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... I am still making available my old diary page for you to read. A number of links do not work on it anymore, but there is still good entertaining content there.... Click Here to Read Original Diary Page
Chassis Construction Phase Entries are in chronological order. There will ultimately be 33 entries on this page starting with March 6, 2003. 
| March 6, 2003 - (First Diary entry) I should have started this diary years ago, but for some reason, I just never started. Maybe it's because it takes perserverance and dedication to document a long term car project. I don't think I have too much of either. However, not too many people think about building a car from scratch in half of a 2 car garage with only a few hand tools and a cheapo welder so I might as well scratch some notes down for posterity. maybe I'll be famous someday. |
| March 26, 2003 - I welded the fuel tank shut this morning. I used a flat plate of 18ga mild steel and put the welder on the lowest setting. It welded shut with no probelms and no explosions. Tonite I will fill it with water and see if there are any leaks. Then it goes to the local radiator shop for an interior coat of epoxy. I got the clutch master cylinder from Dansperformanceparts.com but unfortunately the 3/4" brake m/c's are on extended backorder. I was hoping to get those soon so I can finish up the pedal assy.
In another stroke of good fortune, my neighbor Brian has offered to donate a pair of Sparco Speed seats and (hopefully) a full set of 15" racing rims and tires. The rims are 12Lbs each! Brian's work have a full in-house racing program that runs the Speedvision import race series. They get stuff like this donated to them all the time. I am apparently the lucky beneficiary. It's who you know, not what you know.
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| April 9 , 2003 - My Sparco Seats arrived yesterday! They are Black with red leather wear strips. I fit (perfectly). I suppose I should have tried sitting in a seat before ordering these, but Brian, my neighbor assured me that I would fit. Cool, I do. The 3 new master cylinders arrived today too. These were ordered from www.dansperformanceparts.com . I had originally ordered a trio of cheaper Girling style master cylinders, but those were on semi-permanent back-order, so Dan called me up, explained the problem and offered to upgrade me to the CNC brand master cylinders for only a few dollars more. What a huge difference in quality! The CNC units are awesome. I highly recommend Dans Performance Parts for a low cost source of parts.
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| April 21 , 2003 - I was able to spend most of the weekend working on the car. Thanks goes out to my lovely wife for letting me "play" while she watched the house and family! I decided that the drivers seat needed to be on sliders so that my "vertically challenged" friends could drive the car too. So to recap - over the weekend I welded the frame up completely, no longer in tacked-frame mode. I made a seat slider assembly from the original MR2 underseat assembly and I finished welding up all the bracketry for the rear suspension and Panhard bar.
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| May 13 , 2003 - Lots has happened on the little Bala. I managed to get the motor hung and the windshield frame is ready to be fabricated out of 2" tube. I have started thinking about the exhaust system. My latest whim is to use a motorcycle header chopped and mated to a flange that fit the 4AGE motor. The kicker is that I am thinking about turning the whole thing upside down and running the header out over the top of the engine! Only time will tell if I can make this idea work. I do know that it would look awesome! Imagine two carbon fiber or titanium motorcycle exhaust cans side by side running back along the centerline of the car... I'll have to work up some illustrations of that idea.
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| June 23 , 2003 - The windshield frame is finally fabricated and welded onto the frame. The motor mounts are fabricated and the motor is out again, ready to be cleaned up and prepped for another install. With much help from Jim Williams, a fellow Kit Car Magazine cover boy (CONGRATS JIM!!!), we hauled the bare frame over to Jims house to fabricate the rollbar and the windshield frame. We also got to weigh the frame. It comes in at 225Lbs. I have decided to fabricate a Watts link axle location system in replacement of the Panhard bar that I already built. With a Watts link I can now use the stock MR2 header running underneath the engine. This in an effort to make things more simple. The panhard bar ran right across the only place I could possibly route the stock exhaust pipe... A Watts link opens up that area and greatly simplifies (lowers the cost, shortens development time) of the entire exhaust system. I have a plan in place for building the Watts Link. Stay tuned...
