Progress update.

Rome was not built in one day. Neither the Salt Slush Racing Volvo Amazon. But we're tooling our way to success step by step. We practise the do-something-almost-everyday strategy. Design, decide, build, order something everyday then all of a sudden you'll get there. Next big step is now to remove the vehicle from the build table and let it gently touch the holy garage floor for the first time.  This will happen really soon now. Meanwhile, here's a few pictures of details that we like. 

 Anders is in a sheet metal forming period. Which is good. He's especially proud over the right part of this section. A complex shape which is too complex to understand matematically, which is why he just did it without thinking too much.

The beautiful handmade (spinning) Moon hubcaps, the ones that is screwed to the wheel, feels good to have in place. If it wouldn't have been for the fact that they've been used by a lot of gearheads for many years, I would have been concerned about air leaks....

Paul, a SSR friend with certain experience of land speed racing on the Salt Flats, took the opportunity to inspect the vehicle while it's still on the table.

Material happiness = EFR 9180 delivery !

Can material gods really bring you happiness? Those of you who doubt this have obviously not received a 9180 EFR turbo suitable for 1000hp! It's a piece of art with its precision cast twinscoll turbine house, integrated wastegate and milled compressor wheel. 

When you move your shaking finger forward to spin the turbine wheel (the turbo community equivalent to tire kicking) and do feel how easy it is to spin, thanks to the big Titanium-Aluminum turbine wheel and ceramic ball bearing, you hesitate for a moment, then you go for it. And yes, you can almost hear engine roar and boost pressure raise!

One hour earlier I felt like I was overloaded with work on a depressing Wednesday in February. Not anymore, cause I've taken the Turbo cure!

The 9180 EFR does not only a power enabler, it keeps the room together as well. A Turbo  decoration

Is it a meat mill? No, it's the beauty in another angle and another light.

Speed is not an illusion !

I am not a mathematician or physician but I know for sure that speed is for real !

Just take a moment and enjoy some of Mercedes Benz historical land speed racers and race cars !  

I had the opportunity to visit The Mercedes Benz museum in Stuttgart. It was extremely nice and inspiring and without going into details, the cars for speed and racing are fantastic. Such design and engineering meisterstück ! Well kept together via the thesis "Form und Funktion".

All except the two last picture are pre war and they make you think: 

Make speed not war !

 

Moonlet Wednesday evening in February.

Was tonight a moonlet night in old Mexico? No, and Speedy Gonzales was not around either.

Did we get a message from outer space? No, there was no extraterrestrial objects falling from the sky.

We just received some legendary speedy hub cap from Moon Equipment, destined to make our hot rod Volvo Amazon Station Wagon act like horizontal rocket in a moon like landscape.

Not only Anders is happy.
Moon is Cool

A Gasser? A Track Racer? A Dragster? No it's Landspeed Racer !

Our Land Speed racer is coming together step by step. Our coffee drinking and talking, but determined, team is slowly tooling its way to The Salt.  As our creation is taking shape we're starting to get an idea of the final result. It's not a gasser because it ain't high and it doesn't have green or yellow window. It's not a dragster cause it will run on narrow tires and it's not a track racer since it will be somewhat heavy. It starts to look a little bit like of everything above. Actually I get the feeling that it will not only be fast as a shark but as well cool as ice.

But let's start from the beginning. It was a normal busy weekend in the workshop with a lot of gearheads (friends) coming by to critize and question our impeccable ideas. Which is encouraging and gives us strength. Below is a glance of our workshop weekend

Karl-Johan happily provide design guidelines to Robin, the Race driver. A fast guy in search for more speed and control.

Anders is having a machine moment when working with his self-made sheet metal forming machine.

Carina was populating our web based Speed Shop with more good stuff.

 Magnus is concentrated since he wants to leave the workshop with the same 10 fingers he arrived with.

Mario and Gitte are working hard on their newly painted Volvo P1800.

 

Hard work pays off part 1

 Hard work pays off part 2

 Two enablers. Boost pressure = happiness.

 Not Lagom. But nice.

The place we call home.

The future home for our feets. Yes, we know, the most important pedal is still missing. 

