Printing a few tidy-ups.

So, with my new tool-chest I had somewhere better to put my 1/2″ extension arms. They were rattling around in the drawer. So, 30 minutes in CAD and a couple of hours in the printer, and now they have somewhere nice to sit, and they don’t rattle around anymore.

Auspicious Day – Caloo-Calay

So, the engine has gone off to Damien at Day tuner to have the cam timing set up. I tried to do it, and I had sane instructions, but I failed more than Trump in Mexico. Every time I tried to get the valve just so, the springs would shove and the cam would spring round, taunting me. I followed Homer Simpson’s rule: “If at first you don’t succeed, give up”. I rang Damien to get it done (which is what most Duratec owners do around here) and he laughed … “With your setup, those springs will close a barn door in a force 10 gale – come on over”. This is definitely a job for the expert.

Once done, I can seal up the engine (as in seal down the top, front and sump), and put the injector blanking plugs in, then it’s finished.

In the picture below, you can see some of the blanking plates I printed up – this is exhaust side. Pretty groovy I think. I also got more familiar with Onshape and the more I use it, the more impressed I am. If you’re a hobbyist like me, it’s free as long as you store your parts in their cloud and make them visible to all. For $100 per month, you can keep more than your allocated 10 private parts in the cloud. That sounds draughty to me. Onshape really is VERY GOOD. I use it on my iPad Pro and it’s a perfect fit with the pencil. It’s interesting to watch your drawings on the IPad being updated realtime if you’re also accessing them from a Mac or PC.

The engine spec should get me 230 BHP, 100 up from the stock spec, and it’s strong enough to take a super-charger, which will give me 100BHP more, should I decide that’s the route to go. I’ll done that once I’ve got to know the car all over again.

Right – some tidying up do do.