| 05-02-2012 |
I haven't updated anything lately because I cut the tip of my finger almost off with a razor blade which made typing less than pleasant, time consuming and extra frustrating. It's healed up enough that I can type with all five fingers again, if not a little slower and cautious.
I realized I'm going to have to make a custom gas tank to go around the sway bars. The original style tank I ordered isn't holding up to what I want to do. The gallon capacity, at 14 gallons, is too small. It has no baffles inside. It wasn't intended for a fuel injected pump and though the website said you could install one, it doesn't fit the flat hole provided and the only areas for mounting the pump are unsuitable. There's about a million and 1/2 reasons this thing won't work. I went and talked to a guy that lives across the street from a friend that welds aluminum. He put me onto another guy who has been building street rods for years. I went to visit them both and came to the end result that the 2nd guy is going to cut out aluminum to my specs and the 1st guy is going to weld it together, so that meant it was time to build up the mock gas tank with cardboard. I went to a local body shop to get cardboard because they get in fenders and bumpers shipped in boxes big enough for what would suit my needs and then some.
Here's April taping together the sides after I got them cut out.
The hardest part was getting the top contour to fit the top strap because at one point there is a 90 degree turn followed by another 90 degree turn.
I finally got it made and took the pump, sending unit and filler neck to the guy today so he could cut the holes. He had already taken it to the 1st guy and had him tack weld it together except for the lid. The pump kit comes with a ring that has a small break in it which allows it to be slid into the tank and mounted up to the bottom of the top. To simplify this a ring was made from aluminum with the appropriate holes drilled and welded on top so that business will be much easier. I'll have some pictures of that when he gets finished and I have it fully welded.
I went to Pull-A-Part and found this ECU and the rear U-Joint mount that bolts to the rear end on the Explorer. Getting the U-Joint knocked out of this thing at the yard was about as much fun as going to a Rap Concert. One of the clips broke inside and then it didn't want to come loose. Since I'm changing from a drive by wire setup to a drive by cable I was told by the guy making the wiring harness it would be best to find an ECU that had been used with a drive by cable setup. This meant 1998-2002. That wasn't a problem since I haven't gotten an ECU yet. Apparently I'm not the only one looking for one of these things because out of all the trucks there this was the only one still there. I found it in a 1999 GMC Yukon. I also picked up the bolts that hold the rear sway bar to the frame since I didn't get them last time.
I've been wanting to put a horn on my motorcycle for a while. Since my father owned a dealership growing up my mother always drove different vehicles. I remember one of those vehicles being a mid-90's Park Avenue Buick and it had a horn that sounded like mini train horn. I'd been contemplating putting this setup on my motorcycle because of the exorbitant amount of horrible drivers in this area and after a pedestrian walked out in front of me a couple weeks ago (he slowly strolled across 4 lanes of traffic and never looked ONCE) I decided it had to be done. While I was at Pull-A-Part I nabbed a set of the dual Buick horns. These were an option on the Buicks, so I had to find a car that had the 4 horns rather than the standard two.
I got this old piece of steel back out that I got from the scrapyard a while back. I welded a tab on it so I could hold it in the vice and cut out whatever shapes I needed. I almost used it all up on this project.
After a whole lot of mocking up and holding the horns up to see how I could cram all four of them under the front of the bike I made this first piece by cutting one long rectangular piece out the right size and drilling two holes to mount it to the old horn-mount location. Then cut out two small tabs and welded them on the ends, drilling holes in them to mount the horns.
And surprisingly enough, they fit.
Then after a lot more measuring and mocking up, I welded two more tabs on for the center two horns and drilled holes in them as well. Unfortunately, my clutch cable is right in the way and every time I want to hold this piece up to see if something will fit I have to disassemble at least one of the middle horns. I don't want to disconnect the clutch cable because it works really well right now and the bike is so old I'm afraid if I mess with it I won't get it back as good as it is. Leave well enough alone.
Then after that I had to add two more braces in a similar fashion between the horns because of a slight vibration problem. This gave it enough rigidity to take care of the problem.
Then after making a new wiring harness I bolted it on. I'm going to run it this way for a while to make sure it's going to work. I'm going to add a couple of side panels to hide the horns a bit, but not before I find out if I'm going to have rubbing issues or start blowing fuses or blocking too much air flow and causing any overheating issues.
I just ran one long wire to a relay and spliced all the other wires into that one wire. Testing it was a pain because the battery was low so it had to be running to have enough juice to power the horns, otherwise it would just blow one of them, but since my starter is busted (thanks to RareElectrical on ebay. NEVER buy from them, or if you do, pray nothing goes wrong with your order. These people are ridiculous) I would have to push the bike off down the driveway and then come back to have it idle and test the horns.