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| July 07 , 2003 - I finished the new Watts Link assembly that replaces the original Panhard Bar. Panhard bars and Watts Links are ways of securing the rear axle against lateral motion. If you recall, I ran into space issues routing the exhaust with the panhard. That seems to have been solved by throwing money, time and complexity at it. Just not as MUCH money, time and complexity as a completely new exhaust system! I also found time to extend the shifter mechanism forward by 6-1/2". This required cutting the expensive MR2 cables and welding in extensions. Luckily, everything looks like it will work. The exception being a plastic bushing that I didn't remove from the cable before welding. (poof)... I hope Ace Hardware has a replacement. Since it is so damn hot these days, I have been looking for excuses to stay inside. Chris (aka-Cymtriks) gave me some valuable pointers on how to increase the torsional rigidity of my chassis, specifically the rear engine cradle. I built a new balsa model 'half-cut' of the rear of the chassis and played around with different brace configurations. Adding the bracing was a real eye opener. The brace that I had originally intended to use didn't work nearly as well as I thought it would. Some additional braces and it stiffened right up. Thanks Chris! "Triangulate, triangulate, triangulate!" I also seem to be closer to solving my fuel tank accessibility issue. I am simply going to make the entire rear under-brace removable and hang the fuel tank from rubber isolated straps. This will be my next project.
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| August 01, 2003 - Does that look like a car!? At this point, I think I am about 2 weeks away from driving this car on the street! (Illegally of course) It's possible that I'm delusional about the timeframe. Still, the frame is virtually finished (various brackets and tabs needed), the hydraulic lines are finished, the fuel tank is almost finished (filler and piping required), the suspension is finished, the steering is finished, the seats are finished, the windshield frame is almost finished (bracing required)... And so all that's left to get the car running is to wire the engine. This may take longer than I imagine. Click here for complete details |  | August 04, 2003 -Put the suspension back on the car and rolled the car outside for a breath of fresh Arizona air. Only 109f and 70% humidity today. Gotta love the monsoon season in the American Southwest. |  | August 05, 2003 - I only first saw the Lamborghini Gallardo last week and my jaw just dropped! I can't stop thinking about how la Bala looks very similar to the baby Lamborghini from some angles. (edited 9/95/03--After further analysis, I think that la Bala will have a little less "edgeiness" to the lines. Even so, still quite inspiring. So I have taken some design hints from the baby Lambo. Here is a highly re-touched photo of the Gallardo made to look like the NEW and improved Bala, and also an overlay of the original (un-retouched!) la Bala on top of those changes. The profile is strikingly similar! I think I like a longer nose on the car. Please let me know if you like the revised look. | No Photo Available
| September 22, 2003 - My digital camera died last month and I had to send it to the factory for service. So there were no pictures taken last month. I just got it back however, and it works again! Although I haven't updated the website in over a month, I have kept busy building. I fabricated the exhaust system, ran the cooling lines to the front radiator, installed the gas pedal and ran the throttle cable, and did a whole bunch of chassis reinforcement/triangulation. | | | September 25, 2003 - I now have a very very large sheet of aluminum (5' x 12') and a spanking new sheet of 4'x8' 16ga mild steel sitting in the sideyard. The ali will become the undertray, and will be bonded to the frame with 3M VHB tape. The tape is extremely strong, structural in fact. I am excited to try out the VHB tape since it should eliminate a lot of rivets! The added benefit is that it serves to isolate the ali sheet completely from the steel frame, thus preventing galvanic corrosion, which over time will rot the aluminum. Also recently arrived is a Hawker GP13EP sealed battery, which is amazingly small but supposedly more than capable of operating in a small car like la Bala with few accessories. (Time will tell if this battery will be worth the $25 that I spent on it). I also got the radiator cleaned and pressure tested. | | | September 30, 2003 - Not much progress on the car. The past week has been all about other things. However, my air powered sheet steel shears arrived today. It will cut through 14ga sheet steel. That's good! I love eBay! Now I can panel the car. Today I managed to get over to the Arizona Department of Motor Vehicles to inquire (again) about the requirements for licensing and registering la Bala for road use. I went back again because I can't quite believe it will be so easy, but the process is commonly used for Dune Buggies. All I need are some balloon tires.... :-) | | | October 13, 2003 - Got close to 15 hours on the car this weekend. Once I cleaned up the mess, it doesn't seem like I got much done, but I managed to work on the engine and the frame and cut a large amount of the paneling. I've got the scarred knuckles and blisters to prove it! The worst part of the weekend was my decision to degrease nasty engine parts. I told myself that I wasn't going to invest much time in this engine, but the coolant intake pipe was corroded through, and I had to remove the alternator to get to it. Then I found a huge amount of crud behind it, so I