GLOVE BOX/TOOL BOX

After looking at the rear plywood panel I had the thought about storage. Perfect place for a glove box since the dash is covered and forward of it is taken up with electrical stuff. This has worked out well except that the seat has to be forward to access it.

PERFECT CAR FOR MY WIFE

This has got to be the perfect car for my wife; back seat driver!!

REAR PANEL SUPPORT

The hoop tube behind the seat is a long way from the rear panel so I thought it a good idea to give it some support. I just know everyone getting in the car will push on that rear deck to support their weight. Here is my solution.

MORE ON BODY FASTENERS

For the front panel horizontal surface I machined some pins that screw into rivnuts that are set into the frame tube. Hitch pins then insert into the pins. With the Dzus fasteners the 1/4 turn part is riveted to the fiberglass and the rivet has to have a clearance hole in the plate. I had to bend the stock plates to lower them and provide a weld surface.

BODY FASTENERS

Today I started on the fiberglass panel attachment. After considering all my options I decided on Dzus fasteners. Anything I could think of would have drawbacks, i.e. screws back out from vibration, latches stick out and catch your pants etc. These really work great; I had them on a Formula Jr. years ago and have always liked them.

I picked up some plumbing insulation today too and it looks like it will work great when wrapped with leather or vinyl. It comes already slit to fit over the edge. On the area between the front and rear glass panels I'll rivet a 1x1x1/8" angle that will take the foam also.

BONNET BADGE

I wanted a nice badge for the front of the bonnet and so I came up with a design and made one. It measures 6-3/4" by 2" by 1/4" thick.

I've gotten a price for laser cutting the parts if anyone is interested.

I've also gotten 10 Dzus fasteners to hold the fiberglass panels on so that's the next project.

DRIVESHAFT TUNNEL

This build came with a very nice driveshaft tunnel that was all powder coated and fitted to the chassis. The only problem was that my wife couldn't fit into the right side seat without lifting a cheek, if you know what I mean.

I knew right away that she would not be happy riding any distance sitting like that so I figured out  way to give her some more room. After some cuts, some new riv-nuts and some screws I got another inch of width in the right seat. You cannot imagine how happy she was that I did that for her. Lots of good points scored there. I should be able to work that one for some time to come!

The tunnel had to be wide in the forward area because of the starter motor reverse device but aft of that there was about 1-3/16" of wasted space between the tunnel and the driveshaft.

SUSPENSION GEOMETRY

I've been playing around on the Racing Asperations web site and made a model of my suspension. The tires are not quite right so the ground clearance is high but otherwise it is close. See:
http://www.racingaspirations.com/mods/wqropwz7

Here is a link to the original JZR suspension the way I bought it. Pull straight down on the chassis and see how the track width changes. The tie rods would then cause bad bump steer.
http://www.racingaspirations.com/mods/dz6zox7b

Here is a way to to fix it by raising the upper ball joint by 1" or so. This makes the a-arms parallel. This is better than the original but not as good as the first example.
http://www.racingaspirations.com/mods/ruhtdedr

I did another test run in a parking lot where I could cut some circles. The car handled great. I could not get out of 1st gear so the engine overheated soon and I stopped. I'll get a video linked up soon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDGLRn9ndw0&feature=youtu.be

FRONT FENDERS

This week it's been front fenders. I first made struts from 1/4" X 3/4" Alum. flat bar. When I slapped the fender it wobbled a lot so I started over and machined new ends that are pressed into a 5/8" OD tube. These are a good bit stiffer; still bounce around but are better. Underneath the fender I bent a 1/8" X 3/4" steel flat bar that bolts to the fender and to the strut.

Note: After finishing this all up I stood back to admire my work and noticed that the fenders fitted nicely over the tire. That look is great but I would not be able to remove the wheel without removing the fender first; not good.

REVERSE MOTOR UPDATE

I found that the thin floor will distort quite a bit when the motor is energized. I ended up adding a 1/8" plate under the motor and bolted it through a cross member tube nearby. Underneath the bolts screw into a 3/8" plate at each end. This makes it all much more sturdy. There is a lot of force put against the motor mounting plate and floor under it. Eventually the floor would work harden and crack.

SYNCHRONIZE CARBS.

