ah ok, cool. couldn't see them in the other photo.
Also, recommend you paint the A-pillar bars, vertical A-pillar support bars, and the gussets to the windshield frame flat black. Those white gussets will reflect off the inside of the windshield (I can see my gussets there reflect, but not as visible since they're matte black on my car). May or may not be a problem for you, but you don't want to have to pull the windshield to repaint them later if it is.
In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :
Good point, I'll add it to the list
Progress
No time to do car stuff but felt the urge to break out the go kart today. Some backstory: I got this thing when I was like 14 and itching to do some racing but couldn't drive. It came as a bare frame that had been decaying for years in some guys garage, so I had to rebuild the bearings, mount up new brakes, rebuild the carb like 7 times, make front seat mounts and mount the seat (which is way harder than it looks), and make the throttle and return assembly. Also ended up extending the exhaust so the muffler clears the seat, removed the governor, drilled out the jet, new pod filter, and added ceramic front bearings. Definitely a fun first project!
Fired right up (after sitting for 2+ years!!), took it for a few laps and promptly hopped the chain. lol
Anyways enjoy this video of me drifting it that I made when I was 16
Cleaned up the rust on the pinchweld and painted it:
Then painted the front bars on the cage flat black
Then had Safelite reinstall the windshield
All said and done they only charged me $35 and that was just the mobile service fee (parts and labor was free!!).
Srsly....
Some small stuff I did over the past ~6 mo.
ECU and some other box that I can't remember what it does both mounted up in the passengers foot well:
Dash mounts:
Then this weekend I fixed the seat positioning for the driver (I berkeleyed up and had Adam do them too far back).
Got a few more things coming (gauges, passenger seat, etc) that should make it drivable so hopefully it'll see some dirt this year.
In reply to Neslie :
Awesome project, and nice cage too. Rallycross seems like a great use for a 240.
That "other box" next to the ECU is the EZK (Bosch ignition controller) and it talks to the ECU.
Suggestion: add some sweet tool trays to your pin stands. Not my idea, but check out VW's WRC stands. They even have adjustable feet. One of the many cool details learned during hanging out in the service park in Mexico a few years ago.
Are those fronts and rears swapped round? Or am I seeing things?
The better to drift with?
In reply to Duder :
Yea I was thinking about those but got lazy. Tbh I won't actually get around to installing the receivers for the pin stands anytime soon anyways.
In reply to Gammaboy :
Yea the front and rears are swapped, in theory so it'll drift better. In reality it just kinda makes the handling weird and it still doesn't have enough power to hold a drift (even in the rain, with slicks).
Neslie said:In reply to Gammaboy :
Yea the front and rears are swapped, in theory so it'll drift better. In reality it just kinda makes the handling weird and it still doesn't have enough power to hold a drift (even in the rain, with slicks).
The drift trike guys slip a length of PVC pipe over the rear (kart) tyres and then inflate them - should be sufficiently little traction to sort your drift issue out
Hmm. Sounds like the same setup as the e30 where the alternator is jumped on by the gauge cluster. I just put a resistor in-line in place since I have no cluster any more, but it's a bit off. I have to blip the throttle to "excite" the alternator, else it doesn't work.
You're gonna need a master kill switch for rally anyhow, so that will solve your "not turning off" problem. Though I'm not entirely sure why that would happen in the first place. You should call Stephen, he's the electrical guru.
irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:You should call Stephen, he's the electrical guru.
Lol that's exactly what my dad said. I'm probably just thinking too hard and putting in a diode (or maybe even a resistor) will do the trick.
For everyone: I deleted the post (like right after I posted it too... but Josh is quick) he referred to because it is probable I'm just overthinking things. Basically the alternator is not charging because the 12v to "jump it" so to speak goes through the cluster (which I don't have) and I'm having some trouble recreating the circuit. Will explain once I figure it out.
Anyone ever panel mount an autogage 5" tach? Here's what I'm working with:
Will be mounted to ~3/16" abs
Well I found out something kind of funny when testing some new gauges. Alternators won't start charging until it gets 12v to initiate the magnetic field. Problem is that 12v apparently comes though the failing alternator warning light on the cluster (this is actually how a lot of cars do it), which I obviously don't have. Another fun thing is that if you just jumper the 12v to the alternator input the alternator actually backfeeds the 12v coming out of the ignition switch, so the car won't shut off when you remove the key. One thing I'm still confused about is that the resistance between the 12v input into the LED circuit and the output to the alternator is the same forwards and backwards, which makes no sense to me.
Here's a link that explains it and goes into more details on the circuitry in an alternator (it's a quick read so take a look): ac - Source of initial magnetic field in an alternator - Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange
So basically my alternator has been completely non functioning for the past year and I had no idea because it spent so little time running (and was on the charger most of the time). I only noticed because I had the car off the charger and started it a few times, running it for 20+ minutes total, half of which had the gauges and headlights on. The idle started dipping and tach went dead so I turned it off and tried to restart it, and the battery was basically stone dead. 11.2V across the terminals. So I probably need a new battery, lol. But atleast it has an LED in there now and is back to charging.
New NRG quick release:
This will now be the first car I've ever driven that has the wheel close enough for me to feel comfortable without being ridiculously upright.