decided to scrape it off. Scraping looked bad so I had to degrease it. The coolant pipe was corroded inside, so I decided to replace the waterpump. While I was getting at the waterpump I decided to replace the timing belt. Now everything was apart and all greasy, and I can't stand putting together something dirty and greasy, so then I spent hours cleaning parts, chasing threads, replacing o-rings.... Degreaser really stings inside cuts and scrapes! | | | October 27, 2003 - Another good weekend in the Graber garage! The paneling is cut and pre-fitted, ready for welding. I also spent at least 5 hours going over the chassis with a fine-toothed comb and a wire brush, checking all tube joints for missed welds and incomplete welds. I feel much better about the state of the chassis. It is extremely strong and rigid. I know that this strength and rigidity come at the cost of weight, but that's solved when I install the complete IHI RB-5 turbo and intercooler package that I bought off of ebay for $200. In any case, the car will still be under 1,500Lbs(est.) For the turbo I'll have to fabricate an exhaust manifold, but otherwise I have a complete kit including oil and coolant lines, and all the air plumbing. I also now need to replace the stock Fuel injection and ignition system with a MegaSquirt and MegaJoltLiteJunior system. The stock ECU does not handle forced induction. I will not perform this conversion until I have the stock system running and the car through emissions, but I am sure that this is something I want to try. | | | December 1, 2003 - Thanksgiving weekend in the Graber garage! So much to talk about. Turbo arrived, it's a nice piece, and a turbo manifold is currently being fabricated. The aluminum flooring is permanently attached to the frame using 3M VHB tape and it turned out fabulous! The steel paneling has been welded in permanently and as expected it stiffened up the frame nicely! All the major frame and mechanical fabrication is now completed and I am now in the process of putting the entire car back together one last time before frame painting. I want to have it driving around the block by December 25th. I will be painting the frame with a product called rust-bullet. Rust Bullet is so tough that if I later need to weld anything to the frame, it will have to be ground off first! I want to make sure I have absolutely everything finalized and welded on before painting. That means all systems installed and verified, a test drive around the block and then stripped back to the frame again for painting. | | | December 3, 2003 - Work progresses on the radiator plumbing. I was having a hard time deciding what to do with the connection between the copper pipe and the rubber hoses. Without a bead, one runs the risk of blowing a hose or dripping connections. My choices, were limited to forming a bead out of jbweld, welding/brazing a copper ring and filing it down or pressing the metal into a bead with a custom bead forming tool. I chose to create a bead forming tool out of a pair of old vise-grips and some steel scraps shaped and welded to its tips. The resulting test shows that the bead created looks pretty good! This will save so much work and time. I also have the coolant lines back in place and ready for soldering. I will use flux core silver solder for all the joints and use MAP gas rather than propane, because MAP gas burns a lot hotter. | | | December 11, 2003 - Ok, I don't have any photos for this update, but enough has happened to warrant a quick note. The radiator lines are finished and the cooling system has been filled. I filled the system and soon enough noticed a huge pool of coolant under the car. Traced it to the waterpump, which I had just replaced. :-( I had to remove the timing belt to get back to the pump. got it off and the problem was an o-ring betweenthe pump and block that had been pinched. Total time to replace -2 hours. I plumbed all the hydraulic lines and filled and bled the brakes and clutch. The rear brake still feels spongy, so I think I need to bleed it again. Bleeding brake and clutch lines alone is a real PITA! I have a mity-vac though, and that helped a lot. I also enlisted the help of my 8 year old son Jacob. He wants to know when I am going to install the fire-jets! I wonder if he envisions this... I hope not. The list of items is growing ever shorter. At this pace I should have the car running by this weekend. - mount coolant overflow bottle -15min
- tighten half-shafts - 10 min
- tighten steering wheel - 10 min
- perform basic wheel alignment - 30 min
- install new battery terminals (maybe do a complete cable rewire to starter) - 15 min
- install oil cooler and route lines - 1 hour
- change oil and filter - 15 minutes
- route wiring loom to guages and to ignition - 30 min
- wiring to fuel pump - 15 min
- Finish mounting exhaust system - 3 hours
Completion of that list gets the car not only startable, but drivable! Exciting times indeed! | | | December 15, 2003 - IT LIVES!!!! Finished my list of to-do's on the car. There was more to do than I expected. (of course). Luckily my good friend Jim Williams came over and assisted...
Well, after all the engine startup prep work, which went without a hitch, we re-installed the plugs and I cranked the engine over... and over... and over... and over... until the battery died. Checked the timing. Fixed the timing. Installed a spare battery. Cranked over and over and over.... Finally! It started to make like it wanted to start. You know the sound; when the starter whine goes faster and then can barely keep up with the engine and there are little poopy sounds coming out of the exhaust. But it's not quite running by itself... Couldn't get it to do more than that.
