After a few weeks of being much too busy to work on the Spitfire, I decided to warm back up with a cosmetic fix that has been nagging me for a while. I decided to tackle the windows, seals, and door trim. While not important to getting the car back on the road, I feel …read more
The ugliest part of my Spitfire has been the wheels. I had intended on cleaning them up and re-painting them, but having the vehicle undriveable for a few days to do so was unthinkable. But, with the car laid up with the transmission work, it was a great time to get this done. The rust …read more
I’ve been making a lot of progress lately, but it’s been a lot of little things that are difficult to write about. I’ll just lump them all together here in one big post. First I installed the new amber blinkers that I bought. Believe it or not the car originally had plastic lenses, but they …read more
My motor has an output shaft of 1 1/8″ with a 1/4″ keyway. How do I mate that to the mainshaft with an OD of .920″ and no keyway? Well, I machined a collar to slip over the mainshaft with an OD of 1 1/8″. Then, I milled out a deep keyway, to make sure …read more
Read Parts 1 and 2, first. Step 4. Drill and tap holes in the flanges for mounting the speaker and Buna-N rubber sheet. The reasons will become clear in later steps, but I’ll just describe what holes I drilled. One flange will be welded to the tube itself, so it will have nothing but tapped …read more
On April 23rd, 23andme.com ran a special on the anniversary of the discovery of DNA. $99 for their complete ancestry and health analysis kit, which usually costs $499. A bunch of my nerd friends and I got the kit, so we can analyze our own genes. They’re mine, why shouldn’t I know what they say? …read more
Progress has been slow lately on the direct drive conversion for my EV. I’ve been a bit busy with life lately. There’s been a lot of planning and discussing with local experts concerning the best way to implement the direct drive system. I’ve settled on using the rear extension off of the back of the …read more
One of my friends, Gretchen Keller, is half of a new blog. She’s focusing the blog on science and its effect on policy making. I’m sure it’s going to be an interesting read. They’ve just started and are already plunging into global warming. I guess that’s an obvious place to start. Enjoy!
Last week I finally got to head back up to Kagel to do some hang gliding. It had been a number of months since I last flew, and I was tired of my glider collecting dust. There was an incident on the mountain however. One of the other inexperienced pilots who launched right before me …read more
When I took apart the transmission and motor, I found the source of the annoying squeak at low speeds: my coupler was falling apart! I thought I had used Loctite to keep the bolts together, but I couldn’t find any evidence of it. The coupler was loose on the motor shaft, and the clutch plate …read more