I made a carb stick out of 12ft. of 1/4" clear tubing, some ATF and a 2x2. My engine had vacuum ports already threaded into the manifolds so I just had to make barb fittings to fit. I used 2 bolts that fir the threads and drilled a hole down the center and machined the head off.

Check the throttle slides with some drill bits till you find on that just slides under the throttle slide. Get both carbs as close as possible to prevent sucking all the ATF into one cylinder. It won't hurt the engine if you do, it just takes time to fill the tube again.

The trick is to get the liquid even in the tube at idle and then to stay that way when throttling up. Adjust the cable fittings on top of the carb to do this. At idle if the oil is high on one side that means that side has the throttle slide too low so screw in on the idle speed screw or screw out on the other carb. When throttling up if one carb has high oil it is opening less than the other side so screw out on its cable adjuster. This works really well and works just as well on 4 carbs. Just use 4 tubes all tee fitted together at the bottom.

Here is a video showing how it worked.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJzMCmVBggQ&feature=c4-overview&list=UU8tZ0SiUMaImDmtUxQOvtAA

TRAILER

I had a 5' X 10' utility trailer so I modified it to hold the JZR. It took a lot of cutting and welding of old parts and adding some new 3" angle. I got a 2000# winch at Harbor Freight for 50 bucks on sale and another 50 bucks for the #6 battery cable and disconnect to go up to the truck battery at NAPA. I was a bit worried about tongue weight with the front of the car behind the trailer wheel but it worked out well and when I add the trailer spare tire to the front that will make it even better. Still have to put the lights back on somewhere and some paint to finish it up. Now I can load up and take it somewhere to do more driving tests, that is if it ever stops raining. It is like the monsoon season here.

TACH AND SPEEDO

When I first cranked it up I noticed the electronic tachometer was hardly moving off zero. After much thought I came to the conclusion that with dual points and coils the tach was getting one pulse per two revolutions of the crank. The tach thinks it is setup for a two cyl. engine and should get 2 pulses per 2 revolutions of the crank. I was advised on the Yahoo Replicas forum to add 2 diodes to the coils so that the tach would get the 2 pulses it needed without causing the other coil to fire when it wasn't supposed to. Thanks David. The pic should show how it's done. I'll neaten it up with shrink wrap tubes later.

The next issue was getting the electronic speedometer working. These use a pulse generator that fastens onto the tranny where the speedo cable was attached. With the Guzzi metric threads I could not find a pulse generator to fit so Classic Instruments fixed me up with a magnetic pulse sensor. This is mounted on the front upright and counts the spokes on the brake rotor. This seems to work when I spin the wheel by hand. I'll have to go through their setup procedure to calibrate it.

I paid $85.00 for the sensor. Do a search for "cherry gs1007" and you can find one for 30 bucks.

UPDATE: June, 2014
I burned out 2 of these units before I realized I had bundled the wires next to the spark plug wire. It looks like voltage spikes were getting into the sender and causing it to fail.

FINAL DRIVE

While driving I noticed a whine in the rear and figured it was the final drive. Along with all the stuff I got was a nicely powder coated final drive that was partly reassembled. After checking the mating of the gears and replacing seals and tweaking a ting or two I got it all back together and installed. I haven't driven it yet so I hope the whine is gone.

FUEL HOSE/BRAKE HOSE

Found something interesting yesterday working on carbs. the fuel in the carb was orange!! The fuel in the tank is clear.

Also the hose from the remote brake tank to master cyl. was sweating brake fluid and dripping down on the panel below. The brake fluid color was also a dark orange. To be accurate there are 2 different size hoses on the brakes. The leaking one is an SAE 30R6 hose and is the same as the fuel hose. The other hose is an SAE 30R7; the newer grade hose. The fuel and brake fluid were dissolving the hose.

I have changed the brake feed hose to a clear vinyl and will change the fuel hose to the 30 R7 which is supposed to be compatible with Ethanol fuel.

