Thunder Ranch build thread

Thanks, Robert. I'm going to tackle this same job at the end of the week. So, measure free play at the top of the pedal.

Yes. 1 quarter inch at the bottom where the plunger is would be like 2 inches at the top edge of the pedal. 

I've got 1/4 inch there now and it feels like it might work. I also found a little damp spot where the driver's side front hard line meets the flex hose, so a bit more bleeding will probably bring us up. I'll wait until there's a seat in the car to do that though.

I got my new e-brake cables in yesterday and they look like they'll work right. I had to file down the ends that plug into the guide tubes to make them fit in though which was annoying.

Also annoying (and weird, though very much in line with this whole build): cutting new 10-32 threads on the alternator post so I could secure the wire to it.  

Ed, once you get the free play set, do a final bleed. DO IT VIOLENTLY! 3 quick HARD pumps and hold. Then open the bleeder. You'll be surprised that a few tiny little bubbles will raise that pedal a bunch. Been through this a few times with both Spyders and a sandrail.......

That's the plan! Why I need to wait until I put the seats in so I can pump the pedal with my powerful, martial-arts trained right leg instead of a mop handle gingerly placed on the pedal and feebly pushed by my childishly proportioned right arm. 

Stop worrying about minuscule things like working brakes and electricals. Instead, where are these cool brushes?

And see if you can do something about the shape of the shroud, too.

What in the heck are those brushes for?

Lane,

Those are the seals against the trailing arms to keep crud out of the engine bay.

I have the brushes...

Ed, since you are going so far to get this thing looking authentic, here's the last bit you need: https://bringatrailer.com/list...rsche-4-cam-carerra/

You can thank me later.

Lane Anderson posted:

Ed, since you are going so far to get this thing looking authentic, here's the last bit you need: https://bringatrailer.com/list...rsche-4-cam-carerra/

You can thank me later.

I was thinking what car that would be good in, and then I realized, it would look great in our living room.

I'll thank you now, Lane.

I suppose I can sell the 1915 Raby engine and that should get me

*checks notes*

*taps calculator*

—about 1/50th of the 547's going price.

Or we could just squint real hard & pretend, like we do...

When I was a late teen I used to hang out at the shop of Al Alden, a local guy who built race winning Porsche engines for the East Coast gentlemen-racer crowd.  His engines were so good at beating Porsche factory-sponsored cars that Porsche eventually set him up with a dealership (St. Albans, Vermont).

He had a shop way out in the backwoods of Upton, MA.  The shop had benches lining three walls and one of those benches had a Porsche 4-cam engine, just like that one, sitting on a pallet and holding up one end of the bench.  It apparently had been raced quite a bit and there was a lot of wear on the drive shaft gears of the cam driveshafts (which also drive the two distributors) so it really didn't run very well below about 4 Grand and was hideously expensive to get rebuilt, so the prior owner replaced it with a pushrod engine (and kept racing) and abandoned the 4-cammer, as a lot of people did back then when it came time for a rebuild.

They certainly look like works of automotive art and yes, Todd - It would look spectacular in your living room.  Right below the Speedster body hanging on one wall that frames your flat-screen TV.  Just like at Unobtanium.....  

Wow 

A good friend of ours started his racing career in a Thunder Ranch 550 Spyder.  He has long graduated to more exotic cars, but has a Beck 550 body hung on the wall of his Rec room and it does, indeed, serve as the frame for a flat-screen monitor used for his racing simulator.  I spent a little time there getting his parking lights to work with a 12v power supply wired to his headlight switch.  Five cent racing at its finest!  

Wicked cool, for sure.  

All I have in my Rec Room is a bicycle trainer and a 32” screen showing Youtube cycling videos.   

So I contacted my friend (He also created the "Spyder Club" website, for all you 550 fans out there) and here are some photos of his Rec Room.  The Driver's seat of his video game "console" can be rolled over in front of the TV and ou can bring up any major race track and drive it.  Wicked Cool.......   He's been pretty successful in his racing career, too.  His 13-year-old son has recently begun racing Spec Miatas.

I guess he can always take it off the wall and build it .  

IaM-Ray posted:

I guess he can always take it off the wall and build it .  

But who would do such an impractical thing?

Pipes were fit-up back to the mufflers, then taken off, stripped and painted.

Blog post.

Brunch.

Mufflers are on but I don't like it. Gonna have my muffler guy rack the flanges so the muffler outlets meet the tail pipes. That will tuck everything up nicer and obviate the need to alter the pipes out back. Nothing left then but to make the center hanger, then strip and paint the tail pipes when it's all done. 

Tail pipes are stripped and the ears welded on and painted and baked.

I touched-up my rear subframe and bolted it in, torqued the bolts this time, then seam-sealed to make it look mo bettah.

Pulled the remote filter housing out to tighten/shorten the fittings in a bid to get a slight kink out of the short oil line. It worked. So: Brad Penn 10-30 green oil in the crank case.

Nice work on the exhaust system, Ed. It's looking pretty serious now!

I really like your paint baking oven! Are you doing ceramic? How do you keep the newly painted surfaces off the grill?

