d is for deals

Happiness is waking up to a kid hovering over you,
rallying to go to for a swap meet scrounge session.
The other kids enjoy sleeping in,
but Jakob's ready to walk the aisles of junk.

foam conquistador

We found out that the SD swap meet has geared for the super early birds.
We're lucky to get there by 7:30ish,
which is late as buyer entry is 7AM.
I guess there are so many people scrounging for deals at the 5AM seller time,
that they are starting to sell early passes.
No wonder the scores have been light these past few times.

Jakob's skateboard score
dream 1.43 rolling boards deck
DGK wheels and deck

NO matter.
I'll actually be intentionally later just to not see any of the good stuff.
Otherwise sparse project money may be frittered away for something we don't need.
Jakob's focus is the skateboard guy.
His honor roll prize $$ was burning a hole in his pocket,
and this swap outing saved him almost half his dough,
which really meant ending up with twice as much stuff!

library

My pickings were light just a couple $1-2 books and some veggies.
We'll get our moneys worth out of these that's for sure.
Weird how it was also the D-day anniversary weekend.

jaguar d-type

I love these things.
If I ever break away from hot rodding this will be on the STD list...

TP

And no I didn't pick up the foam conquistador!
At first it looks like wood and I had to stop.
Now looking at the picture dang it if I should have at least asked the price!

short sale

We had an early family x-mas party at my aunt and uncle's house.

stacked

They're the ones with the English car addiction.
perich brothers (and sister): english invasion - Pt I - 1966 Lotus Cortina
For years they've been planning on getting one of those stacking car lifts.

lotus + morgan sandwich

Well a couple weeks a go they scored huge on a bro-deal.
A friend of a friends house was on a short sale,
and they got this really bitchin lift for a ridiculously low price.
Super cool as they have another English car to take up the new space!

cousins Jake and Jayden

It's also the natural spot for a couple of kids to hang out!

TP

saved from the scrap heap

For years I've been kicking around this old cadillac/lasalle transmission.

1938-53  cadillac transmission

It was so clean on the outside,
and wasn't seized.
I figured it was something worth hoarding.

cadillac/lasalle transmission

Out of curiosity I removed the bottom cover plate.
Holey chit.
The gears were totally pitted!
Water must have been in there for years.
To get this bad there had to have been some rust in there,
but the strange thing is the insides were totally  clean.
Some bumpkin had to have disassembled the innards,
cleaned them up,
and thrown it back together!

holey chit

Great.
For 6 or so years this thing was basically a boat anchor.
A heavy one too!
Time to send it to greener pastures.

base

I considered scrapping it,
but made a half-hearted attempt to find a new owner.
Of all places the most interested person lived in England.
Holey double chit!

strapped

Way too long for one of those plastic totes,
it took me a while to figure out how to make a crate.
Not that it is difficult to make one,
it's just hard to make one on the cheap.

framed

Using some pallet scrap, new wood, mikes patch panel scrap, and some old rope,
a strong box appeared over the course of a couple days.

screwed - glued - taped - tied

Definitely not a show piece for my wood work!

The ends were covered in packing tape,

to keep it together as well as protect from splinters.

I've come to respect that plastic tape,

it's some strong stuff.

The plastic rope handle is threaded through the base,
and wraps around the transmission,
so the box isn't really a structural piece,
more of a protective cover.

child labor

The kids were barely able to move it.
No wonder that piece of junk weighed in at 112 pounds!
Fortunately the guy wanted it that bad.

how to  ship a transmission!

UPS was the cheapest to get it out to the middleman out east.
I am glad it is finally gone!

TP

devil's advocate

Some more English Invasion pictures that were stuck in my phone.
These are from that same British Car Day 2012 show as the previous post.

So it is 1955,
and you are buying your first used car.

austin healey 100

By now these Austin Healey 100's are a couple years old.
Beaters.
Why on earth would you want to buy a big ole 1953 chevy or ford,
when you could have one of these 100 MPH roadsters,
and still get over 20 MPG,
and be the coolest looking car on the road.
Check out that folding windshield Holey Chit.

austin healey 100

Sure they've got some tiny european engine,
and the only mechanic in town was twice the price.
Tear that thing out,
and wedge in a SBC!

austin healey 100 -  hot rod

When you pick up your date,
you prop the windshield back up to vertical,
now her hair won't get all messy.
The "get lucky" windshield.

austin healey 100

Really the only negative I could see,
was the roadway full of lumbering Big 3 beasts.
Which is better - handling or barge-like steel?