After a few hours of fiddling and futzing and head scratching, we took a 20 minute break. Then at it again. This time the engine kicked over and ran for about 3 seconds. Progress! But after those 3 second bursts it would simply crank with no combustion... I discovered that if I let it rest for few seconds and tried again then it would run for 3 seconds and die. I could repeat this effect. At this point I am thinking "definitely fuel". Sounds like the cold start injector is providing fuel for the initial 3 seconds, but the main injectors are not doing anything. I then notice a very large pool of fuel forming under the #4 injector that appears to be coming from the upper fuel rail area. DAMN! So close, yet so far. So I take the injectors out and the upper o-rings are all brittle and cracked. The #4 upper o-ring is disintegrated. This was causing the fuel leak. My theory is that this was probably causing the rail to not provide enough pressure to the injectors.... I would also have to assume that the injectors are clogged and need cleaning. I had a hell of a time finding the injector rebuild kits on a Sunday. The dealership parts desk is of course, closed on Sundays. Four seperate stores, each one with one injector kit. Lotsa time used up driving around town. So finally I get all 4 little boxes and head home. Each rebuild kit comes with a rubber replacement set for one injector, Top o-ring and rubber seal, bottom a rubber gasket. $2.99 each box. About $15.00 for all 4 with tax (VAT). The original ones were absolutely shot.
But I digress. Assuming that the injectors were clogged, I bodged an injector cleaning circuit out of a 12v cordless drill battery, a brake lightbulb (as a dropping resistor), some wire and a mity-vac handheld vacuum pump.
As a baseline, I applied 40psi suction to one end of the injector and energized the circuit. The pressure barely dropped, indicating that there was virtually no air passing through them. I aborted this test because I didn't want to burn out the injectors. I did this to all 4 injectors. They were definitely clogged.
Placing mineral spirits in a small glass container I applied mity-vac suction to one end of the injector with the other end in the glass. Then I cycled the injector on and off until all the spirits had been sucked throught the injector. Repeated for other 3 injectors. I then did the open air suction test. In each case the injector pulled 40psi down to 0psi in less than 7 seconds! Fixed.
Put everything back together on the car. Cross fingers, turn the key...
3-4 seconds of cranking and vrooooom!!!! vroooom, vroooooom!!!!!!!! wohooooooo
Status - The car is now off the jackstands and sitting on 4 wheels. For some odd reason, after we set it on it's wheels, it refused to crank over. I have traced the problem down to a possible wiring fault in the circuit with the clutch safety switch. I has a piece of copper wire shunting the switch and it may have accidentally touched to ground. Now instead of showing 12v when the key is turned, it shows continuity to ground. If anyone knows the workings of this particular circuit, please
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me. Specifically, which relays and fuses might be tied into that circuit. | | | December 17, 2003 - First drive! 9:15am December 17th, 2003. I propped the video camera in the garage pointing out to the street and got ready to hop in the car. What are the odds a police cruiser would drive by!? Well he did. I waved and acted like I was working on the wiring. hehehe. As soon as he left the neighborhood I fired up the camcorder and went for my first little official blast up the street. Check out the video! Initial impressions? Although I only made it 200 yards up the street and back, and I barely revved the motor, I can already tell that the car will definitely be very nimble, very quick. Everything feels very solid and connected to the road, but at the same time I think the suspension will be very supple. Possibly too soft? The brakes are terrible. Mushy mushy, push to the floor mushy. I am worried that either I got the wrong size master cylinders, or there is still air in the lines, or maybe the brake bias bar is adjusted completely wrong. The rad fans run constantly, but the guys over at MR2 Owners Club Board have given me the answer. What a great resource! There is still lots to do! But this is getting fun! I can't wipe the cheesy grin off my face... | Video 1
Justin Drives
3.7MB - 36 sec. Video 2
Father Son Drive
1.9MB - 19 sec Video 3
Your muffler fell off
569KB - 6 sec Video 4
Front Brake Lockup
2.1MB - 20 sec Video 5
Burn some rubber
779KB - 7 sec | December 22, 2003 - Neighbors Justin and Toby come over to help troubleshoot the brakes and finish up some other nagging to-do's. It's nice to have the help of competent people! Both Toby and Justin are Honda guys, but I don't hold that against them. They are very smart and know a thing or two about cars. We figured out that the rear brakes were not bleeding properly due to the bleed nipples not being at the top of the Caliper. Once we tilted the calipers up, the air bled right out and the brakes became much more solid. We are still working on configuring the bias bar. Just can't seem to get enough bias to the rear yet. (Update: I figured the bias bar out Sunday night, but haven't been able to test the changes yet.) I'm sure the brakes are fine now. Before doing some test runs around the neighborhood (see the videos), we managed to scrounge up some bathroom scales to weight the critter (Full tank of fuel, no payload). Drumroll please.... - Right rear - #344
- left rear - #326
- right front - #236
- left front - #216
- Rear weight total - #670
- Front weight total - #452
- Complete car total - #1,122
