The challenges continue but we are relentless and take them as they come.
D2RS
The old body panels are off the car and we’ve been using another in-progress D2 chassis as a ‘clothes hanger’ for the bodywork. Pretty convenient.
In this case clothes do make the car – the old and the new look so very different, but the only change is some fiberglass. It’s still the same car underneath. In the first shot you can see a Drakan nose peeking in – same story there. Really demonstrates the flexibility of the D2 platform.
Now to fit the new panels to the car. Jay did quite a bit of trimming and adjusting, and is in the process of figuring out the various tabs and straps needed to hold it on to the frame.
We need the nose ‘liner’ to finish fitting everything and it finally was done this morning. A lot more work will happen today.
D1PPS
The flywheel arrived in Seattle a couple hours late, but it did arrive. Turns out it’s different than the old one (good thing, in fact), but it did require some engine disassembly to remove starter spacer plate. Then all is mounted and ready to run – but the dyno battery is now dead. George goes out and gets a replacement. More small delays. But the work can now proceed. It is painstaking – getting the map set at every throttle setting from 0% to 100% in 10% increments, at every RPM from 1,000 to 10,000 in 1,000 increments. Each datapoint requires updating the ECU map. This is done without boost. Once the base map is done, then boost mapping can begin. I’m hesitant to plan but we can at least hope to drive up tonight so that we have the engine back here tomorrow morning.
In the meantime lots of work is happening in preparation for its arrival. The gearbox is mounted in the car, the oil and other plumbing is being worked on, the bodywork fit is checked, and we are now ready to start assembling the suspension boxes.
One final bit of machining is the second half of the bellhousing which will connect the engine and transmission. Normally we get material this big cut to size by the supplier, but in this case that would mean a 3 day wait. So we had to figure out how to do it on our saw. It almost did it in one pass…
But ran out of vertical clearance. So the material had to be flipped and carefully aligned. Nailed it!
Now it’s time to machine the part before I (hopefully) head to Seattle to get the engine.
Much more to come….