dimlight65

We are running a GPS speedo so the speedo drive in the transmission needed to be capped. I was told that the triple tree acorn nut for a Hardly Dumb-ass-one motorcycle... would thread on to it... It won't. The thread pitch is WAY finer. I googled it myself and found that an axle nut from... something would thread on though. I ran (and by "ran," I mean drove, of course) over to O'Reilley's and bought one... gave it a test tickle on a spare tranny... and then hole-sawed out a plug... and zooked that in... After it cooled, I crawled under the car and installed it... It does sit on top of the bolt that holds the pinion into the transmission... but it is hunkered down pretty tight, so I think it will be ok. Of course, after I was finished, I found a speedo cable... hanging on the wall. Oh well, it's what it's.

A few pages back (I'm not going back to find the post to quote it), I said this... was going to be the final arrangement for the "Zookie Lights." But since the smaller spot lights were upside down, this hood... was going to collect water. Well, today I drilled drainage holes... in them. Of course, me being me, I also drilled a drainage hole in my hand... Be careful how you hold shit when running a power tool, kids!

This I did... then bought four sets of sway bar bushings with saddles for it... and bolted the bar to the T/C rods... It turned out WAY better than it had any right to... A quick bounce on the fender showed a remarkable improvement. I am quite chuffed with this. We're going to paint it and the rear bar gold to "match" the T/C rods and rear control arms so I can stand back, point to them, and go, "Eh? Eh? Didja see the sway bars?"

To the best of my recollection, it is either a B-210 or automatic 1200 driveshaft that I shortened some 30 years ago when I first put the Z-20 in the car.

We finally have all the bits to have a driveshaft built... because, in addition to having non-serviceable joints, as the bishop said to the actress, my old shaft is just too long... Then we had a look at how we could make a sway bar for the front... We decided that we could do something similar to what the factory did on the rear by hanging a bar from the T/C rods... where the yellow line is. We made a template... and will have some spring steel rod bent to this shape. That will attach with the patent pending, Dimlight Racing Method... So stay tuned!

Well John, looks like "two days" is the answer to my question. What was the over/under again?

One might remember the collection of Hello Kitty knives I started earlier on this page. Well, I may have a problem... and open... I can't decide if I want to make a shadow box display for them or just continue to use this old pistol case.

So we finally got tired of the superfluous spark plugs... did a little Google searching, and discovered Honda oil drain plugs... should fill the holes in a much prettier manner. Of course, the heads of the plugs were larger than the recesses in the cylinder head, so we headed to the Dimlight Racing, Patent Pending, "Hillbilly Lathe"... and turned them down a little... Yeah, that one turned out a bit triangular. Anyhoo, we then stole the crush washers from the spark plugs we took out... and popped the plugs into the head... They should disappear once the "Dramatic Lighting" is removed.

One would think... but, no. I am a stubborn non-learner.

And better header to floor clearance, and steering rod/control arm angles.

Last week I relocated the oil filler pipe and secured it better in hopes that it would stop leaking oil onto the zorst. It did not. If anything, it made it worse. So I decided to ditch the pipe altogether... I saved it to use as a filler though... It was replaced with a standard fill cap... which is still easily accessible... Just don't burn your forearm on the upper radiator pipe!

Which is what we did. You have seen M8x1.25 button head bolts before (and I forgot to take a picture) so you will just have to be satisfied with this... And if you compare the above photo of the mismatched pedal height to this... you will see why... Oh, and the clutch master is all bolted in and plumbed again... So, we are basically back to where we were last month.

Which finally arrived! Drilled bolts made of titan-YUM... And in the process of swapping them out... and all in... Then, I broke out the safety wire pliers and got to work... I didn't like how this turned out so I cut it off and tried again... Much better. Only three more pairs to go. Back pair of front flange... Front pair of back flange... And back pair of back flange... And a final gestalt... SON OF A... Just kidding. That's one of the old gaskets.

