Meep-Meep
дворянин
This is really to document the last couple of days while giving you something interesting (hopefully) to read. Much better pics are coming and some killer video! I'll start off by saying the designer and builder of the car (Marc Witt) has proven his brilliance once again. As a quick recap, this car is not a kit and is not based on any chassis. The body was created from scraps of 3/16" aluminum sheet collected from other jobs by a crazy man with way too much time on his hands. All panels formed using sheet metal brakes, an English wheel, dies, hammers, CNC mill, CNC plasma burner all under the supervision of Cookie the orange Pitbull and to the chagrin of his then pre-teen daughter Imani.
The trip started out pretty normal with everyone getting stuff together, but as we tried to leave Fri AM we discovered few problems with the car - like lack of water circulation to the radiator for one - and the drama with Marc's on again - off again girlfriend. All this delayed the trip until Sat afternoon. The mechanical issues were identified and a solution proposed and implemented within an hour - on a Friday at 6:00 PM. That solution is the electric water pump we quickly stuck on the back. Only if drama can be solved this easily!
Marc doesn't travel much so the joke all weekend was about him going outside of his 20 mile triangle. He thought California extended to just south of San Leandro, but after 6 hrs in the truck and still no border in sight, he realized the place is pretty big. One thing I pointed out was the decline of liberalism vs. distance traveled away from the SF Bay Area appeared to be exponential curve. There may be a graph coming.
We landed on the lake bed Sun AM about 9:30 and started unloading stuff. The crew was Eric the photographer and yours truly. His now iphone equipped teenage daughter was there to see a bunch of lunatics fuss over a welded up pile of aluminum with a supercharged 13B rotary engine bolted to a VW transaxle but Cookie the orange Pitbull was at the sitters because there can be a thing as too much dog help!
Once unloaded and buzzing around the lake bed I got reports of it being weak. He made a few runs and could only get to about 70 MPH but at least it wasn't boiling over. Incidentally, this is the first time he got the car past second gear because it's hard to blend in with traffic on the city streets of Emeryville testing an unregistered custom built amphibious car - with no muffler. But I digress..
The car is running one of my "Mongo Motors" 450 CFM Ford truck Holleys that I'm sure Mongo (RIP) himself got from pick N pull. All I did was freshen it up prior to the event. I began looking into why the thing wouldn't run and decided to do some basic diagnosis. I disconnected the secondary diaphragm and there was no difference. OK, I'm on to something. I pulled the diaphragm off and removed the check ball from the vacuum port then hooked it back up to the linkage. Still not much difference but Marc did see the secondaries start to open. I then went the other direction by implementing a classic white trash engineering technique, which is hooking a spring in this case (or more commonly a screw) in the sliding safety link to force the secondaries to open mechanically. Ignoring all the drivability problems that ensue with such a mod it did manage to get the car to 101 MPH but it was still like pulling teeth to get there. At this point I was wishing I brought another carb. Just so you know all speeds are by GPS with the actual reading captured by in car video. 101 is OK but not good enough as the record for a land run of an amphib is 125. Disappointment was setting in.
During our short test runs were informed by some locals riding bikes and quads that the speed guys always start at the other end of the lake. As you can imagine this car drew quite a crowd accompanied with lots of questions! This new information about the "good part" of the lake starts to make sense because during the 101 MPH run Marc hit a small pile of loose dirt, which scrubbed off about 30 MPH instantly. The car is pretty low and something in the front dug in like a gardening tool. From the truck we just saw a big plume of dust and Eric the photographer thought he wiped out big time but all was well except one of the fenders bowed from the tire hitting it. No big deal as we had the on site metal fabricator to straighten it back out.
We caravaned to the opposite end of the lake, escorted by our new ground crew, who all became very much involved in making this event. They took Marc down in their car to show him the line to follow and where to hit the brakes. Then they would go back to the end point and park giving Marc a target for direction and flash the lights to signal stop. The lake bed in this area was notably smoother with fewer obstacles and we were ready to see if the improved conditions would result in better speed. But to break 125 MPH conditions would have to be really good or even approaching miracle status. With Marc inside the car ready to go I made a final check of the car and noticed something that wasn't right. I'm no rotard expert but I do know these engines have leading and trailing plugs, which are controlled buy a second set of points in the distributor. Well, I found the smoking gun. One set of points was disconnected! I ask Marc about it and he said "oh no, that's fine" not really seeing what I was talking about. I said it's on the distributor and pretty sure we have been running on one set of plugs all day!! The light came on and he said, yes, hook it up! This thing is acting like the timing is off so that must be it. I hooked up the wire; stuffed him in the car and he fired it up. As soon as he took off I knew good things were going to happen because it sounded different and responded much better. The result was an EASY 130 MPH run! According to Marc it was still pulling at 130 but he ran out of lake.
