Flick the Hillclimb Beast.

[Speedhog]

So Christmas and new years is the time around here for building new stuff, and today I finally have a finished Hydraulic handbrake (well kinda more on that later).

The plan for a long time has been to put some 4 pot wilwoods on the rear of Flick to help (groan!! goes the wife) flick the rear of the car out under braking making it easier and faster on the loose stuff.

I started with a pre-fabricated hydro handbrake unit and cut it up into bits to use the master cylinder bracket and a side of the main bracket for support.
Well this was working really nicely until i tried to put the seat back in.
Interference between my nice new handbrake bracket that I had spent four days on and the seat meant that I couldn't even bolt it in. Sigh.. redesign time.

So off came the seat from the sliding base and that got bolted in so I knew down to the millimeter what i had to miss.

Luckily that worked! another couple of days rebuilding the brackets from scratch then resulted in a happy coincidence the hydraulic handbrake now fits in the same hole as the old cable handbrake!!
Last night and today was spent running new hard brake lines from the master to the tee piece above the engine mount. the reason? well also in the mix is a lever proportional valve for when the Wilwoods do get on the rear. so it all got plumbed up inline at the same time.. ( why do the job twice?!?!)

For the shit's and giggle's


So the reason why it's a kinda done..
After bleeding up the brakes, we found a small problem with the hydraulic master cylinder where when you pull slowly on the handbrake, it's forcing the brake fluid back to the brake master cylinder in the front, instead of the rear wheels. It's an old but new master that has been sitting for a while, so it will get rebuild or replaced at some point soon.

[Speedhog]

First event of the year was Foreman's corner Triathlon. A three day event run out of Opuawhanga near Helena Bay over Auckland anniversary weekend every year.
After the heart ache of making a hydro handbrake for the beast just for the Motorkhana and autocross's, she got her first real test in anger.
Well it worked but not quite as hoped so a little brainstorm as the motorkhana day wore on on how to make it better, then BANG.
As Jeff of SO863(Dopey) fame was doing a test the rear inner CV gave way and split the gearbox housing!
A quick decision for the day was to retire the car for the day and try to fix her for the Hillclimb the following day.
A little bit of metal weld and a quick trip back to Auckland for a "new" inner cv, and gearbox oil we prepped for the hillclimb.
Gearbox not leaking oil Flick was put straight on the trailer to head up the road 5 minutes.
As I was unloading off the trailer he died, and wouldn't refire! This weekend just wasn't getting better!
Didn't help that i managed to get my back put out of alignment and start pinching nerves in my lower lumbar region.
Had a few of the HCMC club members try to get Flick to fire even so I could do just a single run( just to get points for the weekend) But alas, she was stubborn like me.

Finally got home and will my back in absolute agony left Flick on the trailer for a week while i recovered enough to actually lift something. (fun NOT!)
Pulled the ECU out on tuesday night just been to get the smell of a leaking caps.... YaY! :s

So now remains the question of what to do going forwards.. Do we put a better stronger box in now and add some more weight back in? do we Link it and be done with the standard ECU and bird's nest of the wiring?
And beside of all of this, still doing the wiring on Dopey to hopefully get it turned over in the next week!

[mickeyduck]

Had a few of the HCMC club members try to get Flick to fire...

"Flick the little fireless engine... Isn't that a shame."
(Sorry mate just reminded me of a stupid wee song they played on the radio Sunday mornings about 45 years ago).

Carbies, cams, extractors and a simple old CDI dizzy. That'd sort it.
Exactly what I want in my AW one day...

As for the back pain - I fully understand. No fun at all.

Here's to both things coming right!

P.S. when you embed a youtube vid, delete the url for it and leave only the video ID.
So this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaV7pfrEIDA
becomes this:
YaV7pfrEIDA
inside the youtube-embed tag.
(mouse over the youtube-embed button for the hint)
I've fixed your handbrake video for you.

[Speedhog]

So I got started on coding a OLED display for Oil Pressure using parts of David's Code from the ICE section. (Thanks David, and Malcom!)

On other news, haven't really started to work on the car itself as the workshop has been overrun with actual work, so the car is sitting waiting for floor space.
But found that the Windscreen has another crack in it.