6/28/11 Coming Apart

Everyone in the shop loves the new lathe. Over the past week we permanently mounted it to the table and disassembled to get the slides to travel a bit smoother. J.B. also mounted his light on the lathe so we can see what we're doing a bit better. Overall it's looking pretty great.

There are a few more big parts of the disassembly of my car left: The rear suspension, the engine, and the dashboard. I chose to tackle the first two because I hate taking dashboards down. You spend a day on your back, bent like a pretzel to reach a bolt way up inside the dash, only to find that there are 5 more bolts, even further up inside holding that section of the dash down.

To pull the engine you need a hoist. The problem with a standard like the one below is that it is designed to roll under the car.

With the car up on an elevated concrete pad like mine is, that isn't happening. To solve this problem I decided to build a gantry. I gathered up some scrap steel from some old scaffolding and started designing.

I need this to be about 8 feet tall and wide enough to span the concrete pads we have. I'll hang a chainfall from it and we can use it to pick up engines or even whole cars.

After getting the steel, I cut one section off with the torch to make a foot, then I ran out of gas. Once I got ahold of a sawzall, I cut another section off. I hit all the surfaces that would be welded with the wire wheel, then lined it up to weld.

After some ugly welds, this is what I've got. Just need to make one more, then span the towers.

I also dropped the rear suspension out of my Z yesterday. First I pulled the driveshaft and halfshafts.

Then I disconnected the brake and e-brake lines, and loosened the 12 bolts holding the rear end of the car on.

And so this is how she sits now. The rear end of the car is light enough for one person to pick up easily.

K.Y. started putting the Benz back together as well. That sparklingly clean intake looks so out of place in the engine bay now. Hopefully we can get all the vacuum hoses connected correctly to get this thing running soon.

Making progress...

-W.W. SBSS

6/17/11 SBSS gets a Lathe!

The collection of tools at the shop is growing at a fantastic rate.

As usual, on Wednesday I spent some time in the craigslist tools section. Searching for a lathe, I came across this beauty only an hour away from the shop.

I immediately emailed the seller and A.Y. who has a pickup truck. We made arrangements to meet Thursday evening and I started doing research about the model of the lathe. It's an Atlas model Th42 and, like the mill we recently purchased, it was probably produced in the 1940's. These things are built of solid cast iron and tend to last forever though.

After work yesterday, I hopped on the train and went to the shop to grab A.Y.'s pickup. After much swearing in traffic, I picked up A.Y. on the lower east side and we made our way to Long Island to grab the lathe.

The lathe was sold by the third generation owner of the Road Runners bicycle shop in Glen Cove. Apparently, the shop used to be a motorcycle shop, and somewhere in it's history they moved to bicycles. In the back room, where the lathe was housed, there was a full sized South Bend mill, a sandblaster, and many other heavy machine tools. There were also a couple of classic British motorcycles mid restoration. It was truly a great shop. It also turns out that the seller and I had met a couple of years prior at the North American Handmade Bike Show in Richmond where I was showing the Bamboo bikes.

We did the deal, loaded up the truck and made our way back.

The table wasn't original to the lathe and was a little flimsy, so we decided to use it for something else and mount the lathe on our cabinet alongside the mill.

It was getting a bit late by the time we got to the shop, so we didn't mount the motor to the table yet, but that should be a fairly simple job.

All in all the shop is really coming together.

-W.W. SBSS

6/13/11 New Toy!

Tools are toys for men.

After spending some time searching on craigslist, I finally found a suitable milling machine for our shop. I originally wanted a full-sized Bridgeport milling machine. While we could afford the machine itself, transportation and installation of a 2500lb machine gets pretty expensive pretty quick. I kept my eyes open and eventually found this smaller, benchtop machine that fit the bill perfectly. I called the guy and arranged to pick it up Sunday.

Saturday I went to the shop with K.Y. and did a little work on the Z. I pulled the bumper and corner markers off, and started removing the front suspension.

K.Y. and I also took a trip to a local machine shop to pick up the intake from the Benz. As seen in the earlier posts, it was quite dirty both inside and out. After a quick sandblast from the shop, the part was as good as new.

Sunday, I went to see the mom and check on an oil leak on her Ford Focus. Once I determined it was nothing to worry about, we took a trip up to white plains together to pick up the mill. I took a quick look at it and determined it was good to go. After I did the deal, the seller showed me his workshop, which had pretty much every machine tool in existence. There were at least $150k worth of machine tools in his basement. It was like looking into my future.

We disassembled the mill, threw it into the focus and drove home. Getting to the shop I discovered exactly how difficult moving a mill by yourself can be, but weight means quality and this mill weighs about 350lbs all together.

I just ordered all the little end mills, collets, parallels and holders that I need to start using this sweet little mill. It is seriously like going to a toy store for me.

-W.W. SBSS

6/7/11 - Taking Shape

Just a little update for today. I spent some more time with the sandpaper and the dremel getting the final shape out of my fairing. Here is what it looked like after a little trimming.

Then I made the sort of jaw area a bit narrower.

Added some detail.

And here is the almost finished shape with the angel eyes on. I think its starting to look pretty decent.

Now I'm just waiting for my carbon fiber to arrive so I can make a finished part out of it. Stay tuned!

-W.W. SBSS

6/3/11 - Mold Making for Dummies

Yesterday I spent most of the evening hunched over a block of pink foam with a bit of sandpaper making the mold for my fairing.

First I hollowed out what was necessary on the back side to get it to fit over the lights, gauge, bars, etc.

Then I mounted it on the bike and took a look at what I could rough cut away.

With the foam rough cut, it was time to break out the sandpaper.

Starting to look like something here.

It's still much, much too large and bulky, but the shape is starting to come through.

You really just have to work with the foam and let it shape itself. I need this to be a bit curvier and about 2/3 its current size, but it is getting there. Stay tuned for updates.

-W.W. SBSS

6/2/11 - Pens, Coins, and Foam

After a wonderful long weekend, I returned to the shop for the first time Wednesday with two goals: Pull the doors and seats out my Z and make a trip to home depot to buy foam for mold making.

K.Y., Harley and and I got to the shop and immediately started work. One thing I love about the Z is that it comes apart relatively easily. Twelve easily accessible bolts later and my doors were off the car.

The seats, stock from a 3rd generation RX-7, were a little more difficult. I custom mounted them about 6 years ago, and I remembered them being a pain to put in even then. They weren't much easier to remove. If I had a 12mm ratcheting wrench, it would have been a bit easier, but alas that was the one tool missing from K.Y. and my collections. After some sweating and cursing, however, the seats were out.

Pulling up the carpet I found all sorts of things. In the drivers side I found about $20 in change and 20 pens and pencils.

In the passenger side I found that the floor was simply bolted in, not welded, and that I could see daylight between the two panels in places.

K.Y. pulled the intake off of the Benz for cleaning. It is incredible how much crud is in the intake. We think it'll run like new with a good cleaning.

While he did that, I stole his BMW to make a home depot run to pick up some foam insulation boards for mold making. The idea is that I will glue this together, shape it into the shape I want my fairing to be when it's finished, cover it in packing tape, wrap it in resin soaked carbon fiber, vacuum bag and pop out a new fairing. If this works well, expect many more carbon parts in the future.

W.W. SBSS