Progress Slow but Fine
I’ve been kinda bad about blogging lately, between the Christmas travel slowdown and just general busyness this last week, so I thought I’d take a chance to update everyone on what’s going on here at TARP Worldwide Headquarters. Hit the jump for more:
Dave and I visited the junkyards a couple times last week in the search for parts for the TARP Racing Special. We came away with four BMW alloy wheels — standard issue on mid-80’s 325’s — that fit on New Blue (Dave, I tested this yesterday). We had quite a few wheels to select from, so we took the four that had the least curb rash. Between these four wheels and the four that are sitting on the car now, we have 6 wheels that will suffice for putting on the new shoes. Once we buy them, that is.
The brake parts arrived early last week, so I completed the front brake caliper rebuild (which was very messy, BTW) and installed the new front rotors and the rebuilt calipers. Still on the to-do list for the brakes is to put the new pads on the existing rear calipers (rear caliper rebuild kits are near impossible to find) and then flush and bleed the brake system. At that point the brakes should be good to race.
One of our junkyard finds was battery cables from mid-80’s BMW 3-series cars. Thanks to the intarweb folks for that tip; the 3-series cars had the batteries in the trunk, so they had long lead cables, perfect for our battery relocate project. I built a custom bracket on the passenger floor of the car from aluminum square tube and threaded rod and I’m in the process of routing the battery cables to match.
As I was running the cables and generally inspecting the engine compartment, I’ve found several bolts missing from when a prior owner replaced the transaxle seal. I’ve spent some time looking in the parts car for how things should be and then have taken the missing bolt from the parts car and put it on our race car. I’ve found that having a full parts car is much more instructive than a factory manual. The downside is that a parts car takes up a lot more room on the bookshelf.
Progress definitely slowed yesterday afternoon, as a nasty head cold dropped me on the couch for recovery, and I suspect that’s where I’ll be most of today too.
Looking forward to this week, I’m hoping to get up to this guy’s shop to take some measurements that we’ll need to fabricate the roll cage. I’d like to finish the brake job this week too. The plan is to move the car over to Grayson & Jesse’s shop on either Saturday (hopefully) or Sunday so we can start the roll cage work there. It would probably be helpful to have the race seat for when we start that, so I’ll need to order that early in the week.
Finally, our entry fees are due by Saturday, but I’ll be in touch with each of the drivers about that.
Pat, I take it you took a magnet and confirmed the wheels are NOT steel.
@Dave
That is correct. They passed the magnet test with flying non-magnetic colors.