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Yep, sure is... But iffen I say it out loud and TWWTFM hears me, I could get "ousted" from several things myself!!!

You can google for "west system glass transition" and a bunch of stuff will come right up. Or "epoxy glass transition".

And do you know "THE" reason that the Model T was painted black? Henry Ford was a time study expert. His studies showed that black paint dried the quickest. If he painted cars a different color, they would have cost more because they would have fewer cars built per hour,day, week....

I think I've heard that before, now that you remind me of it, Chuck. It's a great story, good insight into Mr. Ford. If black paint was $0.02 cheaper per freight-car load, I betcha Ol' Henry would have gone for it, too!

So, you delaminated any fiberglass lately? I been trying, no luck , but we haven't had a truly hot sunny day in the last three days...


JDK

GEE'S JD you are behind the times ..everyone knows that white is the new black
who knows ..if henry had offered white as a second option he may have sold twice as many cars ..Nothing wrong with black personaly..it hides things like brake dust,exhaust soot,cracks,horse flys, and anything else black that sticks to it..80% of the cars i clean are black

While I love black cars, I'll never have another small car that's black. I couldn't stop people from running over my Miata and it's ginormous when compared to a 7.

BRIGHT colors for me!!

Yo, Team Slotus!
I've got a bit of catching up to do... Me and James went to the shop last Tuesday, and installed that auger muffler I posted about. In "real life" it looked like this:And, looking behind it, you will see the usual "Team Slotus" weapons of new auto-part destruction, the file and grinder. Yes, it didn't fit the 3 inch pipe like it was supposed to. I'm guessing the pipe wasn't perfectly round, but the main problem was the "auger flights" on the muffler were nowhere near the same sizes. You could set the thing down and it would "rock" back and forth on the center flight. However, a few moments with the grinder and a lot of well placed foul language and it was whipped into shape!I think you can see a shiny, "just ground" edge on the upper flight.The center flight got the same treatment before we were done. OK, things moved along pretty quickly then, we stuck the "muffler" on the end of the Y pipe and tack welded stuff together.James tacked the auger into place in the pipe as well. We'll be welding things up totally soon, including that auger flight to the pipe.

And then, bein' out of gas, we didn't test the new muffler. Duhhh... I think Bubba was in charge of buying fuel for the Slotus... Gonna have to fire him again...

Stay tuned for next installment when we'll hear Bubba say... (To be continued!)

Yo, Team Slotus! Reverend Bubba here, calling the faithful to prayer, or to dinner, whichever comes first...

On the "Science Experiment" front, the test piece has sat outside continuously since my last posting about it. Most of the time, it was sitting on top of my black grill cover out in the driveway. It gets 5 or so hours of direct sun that way. On Saturday, I moved it out to the top of my mailbox, in direct sun most all day. It's still sitting there, although today we had mostly cloudy skies and rain. To date, no bubbling of fiberglass. Nor has it "wilted" or "farted" or turned into mush or anything. The stuff is just not that exciting... I was hoping for explosions or flames or at least strange odors... Nuthin'...

The experiment continues, we'll come back to it in the next few weeks... Months... But at some point, I'm gonna say to Hell with it and go on and paint the car...

OK, on the automotive front, James acquired an "Air Raid" intake for a Mustang at work. Came on a used car or something. Only problem was, it didn't quite fit on the Slotus. (It was not from the same year Mustang as the engine in the Slotus, I guess.) Any way, the intake as obtained would have put the air filter hanging out at top-of-intake height on the passenger side. I'm thinking I want to put it behind the engine, under the hood, hopefully in a high pressure area in front of the firewall. If it ain't a high-pressure area, we's gonna make it one... I was planning to put louvers across the rear of the hood anyway, and all I gots to do is turn that batch of 'em around and make little bitty air scoops out of 'em and Viola! High pressure air, which will surround the filter as it flows down and rearward into the side pod, helping to vent the exhaust heat.

So, how did we re-build the intake? Why, with PVC pipe from Lowe's! (SLowe's???) Isn't that how everybody (Formula 1, LeMans, Indy Car, etc) does it? TWWTFM was horrified, said I shouldn't use "sewer pipe" in the Slotus, that everybody would see it and know what it was immediately... I said, "Yeah, so what? If they don't like it, I'll throw Jamey at them like a hand grenade." OK, so y'all have been warned. And here's the first view of the new, specially tuned Slotus Power-Potty Induction System!!!Looks like it oughta be worth 15 horsepower or three extra flushes , what do y'all think?