PARKING BRAKE BUILD

The Guzzi Convert model had a manual parking brake caliper mounted on the rear brake bracket. These are hard to find and I've been looking for one for the last 2 years. Several came up on e-bay last month and I was able to get one. For other than Guszzi applications this is available:
http://secure.chassisshop.com/partdetail/120-2373/

The next issue is how at actuate it. A Ford 1930-32 has a nice handle with ratchet but I couldn't find one so I made my own. I next need to find a cable; a Guzzi clutch cable is long enough I think.

THE DAY EVERYONE WAITS FOR!

Yesterday I cranked it up for the first time. I always get a rush from that. Today I took it for a short test drive. Wow, that was amazing; it all worked just great. I did notice a little noise from the driveshaft, the brakes need more bleeding and the turning radius is too big so there's some more work to do. other than that all went well. Click the video link "First run" below.

First run

MORE WIRING

On advice from a buddy ( thanks David) I removed the wiring harness tubes and re-routed most all of the wires to make things a lot neater as shown on the left. There are still a couple of more to move to finish it all up but they have to be extended to do so. I like this much better.

MORE BITS

I forgot to mention the oil pressure sender. The Guzzi comes with an oil press. switch and idiot light. The thread for this is M12-1.5 and an adapter to 1/8 pipe thread is available at Speedway Motors. They also carry the M10-1.5 adapter. I used an Autometer press. sender that is 240-33 OHM resistance to match the gauge. The sender is ugly so I chose to mount it further back out of sight.

 

LOTS OF BITS SORTED OUT

The front fenders came in yesterday and will look great. They are polished aluminum.

And I got the rear fender mounted too.

The gauge set came with an oil temp. gauge so I made up this sender. I took the oil drain plug and drilled and tapped it for the 1/8 pipe thread.

When I went to lub the front wheel bearings I found there was no way to remove the bearing cup so into the lathe it went. I machined a taper on the big end to expose the edge of the the cup. Then bore out the center until the front  cup edge is exposed. Now both cups can be knocked out. This is a specially made hub that puts the splined hub closer to the upright and reduces scrub radius.

Next is to tighten up all the brake lines and bleed the system.

SMOKE TEST

This week I did the smoke test on the wiring and the only thing that worked was the air compressor. After some head scratching and study I found that 2 relays had wires reversed on 2 contacts. Suddenly everything came to life. I need to add some ground wires to the headlights and finish the tail/tag light and all will be well.

From here I can add fluids to the brakes and bleed them; add oil and gas and give it a crank!!!!!!!
WOW. That should happen early June if all goes well.

WIRING 2

After another week of wiring I have a lot more circuits run and some tidying up work. What's left now is the lights front and back and the air compressor wiring.

WIRING STARTED

I've been working on wiring for the last couple of weeks. It's a slow go but I'm moving right along. I am not able to instal a floor dimmer switch due to lack of space. Instead I have found a latching relay. This is connected to the cruise control button on the turn signal stalk. A momentary push flips the relay from high beam to low beam, back and forth. Here is a link to it:

http://www.oreillyauto.com/site/c/detail/BWD0/R3018.oap?pt=01839&ppt=C0111

This is how it is wired. The power input, 56, should come from a normal on/off relay triggered by the headlight switch. Jump 56 to 30. The signal is"S" and 56a and 56b are for hi and lo lights.

Most of the circuits for the engine are started and wires run. The lighting will take some time and lots of wire.

ENGINE TURNING

The dash that came with the car has been kicked around for 10 years and got pretty scratched up so I decided to redo the engine turning. Everyone seems to have an opinion on how to do this so here is my opinion (not really mine I researched and liked this one the best). The tool is nothing more than a 3/4" wood dowel. I used fast setting superglue to attach a 3/32" thick disc of leather to one end and used Permatex course valve grinding compound. I had to play with this for a bit until I got the pressure and dwell time right; then went at it. It took probably most of a day to do.

Next I can cut holes for the instruments and start wiring. Thanks to Roland for assisting me with the alternator wiring.

CONTROLS

The past few days I've been working on throttle and choke hook up. Finally came up with something that should work. The choke is off the Guzzi but I made a modified lever. This will be operated by a pull knob/cable on the dash. The lever will pull on the choke but not lock it so it will release when I let go of the knob. I rebuilt the carbs and have those mounted also. I'm now starting the wiring. This will test my patience.





I have a pair of polished valve covers that came with the car. They will make for more Bling.