Just wondering if you have a hole count. It would be interesting to the group to know.

Looking good!

Just an eensy bit curious about the door hinge in photo 3730, attached to the frame cross member and right above the muffler.

Is that 1/2 of the rear cowl pivot?

You are correct Gordon.

Jim Gilbert - Madison, Mississippi posted:

I really like your paint baking oven! Are you doing ceramic? How do you keep the newly painted surfaces off the grill?

Just wondering if you have a hole count. It would be interesting to the group to know.

Looking good!

Not being sarcastic here:  Why bake the paint on?  Is it spray paint?  Or something else that is resistant to heat?

Yumm bbq headers,needs some bbq sauce glaze at the end:}

Todd, practically ANY enamel-type paint, and all powder coatings I have used, benefit from baking the paint after application to cure it (outgassing of the propellant chemical, often Acetone unless it is a water-borne paint), to make it harder and make it adhere to the sub-surface better, whether the metal was primed or not.

Here's as good an article as any on it:

 https://www.ehow.com/how_55340...ke-enamel-paint.html

It's a long-ish article and even gets into removing baked-on paint, so keep skipping over those pesky ads.

BTW, @edsnova:  Using your covered grill as a paint bake booth was brilliant.  I may keep the Weber I was going to sell and get rid of my counter-top toaster-oven instead.

This is rattle can grill/stove paint from Rustoleum. "Ultra" is on the label; it may be a new product.

I was gonna see about JetCoat but these pipes were used and budget and you know how it goes. So I googled "Best exhaust paint" and came up with a year-old article that rated Rustoleum header paint very high—like third of 10—in some tests.

So...easy. Grabbed a can of that on the next Home Depot run.

And I had the tubes stripped and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and hung up and was literally rattling the can and ready to spray when I stopped to check the label which said PRIMER STRONGLY RECOMMENDED.

Of course I did not have the requisite Rustoleum High Heat primer in the paint cabinet, so back to the Despot I trekked and of course those MF's also did not have this product in stock....

So scanning the shelves there I spotted this silver grill paint. Rated to 1200F instead of the other stuff's 2000F. Read the label: no primer needed. So I spent the $7 on a whim and returned home to check the Google reviews. 

Ended up on a HAMB thread where those old farts sang this stuff's praises, several knuckleheads in a row. 

As you all probably know I deeply admire the HAMB aesthetic, as each and every poster there has built literally dozens of race-and-show-winning hot-rods directly out of old bed frames and discarded 50-gallon drums. 

So I said "screw it" & went out and shot the paint, trying the next day to burn it off in the grill at 600f (best it could do). 

No smoke whatsoever. 

I mean...no smoke. 

I have painted my share of exhaust systems in my 35 years of car tinkering. I have never yet not gotten a smoke show from it on startup. 

Se I guess we'll see what's what pretty soon. Hopefully this weekend. 

Ed, I notice you coyly avoided answering Jim's question about keeping the freshly painted headers off your barbecue grill. It was then I realized you probably hadn't.

But this should be no real cause for concern. Rustoleum claims that all of their high-temperature products go well with meat, poultry, or fish.

Ed, maybe you  need some hickory chips. They give a real good flavor

Yeah I just laid them down on the grill. This was second day, after the paint dried overnight. Didn't seem to bother the paint or the grill.

Very cool on the grille paint! I am in the process of what to do with my exhaust, as it's currently off the car and in need of some attention. I'm leaning toward ceramic coat from a local guy who does it at his house in a kiln. He sends them to another local guy for sand/bead blasting to clean everything off first, inside and out.

DannyP posted:

Very cool on the grille paint! I am in the process of what to do with my exhaust, as it's currently off the car and in need of some attention. I'm leaning toward ceramic coat from a local guy who does it at his house in a kiln. He sends them to another local guy for sand/bead blasting to clean everything off first, inside and out.

Colonic lavage ....

That comment above says more about you than me, Ray. 

Any issues you may need to take up with your Doc?

The Devil made me do it ...

On the other hand Danny I was wondering how he was getting it done inside and out. 

You see, I had a ceramic coated version and had a few issues with cracking joints so we replaced the header portion but my tech guy locally wanted to make one out of high grade SS for my car, they feel they outlast all others by a large margin.  Just saying. 

FWIW, I’ve built no less than 5 exhausts with different headers every time. I started out getting them entirely ceramic coated, but have arrived at a more economical solution that works well for me. 

I’ve been spending the money to get the header coated, but then just using a good 2000+°F rattle can paint for everything after the collects, and use the exhaust heat to cure it. 

Works for me. YMMV. 

I hear you Stan. FWIW, the original exhaust from my first Spyder(circa 2002) is still almost rust free, except where I had cracks and ground off the ceramic so I could weld some gussets and cover the cracks.

Pretty much what I do, too.  I have found that the Rustoleum Hi-Temp or BBQ paint gives better coverage than the Krylon Hi-Temp paint (which seems a little thinner).

You can find them in flat, satin or gloss and a number of colors - whatever floats your boat.