AC Ace

Then there's the Big Daddy AC Ace at 1" longer all around.
I guess that's not much more mass,
but hey once a SBF is in there whose gonna catch ya.

AC Ace

Dang it must have been tough back then with all these cars to choose from.
Who am I to talk.
Would I trade one of our prewar hot rods for one of these?

TP

the future?

Back in October we sniffed out a cool little car show down here,
the 2012 British Car Day - San Diego.
You know something is going on when there are 4 or 5 old english cars
driving down the main drag,
so we followed them to the park down at Liberty Station.

electric 1970 MGB

First off there were a ton of really bitchin cars down there,
but I've got to get them off my phone first which takes forever.

Out of all the cars,
why would I write about a somewhat plain MGB.
Well since everyone likes to show off there cars with their hoods up,
this guy was showing off a slew of batteries.

It kinda makes me think how lucky we are to burn gas.
Right now electric cars are the 1 out of 1000's,
but there will be a time when this will be standard.
In reality,
the amount of daily driving most people could handle the limited distance.
Lucky for us there are tons of these little light foreign cars to convert.

electric car batteries

I did some quick research and found the owner is a wizard,
not only in figuring out how to convert the car,
but also by funding it!
La Jolla High School teacher receives grant from Best Buy | La Jolla Light
Dang smart Mr Teachworth!

For all of us that can't get an $18K grant for parts and have our minions do the labor,
it was refreshing to learn that there are people that do this in their garages,
scrapping parts from forklifts and junkyards.
(Internet search electric car and motorcycle conversions when you're bored.)

Yeah it is weird without the exhaust sound.

At least there's a little hope!

TP

sloppy

Not all radiator water bottles are created equal.
Well maybe they are created equal,
but like a lucky pachinko ball,
 some go on to greatness.

sloppy's radiator water TM

A good friend Sophorn "SLOPPY" Sin sketched this up many years ago.
He's got a knack for making mundane items priceless.

1941robote

He's also just got a bitchin BSA chopper.

Sloppy's Choppa

I've been waiting to see a picture of it,
and gotta say it's hella cool.

 Go Sloppy Go.

TP

racing the wasp

I hadn't heard from Mark (and wife Kathy)
about their sidecar race in November.
For some reason my head was spinning negatively.
did the motormounts break?  did the brake tabs fall off?
did one of them get injured?
Maybe this comes from having children.
I don't know.

(If you don't remember his 70's  WASP MX Sidecar with the kawasaki 650,
here's the link to the "build".)
perich brothers (and sister): wasp

Anyway as typical of a concerned parent,
they were out having the
 "best fun we have had in a while".
Kids....

Mark and Kathy testing my welds
Jumping on a Wasp MX Sidecar

What can I say but "Holy Chit"!
I'll have to say Mark is a lucky guy,
his wife definitely gets a top ten coolest wife award!

right turn
Wasp motocross sidecar

left turn
Wasp motocross sidecar

Looks like Kathy has the sidecar "english" covered.
A lot of work controlling these things.

hold on!
Mark and Kathy Wood
70's Wasp MX Sidecar 

Hopefully they get good enough to have sponsors.
A "perich" sticker would look good on it,
or maybe some jerseys...

3

They had such a blast that another one is getting shipped from england.

race MX sidecar

He found a KTM 550 2-stroke for this rolling sidecar project.
I think they might like the extra suspension travel.

c-ya!

So this old Wasp will go into show duty.
Good to know it can still hold it's own.

TP

bzzzt ... bye bye wasp

The Wasp has finally left.

wasp mx sidecar 

For the amount of work done to it,
I was a little slow.
Each project was intricate enough that it wasn't quick cut and paste work.
Fortunately Mark found an event to enter which lit the fuse a bit.
Deadlines always help!

kawasaki w650 engine

So where was I since the last update...

After making the brackets for the master cylinder and rear caliper,
the next thing was modifying the foot brake pedal.
Its hard to see in the picture but that is good,
it was a retweaking of an original.
At least the positioning is right!

