a friend. 4 wheel track steering is fully functional, and it is armored from top to bottom.
Whether you are looking to take your Steampunk swagger to a whole new level, or survive the all-but-certain zombie apocalypse, there is, and can only be, one vehicle up to such a challenge. Just ask yourself, do you want to be battling zombies in your busted cavalier or are you going to be be saving lives with steampunk style? Buy it now on eBay for $13,995 or the zombies will win. eBay Item # 380354878683
Special Thanks to Todd for the Tip!
UPDATE: “monkeyfett8” on Reddit/r/autos pointed out that it was used in “The Last Airbender” movie by M. Night Shyamalan. Images can be seen Here and Here.
Last week we discussed the scariness of discovering acres of rot behind the quarter panel that I had just reluctantly removed. Then I showed off the metal repair / replacement of the 64 Chevy’s outer wheel house, and trunk drop off. There was one other piece that had some serious metal repair, but I already made a 1A Blog post about it over a year ago, so I won’t repeat it here again. if you are curious, you can view the fuel filler neck surround metal repair Here.
Next on the Impala list was fixing all of the metal surrounding the “tailpan”. Basically, the rear-most section of the trunk floor was rotted badly on both sides, and it all needed to go in the trash barrel. The bad news is that nobody makes these replacement panels, so I had to make them myself. First step, cut out the rotted area and see what we’re working with. Eeeek!
As you can see , there was no shortage of rot on the driver’s side rear of the “six-foe”. Rather than crying, I began making a flat metal replacement that was the “same” shape as the original. The problem was that I didn’t have a lot of the old metal to work with, so most of this process was a guessing game. Read More