TARP Blog

I worked last night on getting the radiator hoses fabricated and all finished up. I’m waiting on a couple of parts for this too — some aluminum connector pipes — but I think that I have everything cut to size. Of course, the American big-block radiator that we’ve switched to has different sizes than the teensy Japanese radiator hoses, so there have been some upsize and downsize issues, but I’ve found some reducers that mostly take care of that. I worked in a bleeder near the top of the intake side to help bleed the system of air (we know that is a problem) and a fitting on the output side of the radiator into which I’m going to fit a secondary water temp gauge with a peak/warn light so that our driver(s) will have a better visual warning if the water’s getting too hot. I can finish up this job once the additional connector pipes arrive (one in 1.5″ and one in 1.75″) and then get the fan fitted. After that I need to figure out the ducting from the radiator through the firewall and then from the firewall to the new escape duct that I need to cut out of the hood.

After working the cooling pipes issue to the point where I’m waiting on parts to complete, I resumed work on the bumper/air dam. Taking a week or so off from this topic has helped to provide me with some clarity on how to solve the problems (namely, crappy cheap bumper cover and the near-total absence of hard points on the front of the car from which to mount the entire contraption), and I think I’ve figured out how to structure the whole thing so that we can get it on and off with just a few dzus but keep it in place for the race. I want to make it easy to remove and put in place because one thing we’ve seen is that the low nose of the car gets messed up when getting the car on and off the trailer.

So, unless the mail/UPS brings a cornucopia of engine parts (keep fingers crossed!), tonight I’ll resume work on the front end/air dam.

MR2