The wiring turned out to be a giant pain. I blew a fuse looking for a good power source and wound up accidentally pulling the headlight wiring harness loose and looking for that problem forever (it's hidden within a plastic covering, so it's not evidently clear at first that's what happened) and then the left blinkers quit working which turned out to be a quick-connect wire pulled loose inside the fairing compartment. A mechanic at the dealership where my father works and I work part-time gave me an older relay he had. Even though I know full well how relays work for some reason that day I couldn't get my little mind wrapped around the idea and it took me forever to figure out a good way to wire it up. I finally was able to locate the power wire to the original horn way up under the tank and also splice into the power wire for the headlight that comes straight from the "fuse box," if that's what you want to call a plastic container with 3 glass fuses in it. I wanted to maintain the original horn button so I took the box apart on the handle bars with the switches for the headlight, signals and horn. The horn button essentially just grounds out the wire going to it, allowing the circuit to complete, so I was able to test and make sure the switch worked by using an Ohm meter and making sure there was continuity between the switch and the frame when the button was pushed.
At long last, after I decided to go with a custom gas tank, I was able to go ahead and mount the sway bar, which meant I had to make some mounts. Fortunately when I went to the scrapyard a while back I had picked up some C-notch to practice welding on. It couldn't have been more perfect for what I needed if I had tried.
After a little cutting and grinding and semi-professional circle drawing with a marker, it ended up like this. The second one turned out much more to my liking than the first one. They will both structurally do their job just as well, but I took what I learned from the first one and allowed the second one to be aesthetically better.
This point had some thick steel to get through. Every time I have to do something like this now I think about how much the guy at the yard sale last year ticked me off. There's a guy that comes down from Kentucky every weekend and hits up every yard sale starting as early as possible. He buys stuff cheap then goes back and has a store he sells all the stuff at. I went looking for a drill press and this guy walked up to the guy and started talking to him literally 30 seconds before I got to the guy and he wound up buying it, then tried to sell it to me at another house that day for twice what I heard him give for it.
And as you can see, there are going to be clearance problems.
I wound up making it fit, but the other side turned out much cleaner with a staggered hole.
Here's the end result
The correct Lokar shifter came in (black, not chrome like the first one they sent). I have to say that these are the absolute worst instructions I've ever read. They tell you to mount the right plate first, but don't tell you which plate is the right plate. The plates have part numbers on them, but they don't bother telling you which number is which. Also, if you install it in the order the directions say, you'll have to take it back apart at least once.
The directions said that there should be two bosses on the side of my transmission and these two studs provided should screw into the bosses. I looked all over that transmission for these bosses, assuming I was being ignorant and overlooking them. I couldn't find them so I went to the internet and searched for different types of 4L60E transmissions or to see if I had the wrong transmission. I finally called Lokar and the guy, who was very nice, explained that there were two threaded "cups" provided that needed to be pushed into the transmission. This was not only not mentioned in the directions, it was explained as though this step wasn't even needed. The guy said he knew the directions were bad and acted as though he has to answer this question 10 times a day. I would have been much better off not reading the directions and just putting it together by looking at it and figuring it out.
After a few other ridiculous directions (telling you to mount a plate in the wrong holes for example) it finally looked like this.
Lokar makes an adapter now that replaces the shifter knob and the neutral lock out switch. Instead of having a nasty looking shifter with a button on top, you can now mount any shifter ball you want and simply shift out of park by pushing down on the shifter. This worked out great because my father has had this shifter sitting ball behind a clock in his house since before I was born. He mentioned using it on the car and I thought it was a great idea. The only problem is that the shifter had threads that didn't match anything offered by Lokar so I'm going to try to rethread the top half of it so it will screw into the ball. I have some tools to run threads but for some reason I didn't have the right size so I'm going to see if my neighbor down the street, who also works on projects, might have something I can use.
Last Saturday we went to the Squarefest in the middle of town where dad accidentally won "unofficial" 2nd place. He and I met up at the Squarefest and parked out cars down the road together. We wound up sitting in the shade next to the car show portion of the festival and as everything was winding down we pulled our cars up next to our friends' cars so we wouldn't have to walk so far when we decided to leave. Right after the mayor came buy and did the judging. There was no 2nd place trophy, but the officer that was with the mayor came up after and told dad that if there were a 2nd he would have won and he thought the '61 should have taken 1st. My nephew, who apparently knew the car was being judged, knew for sure he was going to win a trophy almost as tall as him and proceeded to tell everyone that we were "ripped off." Hehe.
When I was around 9 or 10 years old I helped dad and his friend restore this car. When I say helped, I didn't do near as much as Jacob helps me do now, but I did offer some limited assistance.
