Keeping up the pace set yesterday with the install of the motor, I decided to spend most of the day today working on the car. I’m exhausted now, but it was nice to get some more done on the car. I started by thinking about mounting the radiator but ran into issues, then went to installing the driveshaft but ran into issues and ended up with mounting the radiator… with issues.
Installing the Engine
Today was a big day in the build: the installation of the engine. The day started off with a breakfast get together with some of the local Cobra guys at Skip’s in Chelmsford. (Ironic I lived five minutes from there for years never having gone and now I’ve been there twice in the last month or so…)
One of the local guys, Ray, who lives in Dracut came by in the morning and I rode down there with him. Breakfast was good, although the turnout was small this month. As we were leaving another one of the Cobra guys, John, asked to come up and was, of course, welcome. Jen also came over to lend a hand and take photos.
For a writeup and pictures, read the rest of this post.
Minor Change to the Live Camera
I made a small change this morning to the code I wrote that is producing the live camera image. There have been times lately that there have been a dozen or more people watching the camera at a given time, and at a peak I’ve had several times more than that. Previously the code on replicabuilding.com would pull an image from my garage once per user, which was both inefficient and was slowing things down for everyone during those times.
This morning I updated the software so it only will pull a image from the garage once every ten seconds no matter how many users are watching. This should mean two things — first response should be much faster if more than one person is watching and second you may note the timestamp in the image may be up to ten seconds behind. Hitting refresh on the image will not update it any faster than once per ten seconds.
This should make both my web server, my network here and the viewers happier.
I-Squared Box and Prepping for the Engine
I took today off and spent a good bit of the day working on the car. The primary thing I needed to get done today was get ready to drop the engine in tomorrow. After getting a bit of a flash of insight on how I can mount the I-Squared power controller, I ended up doing that as well.
For more details, read the rest of the post.
April 18-19, 2008
This weekend hasn’t been terribly productive from the standpoint of getting work done on the Cobra. My parents have been in town and that has been most of my focus. However, during some free moments, I’ve gotten some small bits of work done on the car.
I’d ordered some more parts from Breeze Automotive this week and most of them showed up on Friday. This morning I installed a fuel filter bracket, adjusted some running of the fuel lines, and some other miscellaneous bits. Jen also came over and helped me bend the larger fuel line.
To see photos, read the rest of this post…
A Weekend of Work
This three day weekend started off, as I posted two days ago, with picking up the engine. That wasn’t the only work I got done this weekend, however. Although this ended up another weekend where I seemed to spend more time in stores than working on the car, I made some good progress. Read more for details and (hopefully) photos.
More Site Software Issues
I apologize in advance for any screwiness you may see while browsing around replicabuilding.com.
I upgraded to the new version of WordPress, which has been out for a few months. Unfortunately the Gallery plugin I use to manage the photos doesn’t work with it and the authors of it don’t seem to be in any sort of a rush to get it working, apparently because they disagreed with some of the changes.
I’m trying to figure out what options I’ve got for managing photos going forwards, but posts for a while may be just image dumps like the last one until I figure something out. You may find older links may no open correctly into the larger images, as well.
Annoying…
Need Something to Make It Go
A car without a motor is pretty much nothing but an overpriced wagon — its not even as cool as a big-wheel since you can’t even pedal to make it go. Since I have wheels, I figured it was about time to do something about making it go.
I know its been a while since I posted an update, however I have been up to things this week. On Monday, I finally ordered the motor for the car! I happened to have taken today off, and surprisingly the motor was finished in just a few days (as opposed to months for some engine builders!), so I met up with Mike Forte and got the motor from him!
For more details and (of course) pictures, read the rest of the post!
Minor Site Updates
This morning I’ve upgraded some of the software running replicabuilding.com. The biggest change you may notice is that the resizing of the gallery images that are embedded inside of posts is dramatically better now. Previously the resize was making the pictures look grainy and pixelated. It appears now that this problem is fixed, so both throughout older posts and going forward the photos included on the pages should be a lot clearer.
Installing Gas Pedal
Today wasn’t quite as productive as yesterday, but I got the gas pedal positioned and installed, and did some adjustments to the way the Wilwood pedals were installed to make it all work. I also got part of the drivers side footbox riveted up. As usual, read the rest of the post for pictures and more detail.