Neslie said:Well I found out something kind of funny when testing some new gauges. Alternators won't start charging until it gets 12v to initiate the magnetic field. Problem is that 12v apparently comes though the failing alternator warning light on the cluster (this is actually how a lot of cars do it), which I obviously don't have. Another fun thing is that if you just jumper the 12v to the alternator input the alternator actually backfeeds the 12v coming out of the ignition switch, so the car won't shut off when you remove the key. One thing I'm still confused about is that the resistance between the 12v input into the LED circuit and the output to the alternator is the same forwards and backwards, which makes no sense to me.
Here's a link that explains it and goes into more details on the circuitry in an alternator (it's a quick read so take a look): ac - Source of initial magnetic field in an alternator - Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange
So basically my alternator has been completely non functioning for the past year and I had no idea because it spent so little time running (and was on the charger most of the time). I only noticed because I had the car off the charger and started it a few times, running it for 20+ minutes total, half of which had the gauges and headlights on. The idle started dipping and tach went dead so I turned it off and tried to restart it, and the battery was basically stone dead. 11.2V across the terminals. So I probably need a new battery, lol. But atleast it has an LED in there now and is back to charging.
Also I will note this is why I have a voltmeter in my car. It is saved me at least one time when my alternator died on stage, and we basically shut down all of our lighting and electronics and manage to limp to the end of the rally just on battery power. And then the car died like 1 minute after we finished. If I didn't have a voltmeter I would not have known that we were not charging and we would have died halfway through the course with all of our lights on....
Wiring for all the gauges and oil pressure light is done. Aside from the sensor connections all gauges just need 12v, 12v on a dimmer/rheostat, and gnd. I didn't plan ahead and order some bus bars with covers so I made some terminal blocks we had lying around work:
The gnd (on the right) is just ziptied directly to the cage and the 12v and dimmable 12v on the left are ziptied to an abs baseplate, which is ziptied to the cage. Then I have a plastic cover that will go over it with more zipties. Obviously making use of bleeding edge ziptie technology. The 12v into the terminal block goes through a 5A fuse.
Here's the wiring diagram for everything:
Currently about to start mocking up a dash panel to mount everything:
Current thoughts are tach front and center as shown, headlights and dimmer to the left, and everything else to the right (gauges up top, lights on bottom). I have a shift light but don't know how to mount it so I'm leaving it out for now. Also if I had one I think I'd end up spending way too much time on limiter because more light means more fast right?
Any thoughts on possible stuff I would be adding later (i.e more gauges, other warning lights, switches, etc)? I am torn on where to mount the kill switch and fire pull. There's really no place that I and a codriver can reach when strapped in (for reference my arm is fully extended when putting the car in 5th).
Anyways, I'm back to school on Sunday so it's been crunch time trying to get this electrical work finished. Unfortunately it's been very slow going, but hopefully I can finish the dash panel so I don't come back to a mess this summer.
The car is getting close to being finished enough for rally sprints I think which is exciting. Really all it needs (off the top of my head) is the harnesses installed, passenger seat, extinguishers, move the fuse panel so my foot can't hit it, fab a dead pedal, new wheel bearing, intercom, and hide the massive unused portions of the harness. I'd also like to get a pair of spare rally tires because I have had bad luck with debeading in the past (granted it was in an e30 that sucked at turning). So if anyone has some 15" Volvo wheels or some almost but not completely clapped out rally tires let me know.
In reply to Neslie :
I have a set of used 15" Hoosier hard compound 185 gravels if you're interested- two pretty well used, the other two "almost but not completely clapped out" depending on your definition.
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
Definitely interested!
Made some brackets to mount some of the instruments to the dash.
First up was the dash light pot and the headlight dial, which are originally mounted in this:
Which pops into the dash with clips, next to the cluster.
Replaced it with this:
Which spaces it back from the dash so the knobs don't stick out of the panel a bunch. Notice the two additions to keep the bases from rotating in case either of the nuts come loose:
Next up was a mount for the autometer tach. I couldn't really find anything on how to panel mount these, and the shape of it makes it a bit unique.
Here's what we came up with:
The tach and included mount, for reference:
The outermost flat pieces are riveted to the panel, and the circular part is hoseclamped around the small portion of the tach.
Overall a 10/10 time. Working with thin sheet aluminum and doing little brackets is fun. Easy drilling, get to use punches, bandsaw absolutely shreds through the stuff, rivets, easy to bend, etc. All the fun stuff.
Rest of the dash in the following post
Time to do the dash.
Started with 3 brackets to hold the panel:
Attached at the top and bottom with hardware:
^ pro tip use hose clamps. They are peak ziptie technology.
Then I mocked up the dash with cardboard:
Traced that onto wood and cut it out, then planned out all the gauge positions and marked all the areas I couldn't see:
Then scribed the shape onto some 3/16" ABS and cut it out, taping the visible side to avoid scratches.
I did the pilots on the wood because I had everything planned out there, and then transferred them onto the plastic. Then used drills/holesaws/jig saw (for the tach hole) to finish it up:
Still room for a kill switch, and possibly some other switches and gauges. BTW that was just a mockup, I still haven't wired everything in but hopefully it works.
Overall a complete and utter pain in the dick, but I'm pretty happy with how it came out.
Update: Everything works (including the dimmer for the backlight, haha suck it e30 guys), and my turn signals miraculously started working which is nice. The shift light is absolutely retina searing though so I'll have to add a resistor, and possibly a toggle switch while I'm in there (it came with a cover, but it's yellow and ugly).
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