Afterthoughts: I suggested we look at the in car video to see the tach at speed (hopefully the needle is visible) and make a determination about gearing. My guess is he can use a slightly lower gear if he is not near the red line of 8000 RPM in 4th while quickly running out of lake. Or, we can just stop now and deliver it to the new owner as his new record breaking amphib car.
So what did you guys do this weekend?
- - - Updated - - -
The trip started out pretty normal with everyone getting stuff together, but as we tried to leave Fri AM we discovered few problems with the car - like lack of water circulation to the radiator for one - and the drama with Marc's on again - off again girlfriend. All this delayed the trip until Sat afternoon. The mechanical issues were identified and a solution proposed and implemented within an hour - on a Friday at 6:00 PM. That solution is the electric water pump we quickly stuck on the back. Only if drama can be solved this easily!
Marc doesn't travel much so the joke all weekend was about him going outside of his 20 mile triangle. He thought California extended to just south of San Leandro, but after 6 hrs in the truck and still no border in sight, he realized the place is pretty big. One thing I pointed out was the decline of liberalism vs. distance traveled away from the SF Bay Area appeared to be exponential curve. There may be a graph coming.
We landed on the lake bed Sun AM about 9:30 and started unloading stuff. The crew was Eric the photographer and yours truly. His now iphone equipped teenage daughter was there to see a bunch of lunatics fuss over a welded up pile of aluminum with a supercharged 13B rotary engine bolted to a VW transaxle but Cookie the orange Pitbull was at the sitters because there can be a thing as too much dog help!
Once unloaded and buzzing around the lake bed I got reports of it being weak. He made a few runs and could only get to about 70 MPH but at least it wasn't boiling over. Incidentally, this is the first time he got the car past second gear because it's hard to blend in with traffic on the city streets of Emeryville testing an unregistered custom built amphibious car - with no muffler. But I digress..
The car is running one of my "Mongo Motors" 450 CFM Ford truck Holleys that I'm sure Mongo (RIP) himself got from pick N pull. All I did was freshen it up prior to the event. I began looking into why the thing wouldn't run and decided to do some basic diagnosis. I disconnected the secondary diaphragm and there was no difference. OK, I'm on to something. I pulled the diaphragm off and removed the check ball from the vacuum port then hooked it back up to the linkage. Still not much difference but Marc did see the secondaries start to open. I then went the other direction by implementing a classic white trash engineering technique, which is hooking a spring in this case (or more commonly a screw) in the sliding safety link to force the secondaries to open mechanically. Ignoring all the drivability problems that ensue with such a mod it did manage to get the car to 101 MPH but it was still like pulling teeth to get there. At this point I was wishing I brought another carb. Just so you know all speeds are by GPS with the actual reading captured by in car video. 101 is OK but not good enough as the record for a land run of an amphib is 125. Disappointment was setting in.
During our short test runs were informed by some locals riding bikes and quads that the speed guys always start at the other end of the lake. As you can imagine this car drew quite a crowd accompanied with lots of questions! This new information about the "good part" of the lake starts to make sense because during the 101 MPH run Marc hit a small pile of loose dirt, which scrubbed off about 30 MPH instantly. The car is pretty low and something in the front dug in like a gardening tool. From the truck we just saw a big plume of dust and Eric the photographer thought he wiped out big time but all was well except one of the fenders bowed from the tire hitting it. No big deal as we had the on site metal fabricator to straighten it back out.
We caravaned to the opposite end of the lake, escorted by our new ground crew, who all became very much involved in making this event. They took Marc down in their car to show him the line to follow and where to hit the brakes. Then they would go back to the end point and park giving Marc a target for direction and flash the lights to signal stop. The lake bed in this area was notably smoother with fewer obstacles and we were ready to see if the improved conditions would result in better speed. But to break 125 MPH conditions would have to be really good or even approaching miracle status. With Marc inside the car ready to go I made a final check of the car and noticed something that wasn't right. I'm no rotard expert but I do know these engines have leading and trailing plugs, which are controlled buy a second set of points in the distributor. Well, I found the smoking gun. One set of points was disconnected! I ask Marc about it and he said "oh no, that's fine" not really seeing what I was talking about. I said it's on the distributor and pretty sure we have been running on one set of plugs all day!! The light came on and he said, yes, hook it up! This thing is acting like the timing is off so that must be it. I hooked up the wire; stuffed him in the car and he fired it up. As soon as he took off I knew good things were going to happen because it sounded different and responded much better. The result was an EASY 130 MPH run! According to Marc it was still pulling at 130 but he ran out of lake.
Afterthoughts: I suggested we look at the in car video to see the tach at speed (hopefully the needle is visible) and make a determination about gearing. My guess is he can use a slightly lower gear if he is not near the red line of 8000 RPM in 4th while quickly running out of lake. Or, we can just stop now and deliver it to the new owner as his new record breaking amphib car.
So what did you guys do this weekend?
- - - Updated - - -
