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As you're seeing, amp capacity hinges some on length (voltage drop) and more on size. I don't know what the amp capacity of a diode lead 3/4" long is, but the marker/signal draw that is passing through those is sub-1a. Even my headlights on full bright are in the couple amps range; all my lighting is LED in part to keep the amp draw down, but mostly because I just like them.

To the fan bit, 44a on a regular Bosch 1" cube relay? I wouldn't. I'd run two relays for that. My fan runs off a Volvo relay and they run a double thick 3/8" or so wide spade for the power side. Is 22a each running or startup? My fan from dead stop to full speed will kiss 80a but only pulls about 25-30a running. I don't normally start it like that, it's staged to start on low (30ish start and 12-15 run) but it needs to be able to survive that. I can't imagine a Bosch relay, or a spade terminal, surviving 44a running load. If I had two fans I'd probably try to stage them as well so I'm not starting both at once, either by temperature or with a timer to delay the second by 10-20 seconds so the startup amps don't get so crazy.

My fan was staged on temp before and I'm planning the same again. Probably will throw in a boost pressure trigger on this car as well since that's kind of a precursor to intake temp and boost will likely come up before intake air temp does, so prespinning the fan in that case is probably a good thing.
 
So I did a dumb today, and figured I'd share on the off chance it saves somebody else some brain damage.

I'm doing wiring. Lots of wiring. Turn signals, headlights, markers, brake lights, engine sensors, injectors, coils, etc. I've been using an M12 tool battery for most of my testing because I didn't really want to hook up real battery yet in case I oops bad and short something.

So I'm wiring along, and my marker/signal interplay is going wonky. Like, if I have the signals on everything is fine, but if I have the markers and the signals on, it wigwags the other front marker that isn't signaling, and blinks the whole tail.

Spent a bunch of time scratching my head, only to figure out that the root issue is the M12 battery can't supply enough juice to run all my lights reliably. It can run one or two, but all four plus an amp worth of ballast resistor to make the flasher flash at normal rate, and it can't hang. Hooked up the real battery and the lights work great.

On a side note, the horn made fart sounds with the M12 battery and now works properly too. 9 year old me wanted to keep the fart horn.
 
No pic to update this time, which seems un-fitting of what this update is, but it runs. Started for the first time this afternoon. Now the "fun" work begins of getting it running right-ish without a dyno.
 
ScottRS said:
No pic to update this time, which seems un-fitting of what this update is, but it runs. Started for the first time this afternoon. Now the "fun" work begins of getting it running right-ish without a dyno.
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Always a good feeling. :smokin:
 
It's running, somewhat hard starting, timing is off, but it runs and drives enough to take it to the gas station and back. Tuning to continue.

Meanwhile, time for more Cardboard Aided Design, this time, skidplates. I like the slidey aspect of UHMW, but it's not rigid enough to be standalone, so I'm backing it with 1/4" aluminum. What numbers I can find look like it'll be a bit stiffer than 3/16" steel, but lighter. The buggy had a mix of 1/8" and 3/16" steel backing its UHMW plates, and those were 3/8". I went 1/2" on the UHMW this time, as I'm hoping to not be "consuming" these any time soon, but this car is somewhat heavier.

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I haven't driven it over 25 yet, but so far other than the engine power being off because of the tuning, drives like the buggy did, which is pretty good. Drove by two of Firestone's PD between my house and the gas station, they didn't seem to care. Small town, not much to do, and they're fairly accustomed to the general local redneckery, but I figure that's also a "time will tell" thing. I want to do rear corners and finish/mount the tailgate, as those will make it look "Jeep" from the back. It already looks "Jeep" from the front, but no corners/tailgate looks solidly "tube car" in the back.
 
Rub mah belly! On a rock maybe. Skidplates are on, there's an engine tombstone, belly, and boatsides. Some more tuning and I can maybe 'wheel it. Not a minute too soon either, Trail Hero is only a couple weeks away.