And then, having installed the "Power-Potty Intake" and the auger muffler, we started the beastie up. With the auger muffler in place but no tailpipe, the sound was still appreciably quieter. Revved up wasn't bad, idle sounded nearly like a stock Mustang GT. Nearly... Sort of... It was good enough I think we'll just leave it that way until I get to an autocross site where the local region has a sound meter. I attempted to record a "cell phone video" of the car running, so as to compare the sound to the earlier ones, but evidently I ain't as smart as my smart phone, and it didn't record. Maybe next time... Or not... I'm sure I don't know...

While we had the engine running and were messing with the exhaust, finding leaks and so forth, I climbed into the cockpit. The metal wall of the footbox was hot, too hot to leave your hand on it for more that a second or so. (About like the test fiberglass when the oven thermometer said 150F.) But sitting in there, with shoes on, it wasn't a problem. I know it's nowhere near the heat it might get after a day racing and sitting outside in the summer, but it wasn't insulated yet either and the driver's side header doesn't yet have a gasket or all the bolts in it. So... Maybe it won't be tooooo bad when I'm driving it. We shall see...

OK, this has gone on long enough... I'll post the rest of todays frivolity in a minute, when I finish downloading the pictures. Y'all don't go away, I'll be right back. Sort of... Maybe...


JD Kemp

Hi JD,

So, have you noticed that everything that comes out of the oven is over-cooked? The wonky oven thermometer might explain that!

Bill

1/ I wasnt sure at first about the sewer pipe but i can now see that URINE control
2/ Fastest sewer pipe in the west
3/ When they ask you to back up do you have to call a plumber first
no really i like it,..it looks fine ..so where is the toilet gonna go ?
oooh theres at least 4 jamesgrenades headed in this direction..lets make it 5/ ..i heard those air filters were crappy

sorry mate i had to you left yourself WIDE open

No i can appreciate your thinking JD its straight out of the slotus manual for lateral thinkers


Kiwi Dave

Yo, Bill-
Nope, not had that problem... I don't call her TWWTFM for nuthin, ya know?!?!? That gal can COOK!!! (I don't think she looks at the thermometer any-hoo....)

Kiwi Dave! I relayed your comments to the afore-mentioned TWWTFM and she said you were "One sick puppy." Not that it's news to anybody or anything like that...

Thanks Y'all, for checkin' up on us here at Team Slotus... We can always use a bit more "Adult Supervision."

OK, last little bit o' news... Well, first, HamDip came home, she had gone to Hattiesburg to visit. We had to unload her stuff and make her welcome... Now, on to the car stuff...

I had this piece of hard black plastic that an old racin' buddy gave me months ago. I had intended to panel the front of the chassis with it, to funnel air into and through the radiator. I finally got around to cutting some pieces to fit, now that we're pretty much "set" on where things are going to be.

It doesn't look like much, but cutting and fitting the pieces two sides of the chassis took about an hour and a half. Honest, it did... And they're only about 12" X 22" overall. But it was all the little "cutouts" for various things that killed the hours. Anyhoo, test fitted, held w/ masking tape, but in place, here they are:Passenger side above, driver's side below
And then backing up a step, here's both of 'em together:Magnificient, no? I mean, they're no Power Potty Intake system, but pretty sexy, doncha think?

And that's the news from Team Slotus! Thank you for watching, and now a word from our sponsor... As soon as we get one...

Y'all come back any time!

JD Kemp

Yo Dave- That "lateral"... That's a latin word ain't it? Does it mean "Cheap" or "Slow"???? I forgot...


I really liked the one about "call the plumber to back up"!!! Good one!!!


According to James, the toilet is gonna be the driver's seat, the first time I hit the accelerator hard.

Peace, Love and "Dunnies"-
JD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunny

Now you know where the Oz slang comes from for the Holden Commodore, ie: "Dunnydoor"

Beleive it or not there's been a book (quite some years ago), The "Book of Australian Dunnys" full of a few hundred shots of various outback toilets with captions from around Oz, sure my parents have a copy still - about as useful as a glass door on a dunny

Kiwi Dave, I dunno how it works on the bottom of the world, (though I should mention that I've long been a fan of McArthur's Universal Corrective Map of the World) but "up here", you need the plumber after you've backed up.

JD, those are real nice pieces of hard black plastic with cutouts. I would not only have taken an hour and a half to make them, but I would have then discovered that they were backwards to what they should be.


Pete