The Weight, The Hangman, The Cart, and The Front End

In the dark and misty morning of 19th of December 2015, Gothenburg was gloomy place. Cold rain was dripping over people as they were queuing up to buy useless Christmas presents...and since it was half a year to summer, depression was hanging in the air.

 

This was the state of things everywhere in the....but what is this?

 

No, not everywhere! In the Salt Slush Racing workshop the light was on and the spirit was high! How can that be? What make us so active? And why?

 

Let me explain.

The Weight

It all started with a healthy coffee drinking session in which plans were made and various crazy ideas was exposed to other gear heads. Then we drove to Mr.Santa to pick up Crager Wheels with (hopefully) the correct off-set. A cheerful event. Yes, we assembled immediately on the Currie rear end.

The Hangman and the Body

A nervous moment. Anders and Magnus are lowering the Amazon body over the new rear end assembly. Did they measure correctly?  The answer was, slightly surprisingly, Yes!

 

The Cart

Meanwhile, in another part of the workshop, the chassi /cage got another pair of wheels which will be use during the final fine welding and grinding phase which is now taking place, since we have the intention paint the whole creation before Christmas Eve. So we better hurry up...

The Woman and The Bike

When Cina started up her old Beemer a week ago she realized that a service was needed, which is why old fuel and old lubes are replaced by fresh fluids. I guess the bike will shine like a crystal ball when she's ready with the service. To be used at home instead of the boring old tree perhaps?

The Man and The Segway

When Magnus disassembled the front end from the frame, his associative mind was in full speed.  As usually.

All in all, it was speedy, cheerful spirit worthy Santa's Workshop. But will it all be painted before the 24th? To be continued...

To Do or Not To Do, that is the Christmas question

While, small kids make wish lists before Christmas, car guys write To Do lists. 

But there's different types of To Do lists...

The positive type is written with starry eyes and a broad happy smile...that To Do list represent the creative, happy and naive phase of a car / bike / race  project.

It's an exiting period when there's only possibilities. It normally involves writing car guy type of shopping lists as well.

Then there’s the other type of To Do list…the stressful list which represent a period which all creative people have to go through.  I’m taking about the period when you feel that you’re almost ready or at least have reached a milestone in the project.  When there's just few things left to fix, then your good to go…out of the workshop and hit the road with screaming tires in you new hot ride.

Then you make the To Do list. While anxiety is growing, you realize that there’s more work left then it took to build the Pyramids. 

At this point in time, making a shopping list doesn't cheer you up either, since you're often well over budget.

Luckily, the SSR team is currently creating To Do lists as if there was no tomorrow.

Paint the frame, make in-vehicle plumbing, buy zillions of small parts, weld, design and build a diffusor, start the electric system design and, and...celebrate Christmas.

But we're happy as kids, since we know that there's something nice with Christmas.

Christmas Chili 2015

Normally, Salt Slush invite for a big Christmas Party, but this year we just needed to relax, which is why we just invited a small group of gear heads and made a workshop chili.

No bands, no big arrangement, just a cleaned up workshop, some good food and some cold beers, while people playing the garage piano (Thanks, Mats!) and candle lights that spread light over rusty old friends and newly welded parts.

Relief, workshop mindfulness, you name it, for us it’s fantastic.

Workshop cleaned up.The frame fixture table is converted to a Christmas table, while the A-Ford frame serve a chandelier.

Next step. The Workshop Chef, is preparing the chilli (based on a well established recipe) Cina is here browning the meat before we let it cook softly for 5 hours in beer and red hot chili pepper until it was tender and nice. What Petter is doing? He's acting Kitchen fan with the workshop vacuum cleaner 

No smoke without fire. We couldn’t help starting up Cina’s old beemer as we cleaned up after the party. Yes, we needed to open up the garage doors afterwards.

So, no progress with the Amazon landspeed racer this weekend? Well, as the night grow older, we solved a lot of complicated technical problems…and yes, in addition we started to build the oil pipes and drains for our turbo system. The pluming is not ready, but we have parts and ideas.

No pics from the party? Nope, I was busy relaxing. Let’s see if anybody else…

Flow...

It's not possible to order it and you'll get it when your between control and excitement and...it's a heavenly experience.  FLOW.

I don't know for how long time this will continue, but it happens to Salt Salt Racing now...what it means i practice?

 Go-carts end on the side and half the Belly Pan gets fabricated. We had to force Anders to take a coffee break (Fika).

  

 The frame and the safety cage is fully welded. Yes, we roll back and forward just because we can. 

The race engine (not the old mock-up engine) is almost 100% ready. Only oil and water pipes to the turbochargers missing.

Is that all? Nope, as well the 2016 Salt Slush T-Shirt will soon be available! If you wear it, you'll be faster.

Workshop jamming almost big halla baloo.