So I got tired of the handheld controller laying on the floor. I installed the phone mount that came with the Aces EFI kit for the time being... It's just on there with one bolt... so it's a wee bit flollopy. But it's good enough for now.

... and would make our angles worse.

And at it we did look. We grokked an adjustable rod that John had laying around, but it was WAY too long. It was decided that we would cut the clevis off, and thread my... um, I don't want to say "rod" because we're all 12 years old here. Oh, ok. It was decided that we would cut the clevis off of my unit and... wait, that's no better. Hmm... Rather than do all of that, we're going to take an m8x1.25 button head bolt, thread the adjustable clevis onto it, and use that as our push rod. We finger the button head should mimic the mushroomed head of the stock push rod and... do all the stuff that that does... sort of thing. We also bolted down the heat shield on the brake master, but took no pictures.

I finally got around to reinstalling the master cylinders today... Wait, no. That's the villain "The Master Cylinder" from Felix the Cat. Here's what I did... I still need to install the bolt at the bottom of the heat shield, but that's a two man job. I popped a multi-hole pin in the brake clevis... which was the fucker of all mothers, or so I thought until I tried to put the pin in the clutch clevis... As you can see, I had to trim that one down to get it in, and it is still going to be a bit flollopy. Then, when I stood back to admire my work, I noticed... the clutch needs a longer rod. We will have a look at that next weekend. I was done at this point.

Well, we didn't quite have the clearance I thought we did. The U-joint was scraping the header. We wrestled the header out of the bay... Hello, gorgeous! And we can see where it was scraping... Now, I am not proud of this solution, but it gets us the needed clearance... We did a temporary reinstall (I want to change the bolts out for ones drilled for safety wire) and gave the steering a test-tickle. Of course I didn't take any pictures of that mainly because we dented the wrong pipe and had to take it out again to redo it. NOW it works a treat.

I was lamenting the "fact" that we were going to have to drop the cross member so much to get the bolts out of the frame in order to put on the spacers when John suggested... So, with the threat of dropping a Z-20 on my head removed, I set the jack... grabbed a ratchet, socket, and ludicrous number of extensions... and loosened the nuts... I lowered the jack a little and gave a bit of a pry to achieve... space for the shims... Then, with the nuts re-hunkered, I had a look at the steering clearance... And we appear to be good. YouTube video of it in action... Yes, I did edit out the phone falling off the frame at the end.

We were looking at the relative angles of the steering links and the lower control arms (as well as the slight positive camber it still has)... and decided that a pair of 1/2" spacers between the cross member and frame should even them out. (As an aside, we met shop stray Owen in the Dajiban thread the other day and I mentioned her Evil Twin, Edie. This is Edie)... Ok, back to the narrative. We figured 1/2" of spacer would even out the angles, so I bought some aluminum... cut it in half... and then crawled under to get bolt spacing but discovered the bolts were welded into the cross member. Crap. Well, let's hope they are going to be long enough... Whew! Looks like I planned ahead without knowing it! I measured the spacing and drilled some holes... Now our concern is header to steering rod clearance... I have some adjustment leeway at the column end... hopefully it will be enough. Since I was alone at the shop (except for the cats, and I doubt they would be calling my family if I dropped a 1200 on my head) I decided to wait for John before unbolting the cross member.

My tow strap had faded to the point of embarrassment... so I yanked it out... and replaced the webbing with some fresh red material... and popped that back onto the bumper... Much better... And we take a step back... Oh yeah... That is the thing about which I am talking!

It actually came with a "belt and suspenders" pin switch and we debated using it, but finding a suitable location was the problem.

The car meet the other night highlighted the need for some under hood lighting. So I bought a Chinesium LED light kit... with switch and fused harness... made a bracket and mounted it up... and lit up... But I had to wait until the sun set to really show it off... I am sure the kiddos at the next meet will appreci... Ok, you're right. They won't. I like it though.

If I had anything on top, it would probably be white... the beard is.

LOL, I almost drug out one of my camping chairs to sit in front of the van!