- 59% rear : 41% front
We got the car back on the ground and took her outside for some fun runs. The neighborhood kids showed up and we gave rides and tested the brakes. Was this smart? Probably not. Did we have fun? Definitely yes! It's obvious that the neighborhood is too small to do any serious testing. Mothers don't like it when oversized go-karts go zooming past their kids and do full throttle acceleration and brake lockups. I don't know why... :P Check out the videos of the action. | | | |
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| January 7, 2004 - Back from my extended family reunion in Indiana and ready to get back into car building. I will spend the next month or so tidying up the chassis, tuning the suspension, finishing up the wiring and basically just delaying starting on the body... Got a few more items off of ebay. The most notable is the air filter for $3.99. My neighbor Toby just gave me a set of 5 point racing harnesses, so it looks like my next major purchase will be rubber. I simply can't get a feel for what this car can do with the current tires. They are slick like waxed snot. This weekend will install the harnesses, find a better attach point for the ECU and make an additional bracket for the exhaust. If I have time I will also try to get the guages working again. While I was tidying up the wiring last month they quit working. Click here for complete details
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| January 19, 2004 - The weekend was spent with the car up on the jackstands and ripping out all unused wiring from the loom. My initial plan was to just leave it all, but as things tend to go, I just can't look at something unfinished and let it go. My main goal was to rip everything out that wasn't engine or guage related. So out came all the HVAC, fan, lights and accy circuits. Periodically I would fire up the car and make sure that I hadn't snipped an essential wire and, as luck would have it, I did. One more than one occasion! So, I would tie the most recently cut wires back together and start the engine, then disconnect each cut wire one at a time. That did the trick and I was able to remove every unused circuit! A weight loss of close to 20Lbs! I felt that the lighting and fan circuitry was overly complicated on the original car, so my intention is to simply run new circuits using the existing fusebox and relays. Click here for complete details
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| January 29, 2004 - No major work on the car. Too many other projects competing for my time. I was able to start on the rollbar, and of course I ran into major stumbling blocks along the way. Mainly, the rollbar, when tall enough to protect my noggin, is considerably taller on the car than the top of the windshield... :-( This is entirely my fault and should have been caught by me in the design phase, but now it is so and I need to deal with it. Click here for complete details
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| February 03, 2004 - Ackerman.... Do I have any Anti-Ackerman? Let's let the laser line demonstrate. Many thanks to all who wrote in with questions, comments and suggestions regarding Ackerman and also the rollbar/windshield positioning issue. Regarding Ackerman, I think I have discounted the upright and steering arm as a source of this perceived issue. And it may simply be perceived, a trick on the eyes, but... more than one person has looked at the wheels at full lock and told me that it really looks like anti-ackerman! I still need to do some more investigation, but I definitely know a lot more about the issue than just a few weeks ago! My last words on the subject. "Shut up and drive it!" Click here for complete details
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| February 08, 2004 - A whole batch of new photos from last weekend! Last weekend was a lot of fun. I made progress on a number of fronts. The rollbar is almost finished, the seat has been lowered and tilted back. I fabricated the rear engine undertray. Next weekend I will be able to finish all these little loose ends and then it's time to strip the car down to the frame and blast it with some paint. Click here for complete details
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| February 16, 2004 - Shifter. Sloppy shifting is no fun. Just like other kinds of sloppy.. You just don't want it. So I spent some time and a little money getting the interface to the gears upgraded. I also worked on the rollbar bracing, but that's still work in progress. The shifter modifications turned out so perfectly. Brass shifter bushings to replace the stock rubber ones, a super clean ali shift knob and a simple short-throw modification. Shifting is now a 'snick-snick' operation (kinda like bling-bling, but better). quick, precise and with just the right feel. I am really looking forward to spending some time in the cockpit as the ergonomics are spot on! BTW - I completely recommend www.twosrus.com and their brass shifter bushings as well as their very nice aluminum shifter knob. If you have a cable operated shifter, look into this modification. It's a winner. Click here for complete details
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| March 3, 2004 - FRAME PAINTING COMPLETED!!! It was a difficult job, with so many tubes to coat, but the results were worth the effort. 3 coats of Rust Bullet later and the car is ready for re-assembly. My initial thoughts on Rust Bullet are that it's a fantastic product and the finish is just like powder-coating. Click here for complete details
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| Stay Tuned... | ...many more entries in the pipeline! |
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