An amusing aside

Walmart Bridal, proposals are only a layway away!

A couple of my friends being goofy in Walmart. I find this highly amusing. 

I FINALLY found it!

The original sign of The Acid Beaver! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!

IT LIVES!

It LIIIIIVES!

Justin finally got some revving on camera! Skip to 1:20 for the good stuff:

The "Bisi Beaver" header bouncing off the launch control

It sounds like it hit puberty! heh

I don't think I've heard another Honda 4 cylinder with that much of a baritone to it. I like it a lot!

Justin's "Bisi Beaver" beader. (His name, not mine, if there are any lawyers reading this.)

And now for something that is a total tease, because Justin is a goober:

Justin's "Bisi Beaver" header idling. And nothing else. Because he sucks at video. LOL!

Justin apologizes for the sucky video. He thought he had revved it on camera, but didn't. He will get a better video tomorrow, so check back in the evening tomorrow.

Justin also reports that so far, it sounds completely different (It sounds quiet in the video because his phone sucks) and that the throttle response is "mega better!" so far. Mega better. Yeah. I like the sound of that.

From something old and unfinished, to looking ahead at promising things to come.

Two weekends ago I had the pleasure of meeting Mike, known as MB on Do The Ton. He's got an older motorcycle frame that he needs some work done, and I picked it up and brought it to my "shop."

As you can see in the photo below, all my stuff is currently crammed in a corner of a two-bay attached garage. Some people might not think much of it, but this . . . this is heaven. =) 

My stuff is crammed in a corner because space is being made for me to occupy the large space by the doors to the garage. I don't even have to do any heavy lifting of other people's stuff! Isn't that lovely? I think so. I really do. =) 

This is Mike's frame. A lovely frame, as far as I can tell, covered in some leftover paint and Aircraft Remover. 

This is Mike's tank. A lovely tank . . . Ok, I'm not going to be intentionally redundant (much). 

I love CAD. Who doesn't? Most people don't think they can afford, it, but, with the miracles of modern science, now you, too, can afford to use CAD to mock up your parts! Take a look at the fine model that Mike and I used to get a good idea of what he wants and needs for a seat pan!

You may be thinking to yourself: "WTF is he on about? CAD? That's just a cardboard template." And if you think that, you would be correct! Cardboard Aided Design is the latest thing in fashioning all sorts of components from scratch! low cost an fast modeling times that assure a near perfect fit are the wave of the future! 

I'll be tweaking the original CAD mockup for precision based on the discussed dimensions for the components that need to fit between the battery box and the seat pan, and working out some other details to make sure that everything fits and looks just as Mike has in mind!

Soon to be added to the space are a worktable and a bead roller. I'll use the work table to mount my spare vise (a heavy sucker that will hurt immensely if it drops upon your toes), which will hold a bead roller, which will be of great use in stiffening the seat and battery pans! I'll also be trimming some tabs, welding a few spots and welding on a loop on the back of the seat. I am looking forward to getting this project rolling soon. 

An older, unfinished project, but still fun.

This is from 2008 and I don't have access to a lath or mill anymore, so I can't finish the project until I do. 

What happens when you have plenty of 2024 aluminum, bronze, stainless and machine tools? ITBs (Individual Throttle Bodies), that's what! 

First things first: flanges! You need to have flanges as a strong base for the entire project. Right now, I forget if this is 1/2" or 3/8" thick 2024 aluminum (the good stuff).

The single point flycutter (with a tool I ground myself after some trial and error) going to town on 4 pieces of material:

Notice the clamp on the overhanging material to reduce chatter s much as possible. It worked well enough, since the whole block of material was thick enough when clamped together to be pretty stiff.

After a few passes:

Once I got to that point (I ignored the small nicked spot from an oops with the band saw), I flipped the pieces over and leveled the other side. Gotta love the automatic feed! Set the speed and listen for any nasty noises that means your project is ruined and you have to start over. LOL!

Here's the other side: 

I had a Z6 intake manifold phenolic gasket sent to me and I used poor man's machinist dye (blue wide-point Sharpie!) for my layout. 

I don't have pics of the scribe lines, but . . . I hope you can picture the traced gasket on the chunk of metal. LOL! I determined by, measuring carefully and some math, that the bore spacing for the engine (Honda D16) is 84mm. Armed with that information, I made a bunch of these:

What are those? Pretty close tolerance bushings for the throttle plate butter fly shaft. (THANK YOU JANNE!)

You can see the start of the holes for them here:

I got the holes started then realized I should square up the sides better before installing things that are supposed to be fairly exactly parallel. LOL! 

I didn't take pics of drilling boring holes for them (because, well, the process of boring is . . . boring), but you can see how they fit here:

I used the mill vise to press the bushings in place, two at a time to balance the load:

After I got to that point, I started working on the mounting flanges again. Setting things up in a vise takes time. And though. And time. And measuring. And precision. And mostly time. heh

I didn't bother taking pics of the drilling of pilot holes, but the next few pics will give you a sense of what I was doing:

I left myself some room for final porting and shaping, but I think they turned out pretty well!