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Small fabwork speedup trick here. Got a lot of holes to countersink, particularly in a soft or grabby material (like UHMW skidplates) ? Make a countersink stop out of a washer, countersink it deep enough that you just set it over the hole you're sinking, and let it rip. Next next next and you don't have to recheck over and over if they're at the right depth.

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ScottRS said:
Small fabwork speedup trick here. Got a lot of holes to countersink, particularly in a soft or grabby material (like UHMW skidplates) ? Make a countersink stop out of a washer, countersink it deep enough that you just set it over the hole you're sinking, and let it rip. Next next next and you don't have to recheck over and over if they're at the right depth.
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That's cool. So you just drill till it spins? Does the shavings ever cause it to spin early?
 
ScottRS said:
Small fabwork speedup trick here. Got a lot of holes to countersink, particularly in a soft or grabby material (like UHMW skidplates) ? Make a countersink stop out of a washer, countersink it deep enough that you just set it over the hole you're sinking, and let it rip. Next next next and you don't have to recheck over and over if they're at the right depth.
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I was wondering how you had a circle around all your countersunk bolts makes sense now.
 
HELL BOUND said:
I was wondering how you had a circle around all your countersunk bolts makes sense now.
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Yeah, I got a burr on it, was countersinking in the dark, didn't realize what I'd done until it was too late and I'd put little round scars on my whole left side boatside. Fixed it before the next panel. Oops.
 
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WaterH said:
That's cool. So you just drill till it spins? Does the shavings ever cause it to spin early?
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Yeah, just sink till it spins. Haven't had an issue with it spinning early, but I suppose it could be an issue. Much bigger issue for me was the countersink wanting to dig into the UHMW and sink deeper than I wanted it to, which this puts a stop to very quickly. Countersink just shaves off what curls it's already made and smooths like it should this way.
 
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Just got home from Trail Hero, with a few lessons learned and some stuff to do, but no longer anything time-critical.

The belly tank fuel location is, in-general, not a good idea. I have some ideas for making it better that I'm going to try before giving up, as I have a total of ~25 gallons onboard with it, and I don't want to give up cargo space for fuel, nor do I want to downsize the tank capacity. But the belly tank placement between exhaust and transmission, is heating it to the point of boiling. I have added a fan to dump air into the belly and a fuel cooler, and those helped. Taking the body off, helped. But body-on 45+mph driving, it'll get too hot and lose fuel delivery. I'm going to put a shield between the exhaust and tank and am considering hood-liner-heat-mat on the tank itself to try and reduce how much radiates into it off of the trans and exhaust. Belly fan will probably stay for the time being. I think I need some more air circulation in the engine bay as well, particularly the rear outboard corners of the hood (imagine that, where the turbos are) has near-zero airflow and I don't think that's helping anything.

Lego body, rocks. Want a body to drive in town, put it on. Want a buggy that scratches don't matter, take it off. Heating-wise, it gets hotter than I'd like with the body on, particularly at speed, so I treated it as a two-year-old that just wants to run around naked for the week. Four bolts and the hood is off, four more and the windshield/cowl assembly are sitting on the trailer next to it.

The wagon cage has its downfalls. It's a big car. It's like 'wheeling my living room. It's big, it's comfy, I like it, but it's definitely not a comp car. It's a cruiser. I did hit the upper rear corners of the cage a couple times on overhangs, not enough to make me regret doing that instead of the fastback cage I drew up, but enough to be worth noting.

I should've rebuilt the turbos. I'd have burned less oil over the past week if I'd ridden a two-stroke. Ohwell, add oil, rebuild turbos, life goes on.
 
Nice update!

On the fuel heating up, I doubt the tranny is making that much heat in the fuel, but exhaust is making lots. How hot could the tranny be? Maybe 200 or 220 on the surface? An inch away it would be way less. The exhaust could be multiple times that temp. A couple inches away, it could be still hotter than your tranny. I would be looking at a blanket wrap around the exhaust. Maybe ceramic coat the exhaust and than blanket.
 