The exhaust was fun.
It started out with this unrelated stainless donor that had the perfect bends.

donor exhaust

The tricky part was figuring out how to clamp it to the engine.
The original used a couple shims with a bolt on clamp.
Mark wanted a different method.

double ring

Basically it's 2 flat washer/rings.
One presses on the copper gasket and the other is for the clamp.
very time consuming whittling those rings out of stainless!

exhaust clamped

It seems like a sturdy design and less prone to leaking or loosening.
The clamps can slide off the other end if needed.

almost equal

The idea of the pipes was to have them as equal length as possible.
Tricky when its on opposite sides of the bike,
so that's why that dip is there.
Still about 3" short.
The pipes were forced into the V shape of the Wasp muffler,
so there weren't too many variables without changing the muffler clamp angle.

front view

I'm sure it will be fine,
at least it matches the other angles of the side car.


Another fun part was this foot grip for the base.

castellated

I had searched for some designs on other Wasps,
and came up with this.

forward gription

The rider or monkey has to move all around the side car,
from way forward on this corner leading edge to the other side behind the driver.
Crazy.

rear gription

Oh yeah.
One of the last things was reangling the top handbar.

workbench

That was one of the harder things

as we don't have a bender that will bend tight 90's out of thin wall tube.

I ended up using the bends I had cut out of the original handle,

but it came out good enough.

WASP MX  sidecar rear view

That was one of the relieving things on the bike.
Nothing had to be show,
it was better if it had a 70's race bike theme,
since that's what it is.
Not arc-weld out in the pits type work,
but not unrealistically restored either.

sidecar view

So the cool thing is Mark and his wife Kathy (C?) are planning on racing this together.
It seems like there might be an issue on whose the driver and whose the rider!
(she rides horses and he's actually been the sidecar monkey during races)

I hope they get it running soon enough to get some practice time.
The plan is to get it running for the race this november,
than blow it apart and clean it up.

wasp and happy owners Mark and Kathy

So this left last Monday.
It was there long enough that its strange having the shop space open again!

Thanks guys for the project!

TP

english invasion - Pt I - 1966 Lotus Cortina

Sometimes I wonder which houses are hiding all the secret stashes of cool stuff.

Yeah the majority of people are stuck with honda's and "best buy" junk,

but if even 5% of the population of San Diego County has something cool,

that's 150,000 people.

So on that note,

in a non-descript house in La Mesa,

my aunt and uncle have a serious collection of english cars.

1966 Lotus Cortina

My Uncle Robert is an English transplant,

and is lucky enough to have coerced my Aunt to be as much of a gearhead as he is.

1966 Lotus Cortina

Back in the 60's these little cars ruled the racing circuits and streets.

Basically they took the light Ford Cortina body,

and added a DOHC Lotus Elan engine.

Lotus Engine & suspension stiffener

In a NASCAR like move,

at least 1000 or 2000 of these cars had to be built as stock production cars

to be able to legally race in their "saloon car" class.

Lotus Cortina - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here's the link for a more detailed history.

Cool to see the 7-liter Galaxy racing the 1.6 liter Cortinas!
Watch about the 30 second mark,
these cars were famous for their 3-wheeled turns.

1965 Indianapolis 500 winner badge

True to the Lotus heritage,
my uncle actually races this thing.

battle scars

And sadly it has taken some good spins and some rail scrapes.
Fortunately he's the type to get it repaired ASAP.

sign of a race car

Besides the roll cage,
another trick to call out a race car is that little tab up in the left corner.

body catcher

The upholstered pics are current.
He had it stripped down right after the groundup rebuild as a race only car...

race form

after a year of racing decided to reinstall the original upholstery,
including the back seat.
For a couple times a year racer that seems fine by me!

race fuel tank

Here's some TMI shots.

oil pan baffle

The oil pan looks to be widened but I'm not sure,
there is some custom baffling inside though.
Big carbs and some fat exhaust help a bit too.

full flow exhaust headers

The engine has a ton of internal tricks,
and it sounds very expensive to fix.
There is an adjustable rev limiter on it to help tone it down.

Add caption

Even then he said the shift point is about 7500,
which seems high for a 1966 era car but what do I know.
He said they max out at about 10K for a dialed in engine,
but his rev limiter is set to about 8700.

tire quiver

Some courses have tire restrictions so these are some of the quiver.

last year ready for Laguna Seca

Next time I'll post up the pictures of that green thing next to it.

cortina and morgan

Later!

TP