(I only had to remake one mounting plate because I oops when setting up the hole spacing . . . LOL)

Some of the other things I was working on while all that squaring up was going on was the actual runners themselves!

I totally forget the exact dimensions of this stuff, but, again, it's 2024 probably schedule 40 pipe.

 Each one needed a small lip turned. Yes, I messed one up. Sue me.

One of the hardest parts of this whole job was turning the butterfly shafts. I managed to keep the tolerances to within +/- .001", which is good enough for me!

I ended up making 12 runners because I could and also because I know I would screw something up in the future.

 Now, an astute observer will notice that I really having filled in the whole story yet! Where are the flanges with the bushings pressed in? Well, I am glad that you asked!

They were getting drilled then bored to size then counterbored!

Drilling the pilot hole:

Using the largest dang bit in the shop (1.25", IIRC):

And then the horrifically painful process of manual boring with a boring head. It would have gone a lot faster if we didn't only have the crappiest Chinese boring bars that fit the boring head. *sighs* It took days to size the holes correctly! (Working after hours during deployment (in Iraq) for sometimes 4-5 hours straight.)

Taking the biggest cuts I could at first to just get to near the correct size:

On size and good finish!

To compare, this is what I start from:

Then, after all that painful stuff, I had to counterbore the top of the plates like so:

 In order to fit the runners in place thusly:

I started making throttle plates, but found out too late that the plates need to have a 10-15" angle on the edge . . . and then we started packing up the equipment. Who knows when I am going to get to finish this stuff . . . 

A good quote!

From a friend I tune for:

"We won't make this a fast car . . . but a slow airplane." ©
(Evidently everything he says is copyrighted according to some treaty from Geneva. heh) 

That made my evening. LOL!

It's DONE! Now the shipping adventure begins.

Justin got back to me with measurements on where to place the O2 sensor bung, so X marks the spot! I center punched the point, as anyone who has tried to drill round stuff knows that if you are doing it by hand, the bit will walk if you don't!

Here it is opened up to 3/8":

I used the bun to trace out how much it needed to be opened up, and it was a bit off from vertical:

I used my hanging grinder and an 1/8" carbide cutter to open up the hole thusly:

Looking good!

I happen to love this clamp! It isn't cheap, but it is very versatile, as it has swivel pads and is tension adjustable, so it will clamp down on anything from the thinnest sheet to up to about 4"!

http://www.lockjawpliers.com/ They are built very, very well. Better than real Vise-grips and faster to use. (Don't get me wrong, I still have and still love Vise-grips, but these things are just that much better!)

Here's the bung welded on:

And here is the finished product in all it's glory:

I had forgotten to get pics of the rest of the collector to downpipe welds:

I actually didn't like how the SS of the original header was welding. I just did the best I could. The good thing is that Justin isn't going to be driving this on the street anymore, and with the new support, I don't think there will be any cracking issues, at least where I welded on the header. heh

I'm getting better, but, still have consistency issues that I have nearly figured out:

Really concentrating on what was going on, I discovered that I am simply not rotating the torch enough. On small diameter pipe, the motion needed to keep the weld puddle consistent seems REALLY exaggerated, but it isn't. Once I realized that, my welds immediately became more consistent and regular. I will be using these techniques on my next several manifolds.

Now, how does one ship something so dang funky? Creatively and carefully. I wasn't going to find a normal rectangular box that would just work, so I made my own from Ikea desk box halves.

Here's the bottom piece, and me trying to figure out how best to do this:

I figured that my best bet was a clam-shell case, so, I started taping in foam supports to keep the header of the sides of the box and to keep it from pocking through, and also bent and taped the remainder of the box up in the back to make part of the tall side:

I stuffed in more packing to keep things in place in case of the worst disaster (I KNOW how "stuff-chuckers" work!):

Then I basically did the same thing for the top, and got it all connected and taped up:

I added sides to the box and then scribbled "THIS SIDE UP" on the top, and a few snarky comments on the rest of the box:

The lady at the FedEx office got a total kick out of the box and the attempt to have the box stay upright. She even had me plaster the box with "THIS SIDE UP" stickers that were bright read. She was laughing the whole time at my snarky asides on the box, and even offered to use some really wide packing tape to reinforce the corners, since she really liked the box. She also said that since it was a bit awkward and out of the ordinary (most of the weight is on the wide side), along with the placement of the address sticker and the "THIS SIDE UP" stickers, she thinks it has a good chance of getting to Colorado intact. We shall see . . . If the worst case happens, I declared a value of $499, which is more than enough to make a new header from scratch . . .  (I'm sneaky like that).