There is an old cartoon that I remember that goes like this:
A man has just reached the summit of a peak and sitting on that summit is a man dressed like a guru— white robe, long white hair and beard. The man climbing the peak says to the guru, ‘Tell me the meaning of eternity’. The guru responds, ‘the NBA payoffs.’ Well, I like basketball and love building the roadster but it does seem to be taking me a long time. I have spent part of the time since the last blog entry in the desert trying to avoid COVID-19.
But I digress….
You will see that I’ve updated the sections on the fresh air system and some of the electrical work. I decided to split up the instrument panel and electrical system sections although they are clearly linked.
The vent system to this point took longer than I anticipated as there were a number of things to work out. In the end, however, I’m happy with the results. Three additional steps needs to be completed before the system is totally ‘finished’: 1) the attachment of the choke cables to activate the damper valves; 2) cutting holes in the ‘elephant ear’ panels for the FA tubing; 3) the ‘front end’ part of the system with the air intake in the roadster’s nose. All of these steps will need to wait until a bit farther along in the build process. For example, I won’t complete the actuation cable until I have the dash mockup in place so that I can place the cable knob.
A complete description of the parts, etc., can be found in the construction steps section for the vents. The photo album for the vents is here.
The addition of the air venting system required creating a pass-through for the tubing going from the Atwood blowers into the cockpit through the front splash guards, i.e., the ‘elephant ears’. As with many things in the build, what seemed like a difficult problem turned out to be not so complicated as long as I took my time and planned it out. The driver’s side vent is below. I tested the system using a DC voltage generator (you can hear it in the video associated with this blog entry on the main blog page) and was quite happy with the airflow. Atwood states that the 3000 Turbo will produce 100 cfm with the bends in the system. I suspect that when the vehicle is in motion, the ‘ram air’ effect will increase the flow through a bit.
The wire loom will be protected from the Al edges using a grommet; the vent hose will be protected using Trim Lok. I also learned of another neat tool. Often when faced with a ‘How do I do that?’ moment, I’ve discover that someone has already figured it out. Probably long ago, too. A cable loom insertion tool allowed me to feed the blowers power wires through the already-occupied headlight loom.
The completed aft-section of the air box vent system, looking from the front, below. The wires for the PS blower will run in a loom adjacent to the vent hose.
The remaining tasks for the vent system are: 1) running the butterfly valve actuator cables through the firewall; 2) connecting the blowers electrically to the blade fuse box (https://www.amazon.com/Terminal-Negative-Indicator-Waterpoof-Automotive/dp/B07HDZVW3P); 3) completing the front section of the vent system, from the blower to the nose inlet. The inlet will be through an Al panel adjacent to the radiator.
I also started on the battery system by purchasing a Breeze battery box for a Group 51 battery. This is described in my 12/16/19 blog. Since then I tapped the chassis for the electrical system ground and added the 4 AGW grounding wire.