In Gothenburg we have had some really bad weather lately. Heavy storm combined with heavy rain for a couple of days. The big bridge has been closed creating traffic chaos...

This Friday it took almost three hours to get home from work in mostly stand still traffic …. while it usually takes 30 minutes.

Salt Slush team knows what to do when this happens and yes, you've guessed it; stay in the workshop while the storm is howling and secure some good progress! 

And it's for sure what we did this weekend!

We meet up as usual for a Saturday session Energized by the storm we kicked off some heavy progress, all together with some good music (the weekend with Gabriel Kelley….) combined with traditional Fika ( Coffe and Cakes).

 The body had already been separated from the frame to enable welding, so the next step was to tilt the frame to make access for some more welding underneath and start to create a belly pan, but first we needed to tilt the go-cart which was exiting.

We made it eventually, without any casualties.

Anders is here doing some fast ad hoc FMEA while trying to decide next step.

As we looked at the tilted frame we all understood that we had a robust and for sure  heavy go cart.

Anders challenged us all with an announcement:

-It's soon time for some paint!

Meanwhile Carina, in a very structured way stated;

-Please document everything and try to get some feedback from SCTA before adding any paint!

Yes, we'll need some more protection under the driver…. 

yes, most of us works at Volvo Cars.

Rear part of the chassis and Håkan, glued to his Loctite 518.

 

No Loctite and obviously no Håkan, since they come in pair.

 

Besides of high speed engineering, we try to sneak in other aspects; 
self induced vehicle body levitation.

Successful as we were, we took the opportunity to have planning session around the next steps for the body. Conclusion: We will continue to remove more that does not make it look and behave like a race car.

In addition to D-vitamin, we need some real sunshine and heat to sheer us up and what is a better then bright light and heat from a welding arch?

It will take several more months before we get the real deal, when the early spring sun get back in business, so we're currently in search for a substitute and we've found it as it seems…

After sunshine comes the evening and with the evening comes contemplation. Reinforcement looks nice. We're safe...we think.

 

Yes, we're a bit proud.



 

With Loctite 518 nothing will leak , Håkan is happy to handle the sticky stuff that seals.

Sticky magic stuff ! Probably not healthy ! But still...Nice.



 

Check! Cylinder head screening ok!

Håkan is happy and valve cover is ready to get back on the engine. 

Yes, soon there. Please note that the valve cover also fixate the camshafts

Yes ,Yes, Håkan is slightly nervous !

Will the camshaft end up in the right position ! ? ! Really?

Tightening the 68 bolts that holds the valve cover and the integrated camshaft girdles.

Håkan is trying to look cool and fast, we who know him better, can see a sign of anxiety and tension which can only to be cured with a happy grunt and roar of the engine.

I did some more work on the water tank welding the aluminum in and outlet to the aluminum tank.

As said before, maybe not possible to earn a living on my skills yet, 

but welds are getting better and better. Practice makes perfection.

What now ? 

At some point in time it was time to close the engine and assemble the oil pan.

Oil pick up in position with new sealing and 

yes, you see the burden on Håkan's shoulder…...

 will there be oil pressure ?  Magnus is meanwhile making scientific experiment to determine which Loctite to use for the magic new oil filter contraption. 

He came to a verified conclusion. 

If nothing else helps;  

A hammer and Loctite 518 can fix everything. Except oil filter contraption assemblies, which need another treatment.

 

The Masterpiece. Now complete! Ready to rock And roll! Cheers!



Now this was fast and for sure furious !

On the way back from El Mirage we stopped by at Blackbird Airpark in Palmdale and had a good look at some really fast stuff. The SR71 Blackbird, a technical masterpiece from the the era when no limit approach for sure were a no limit approach. 

Scientific approach combined with a lot of testing. You get the impression of hands on applied theory. The SR-71 was designed by a team lead by Kelly Johnson, a legendary designer with long and impressive series of designs such as the P38 Lightning.

The 3 different noses that was evaluated.

Impressive specification, 

To learn more and to get some live action check it out on You Tube.  

They were smaller then what I had expected, still very compact, 

and fast looking even when standing still. 

Still looks fast though many years has past since the last flight 

Extremely compact, when you see the creature in reality you understand…

Ich pointing out that the engine, when getting close to 3 mach

 is fead via pipes that jumps the turbine and act more 

more like a rocket engine. At lower speeds it's a jet turbine engine.

Lot's of air has passed here !

Drones were already then in pipeline then, 

but the drone as such was wasted after each mission.

The drone

All in all, the day became a day focused on speed.

First SCTA El Mirage and then a couple of legendary SR71.

Midnight directions

As the dark night meet the grey cold dawn, I wonder where our racing dreams are leading us. There are a couple of alternatives: 

One direction...

..or the other.