HYDRODYNAMIC said:
Trailers are cool
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It's not mine; I'd just taken the body off when the media crew filming Trail Hero was in need of somebody to tow their gear/trailer up to cover Supercrawl later that day (then over to Trail Breaker the following day). One of the upsides to 'wheeling a bus, it tows pretty well. Rear steer is simultaneously a blessing and a curse backing a trailer, it's handy, it's a lot faster than front-only, but it gets confusing. I had to pause a couple times, just put the front straight, and drive it with just the rear backwards; other than the neck-twisting, it makes it a bunch easier to get into tight spots.

I didn't get a lot of pics of my rig at Trail Hero, did more towing and recovery than actual 'wheeling, but that's not a big deal. Gave me a chance to start getting familiar with it. The Special Needs Access run was really cool to see the smiles and hear from the participants about fun it was, how they've heard about the area but never been there before, and how now they see why people rave about it.
 
One more "hindsight is 20/20" thought... I'm not going to post pics of this, but I wired this car with the cowl on, and let myself get pushed for time, sloppy, etc. With the cowl off... it's a mess. I should've wired it naked and put the cowl back on after. Somebody probably has pics of it in a ghetto hackfab thread on electrical work somewhere already.
 
WaterH said:
Nice update!

On the fuel heating up, I doubt the tranny is making that much heat in the fuel, but exhaust is making lots. How hot could the tranny be? Maybe 200 or 220 on the surface? An inch away it would be way less. The exhaust could be multiple times that temp. A couple inches away, it could be still hotter than your tranny. I would be looking at a blanket wrap around the exhaust. Maybe ceramic coat the exhaust and than blanket.
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it may only be 220 but when their is minimal airflow, but it will heat soak everything around it. had this issue with an U4 i worked on. ended up drilling 1.5" holes all down the boat sides, which significantly helped the situation.
 
While I suspect the transmission's contribution is less than the exhaust's, it isn't helping the situation. I'm going to try some stuff and see if I can make it work. As much as I do acknowledge that the belly tank in-general isn't the greatest idea, from a volume and space utilization standpoint, I'd really like to keep it.

For sale of discussion, my trans temp sensor is on the hot side cooler line, PS temp is the same way, trans got to a max of 220, ps to a max of 200. Both drop 30-40 degrees through their coolers. Engine coolant temp saw 235 max, I didn't check what the temp drop through the radiator was.
 
mobil1syn said:
is the upper tank gravity feeding the belly tank?
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Yes. I have some "small" modifications (like pulling a belly tank, cutting it open, welding plumbing into it, and putting it all back together is small) to do to make it into a fuel trap, but overall, I'm happy with how it feeds so far.
 
So backing back up a bit in history, when I decided I wanted to build this, I knew I didn't want to recycle the fairly tired 302 out of my buggy. This thing needed (cue Tim Allen) more power.

Junkyard 351w was procured. Turns out, I got really lucky, it was a 96 351w, which is (supposedly) the only year ford made a 351w with factory hydraulic roller lifters. Whether that's true I don't know, but whatever. It had them. Unfortunately, it also had a cam that looked like it'd been deburred by Red Green, and several lifters were seized internally.

Factory heads however, sucked. Tiny valves, iron, just junky. So new heads, cam, lifters, were all needed.

Since I was putting turbos on, manifolds or headers weren't an off the shelf option. I chose the heads I did because they have the wider aftermarket exhaust bolt spacing, 3" in addition to the stock 2", so I could fit decent size tubes without crimping them. That in turn meant making header flanges, and since I wanted enough meat to be able to skim them flat in case I needed to post-welding, I cut them from 1/2" thick bar stock.

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Most people put old license plates on their wall, but you used them as a machining fence. That's cool. So is the 4lbs of metal you took out of 1/2" stock. Such a great picture.

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What kind of heads are those? Not afr or twisted wedge....
 
The heads are Blueprint HP-9009.

I have lexan for some of my machining fencing, but my vise overhangs the table such that I can't use the lexan. License plates are about the right size to just lego up fence enough to keep most of the coolant on the table. It's a bit redneck, but I'm ok with that.
 
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