Anders waiting for parts fabricated by Magnus. 

CAD (Cardboard  Aided Design) supported fabrication. Here's the final state-of-the art bearing support ready to be welded in place.

Anders evaluating if the part is according to our strict standard and intentions. 

Magnus keeping a polite and humble attitude !

Yes, we all approve it, we are good to go! Soon we will be in control !

Smart storage, when you outgrow your workshop

Disclaimer: You are about to see some pictures from my garage/workshop. This in no way represents good practice nor should the rest of the team be judged by my standards. Do not try this at home. Remember cleanliness is next to godliness. Now let's talk shop saftey and smart storage.

A machined surface is a surface you make using your machine. Hopefully with some degree of precision. A machine surface is a somewhat flat surface on your machine where you can store tools, parts, rags, catalogs, fast food, etc. Preferably under a big pile of metal chips. Sometimes your machined parts can become the storage space for other parts and projects. That's a practical way to save space. The fun part is when you finally dig in to the pile of parts you have and find all the neat things you have been looking for. So really, slacking with the cleaning up is just like giving you a surprice christmas every now and then. If you know what to look for you can see more than a few ongoing, well not completely abandoned, projects.

Oh there's one of my flathead blocks under my soon to be bass cabinet under some Ford Model B engine parts. At least the stack has wheels and can be rolled.

Other Ford parts on my washing machine

In a recent blog entry I showed you some machining of our flywheel. To do that I had to fire up my trusty old Warner & Swasey turret lathe. And by trusty old I mean old... and not that trusty. Make  no mistake, it will turn big chunks of solid metal into tiny chips in a heartbeat. But the clutch drag in neutral and the difficult to stop 50+ kg chuck sometimes worry me. But hey, moving the forward/reverse lever slightly to reverse the chuck is held stationary most of the times.

Poor old Bridgeport

 I really like older machines with all the knobs, wheels and levers. Big heavy castings, functional design, useful damn nice looking and a lot of space to pile up parts. But what really want to say is that I'm in desperate need of a larger workshop. Much much larger.

OK enough of the stupid rant . Enjoy the horror.

Using my MIG weld as a cart for my TIG welder. How's that for weldporn?

What is this neglected machines? Hardly anything stored on them. 

Until next time: Eat, sleep, salt slush, repeat.

Dream, Think, Talk, Agree, & Build -A consequence of Consensus Anarchy

A Saturday afternoon at Ringön is an essential part of a nice weekend.This Saturday we all dropped in for a workshop session.

The focus of the day was to continue with the steering our "Goldene Lenkrad" and pedals. Everything is now set up and some parts are spot welded and combined with mock ups for the rest we'll soon have everything in place and will be good to go. As mentioned in the headline everything done in a traditional Swedish almost Japanese consensus manner, meaning that we drink coffee and talk without thinking. Closely followed by …..a jam session….. then trial and error…..

Yepp, we'll change to steel any day soon. You can for the first time can see what will be our inlet manifold, an original T6 Volvo manifold, which we will modified in numerous ways. We all started to see Håkan's eager eyes as he look forward to cut and change when adding a huge LS throttle. Anders and I started to think about welding aluminum. 

Salty liquorice, a Swedish treat we'll bring to Bonneville.

The one and only:  Der Goldene Lenkrad !

In parallel I kept on building tables... Why ? Just now, we're not prepared to explain why.

All serious build blogs tends to show case welds ! here we have one, TIG 90 amps no added material, nothing strange, made by a rookie …..

Big worries and almost time for... Power Point engineering: How bad and wrong can't this turnout. Just kidding,  but we've started to plan our participation at Elmia Motorshow where we will promote our EFR & Schwitzer turbo business. 

This will generate a couple of things to do, to make the best of it. 

All based on the concept act big and you will be big ! 

Håkan and Carina is evaluating if our stand at the fair is in a good place and on display. Will the right people pass by ?

Lars Martin is thinking while preparing to measure

Håkan digesting and thinking as he is preparing to talk

Back to work our never ending front end. But now it's renovated and in place. We're getting there with a mega caster to help us when going fast.

Our not 9 - 5 office