January 16, 2008 - After a long day, the header's almost complete.
I just have to finish one part of the #1 runner, and that's just a matter of getting the motivation back up again after dinner. I stuck it on the engine just to make myself feel better about the amount of work I've done today.
The metal versions of the tubes weren't as cooperative as the plastic. Why? I think the biggest problem was that I didn't have any way to ensure that I was really cutting the tubes off perpendicularly. The belt sander helped on the straight sections, but in the middle of a curve it was mostly eyeball action. Icengineworks does sell a nice tool for this, but it's not cheap. The fact that I was using their 1.675 tool to work on 1.75" tubes might not have helped, I'm still trying to figure out if that's true or not. The biggest change I had to make was that little short straight section in the #2 runner.
A real challenge still awaits, though. I'm going to TIG weld this together. Not that I know how, of course! I'll be working with Bill at Flyin' Miata for that. I can MIG it, but it will look much better with the TIG. That's not the challenge though. It's going to have to be assembled and welded in a very particular order so I don't end up with inaccessible seams. It's going to have to come apart, that much is fairly obvious. A bit of thinking should prevent me from getting painted into a corner, so to speak. Hopefully.
tags: header |
THE DIARY