TireSmoke.org

So we had a little disaster on the throttle shaft. After cutting the slots from one side I had to flip the part and re-slot it to make up for the shape of the cutter. Standard stuff. First issue I notice is that the threaded holes are NOT perfectly 90 deg. to the slots which means my fixture wasn't as Ricoh Suave' as I thought. I had pretty tight thru holes which I thought would prevent that - I was wrong. As a result I ended up having to use an indexer to flip the shaft to machine out the corners. And decided that I could probably live with the less than perfect screw orientation. Well on the 7th corner (out of 8 ) I got careless and mis indexed the fixture resulting in a scarf on the shaft as the cutter wasn't aligned with the slot - by a lot. Salvageable? Yes! Acceptable? No! Time to start over. So I re-thought the fixture and improved the shaft support. It worked PERFECTLY. I'm so happy! The close up pic shows the goofed up shaft. The other pic shows the new fixture - where I machined a U groove down the center and clamped it in with 2 rows of screws. I drilled and tapped the holes thru the shaft so I could bolt it onto the U groove from both sides. Later I will come back and put counterbores in and relieve 1/2 the shaft for the clamp screws. They say experience is a HARD teacher because it gives you the TEST first and the LESSON afterwards. Yep!

Time to finish up the slots. Whne you come in from either side with the cutter you have a little "triangle" of left over material that is a result of the radius of the cutter. After contemplating several approaches I first tried making a slotting tool from an old drill bit. Basically a one stroke at a time broaching tool. And while this worked it was PAINFULLY slow. So I went a little caveman and cut the majority of the material away using a hand held jigsaw. Then it was the Die Filer to the rescue! That saved a BUNCH of time. I gotta say it came out SWEET!!!!!!!

So today we tested out my new butterfly fixture. The first one was OK, but you had to cut one at a time because I had drilled the screws so they were perpendicular to the angled surface. You can imagine as you stack up more and more blanks they keep getting further and further from center. And here I thought I was being slick when I drilled those holes! So now I have the holes drilled parallel the the axis of the part- which means I can stack up bunches of plates a AND once machined all those will be dead nuts the same diameter! Much easier making an identical set that way! I also discovered that you have to be super careful cutting out the blanks because it's super easy to tweak them and not know it because the clamp will temporarily flatten them out! The picture of the fixture in the lathe is actually 4 throttle plates being turned.

So here's a pic of what I am after! The GOLD standard an original ScottSuperSlot top. I will need to tweak the shape just a wee bit and if I do it right it will hopefully be undetectable. I am NOT modifying the original I am making new one from 5052-H32 which is fab friendly. I can't hardly wait to get started! Wish me luck - I'm gonna need it!

Last of the V8 interceptors!

Thought you guys might like to see my "tool" for making the high pressure fuel lines. I bought a couple extra ferrules to practice with.

Truly a man of vision... too awesome!

-BP

So today I started to bend up the bottom half of the scoop. I had to make due with what I had laying around so that may explain my hillbilly approach (or I'm just a cheap bastage - take your pick) Anyways I used 1" thickness of rubber as the bottom die and a tire iron as part of the upper die - using the tire iron to get the inside radius. A little bit of tweaking back and forth and I got it pretty darned close. I can't wait to get started on the top piece!

Spent some time on the press. Definitely easier ways to do this. This method left some facets in the top surface, but I think they are shallow enough to sand out - we'll see.

So I got to sneak out for a few minutes, didn't get a lot done, but did get to fire up the welder. Tacked it from the top, fully welded on the bottom, then V'd out the top because I would grind it flush later. Still needs some smoothing, but it's on it's way!

Time to punch the holes in the scoop bottom...and you know I can't leave a sharp edge there!

Just like you knew what you were doing!

-BP

Almost! Did a little welding and smoothin' today.

That's impressive!!

GM

A little more tinkering...