D-7: Saturday Night
Gotta say, I was kinda draggin last night from the long, busy day with the kids and the late night on Friday night, so I decided to work on jobs last night that were a little easier and wouldn’t induce a critical failure in the race if I screwed something up out of fatigue or general cluelessness. This was high on the agenda:
More on this after the break:
First up was finishing off the radio wiring. This is the kind of thing that you think should take about 5 minutes but ends up taking a lot longer sometimes, especially since we have to wire up power and the ends were all bare. I added splice connectors to make it easier to remove from the car in the future. It was kinda tricky figuring out how to get the wiring for the push-to-talk button configured on the steering column — you want it tight enough that the cord won’t interfere with the drivers’ hands while driving, but slack enough that it will twist and untwist during steering without moving around too much. About the time that I was trying to figure that out, ABC showed a close-up of the interior of Juan Pablo Montoya’s car when he crashed in the Cup race at Charlotte. So I stole the idea of how his team ties up his PTT wiring. I figure if it’s good enough for the Cup teams, it’s good enough for us.
Once that was done, it was time to work on the camera mount and wiring. The wiring part was easy (although we’re probably carrying around 3 pounds of zip-ties on this car), but we needed a mount for the camera. The manufacturer of the camera doesn’t have one for roll cages yet, but a quick search of teh intarwebs generated an idea: use a plumbing t-connector sized for 1.5″ diameter pipe. So it was off to the Home Depot to grab the connector and a plug. I had some other hardware to donate, and what you see above was the result. Here’s what it looks like when mounted in the car:
I think that I’ll throw some rattle can black on the white pipe just to make it less distracting to the driver and then we’re all set. I could offset the camera from the mount more and put an adjustable handle on top, but I don’t know that we need to do that. Plus, there’s lots of other stuff that needs work today.
After I got that finished, I learned quickly how to make a movie on the Movie Maker software that comes with Windows. It’s okay if basic; the biggest PITA about it was that it only outputs in WMV format, whereas everybody else wants it in MP4, so I had to download a converter that puts a watermark on the video while you’re trying the software for free. Anyway, here’s what the video looks like in that position. I think we might want to move the mount more toward the passenger side door and then angle the camera toward the driver more, but see what you think:
There were a couple other loose odds and ends that I finished off last night, but that’s about it. Today will be the big day for the new door bars, putting on the kicked out oil pan, and finishing the engine scoop, then it’s just about off to the races. Tally ho!
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