Project-Zero: Tires

Ordered tires from. 

I went with Toyo Proxes R1R², because reasons¹.

My car will use a staggered setup:

Front size: 195/50/15 front 

Rear side: 205/50/15 rear

Footnotes:

1. The current Coronavirus situation has impacted the manufacture and supply of tires in general, selection is a little thin at this time.

3. I have a set of Proxes R2Rs on my Miata, I like them.

Project-Zero: Bushings, Part 2

Dirty update about installing bushings. 

The bushing tubes should be slightly recessed vs. the shoulders of the bushings. I didn't realize this until after I'd pressed in a few of the bushing tubes. Aping instructions offered by Richard Lincoln, I've fixed replaced them so they're no longer standing proud of the bushings. In the video I say trim 1-1.5mm but 1mm should be just fine, mostly. 

Repeat for all of the other bushing tubes in the control arms and pedal box until you're done.

General-Shop: Torque Setting Guidelines

Fastenal have a PDF chart of generally good-enough in-the-right-ball-park torque values for varying fasteners.  It's been handy when specific official torque values have been elusive.

NOTICE: Don't use this guide as a substitute for OEM torque specifications when those are known!

General-Shop: Workspace

I know that many pretend to be Tony Stark, assembling their kit cars in tiny caves with barely and inch to turn around. I admire that. I also loathe that for my personal workspace.  My garage isn’t super small but it’s annoyingly crowded as balls. That makes it difficult for me to work in. Most of this week will be sorting that out better.

Project-Zero: Bushings, Part 1

Borrowed a friend's press and vise to install the nylon bushings in the pedals and the control arms.  

I still need to trim and install the bushing tubes. That's its own project. Richard Lincoln's GBS Zero build log outlines a pretty painless process. ( this post, specifically )

Dogs in this video: Kenji and Kumo.

Project-Zero: Front Uprights

Spent a short afternoon of work cleaning up the donor front-uprights. They're from an NB MX-5 Miata, I honestly don't remember the exact model year.  Dusted them with a little black paint even though I've still got to drill/ream them out for rose joints that will act as the upper ball joints.

Left P/N:

    N115-33-031 w/o abs

Right P/N:

    N115-33-021 w/o abs

Project-Zero: Retrieving the GBS.

Some out-of-order short-form video retrieving the Zero.

Conned a friend with a tuck and trailer to help grab the crate from the warehouse in Oakland, CA. Made a fun afternoon adventure.  Could have had it delivered but picking it up personally only cost $100 in gas, lunch, and parts. Direct-to-home delivery would be about ten times that cost.

The only advice I offer is that warehouse workers don't care if you know what you're doing or not, just have patients and roll with it.

We got the thing back to my place but there are a few things I'd do differently.

• I should have gotten much beefier ratchet straps for hold-downs.
• The crate is not exactly balanced, a single axle trailer is not the best choice.

Project-Zero: Parts Inventory/Sorting

The GBS Zero ships from England to the United States in a moderately large crate filled with an Imperial Fuckton of bubble-wrap and cardboard boxes. (1 Imperial Fuckton == 2.3 Metric Fucktons or .4 Texas Fucktons)

During my inventory I replaced the parts into transparent plastic totes with some level of grouping. Fuel/air parts, wiring looms/switches, water/oil cooling, etc...

As useful as...

I find blogs car build blogs a mixed bag of usefulness. When I'm looking for specific information I've almost always have to distill it from spray of forums, blog posts, YouTube videos, and FaceBook groups. Then there's wading through the commentary.  It's tedious.

This blog is so that FutureMe will have context when, invariably, he's looking at something stupid [with the car] and grumbles, "Why did that bumblefuck PastMe do that?"

To that end I will make an effort to keep posts focused to a task or point with minimal color commentary. I will boil down the research that I do to the most concise information applicable to my build so that it will be documented for future to keep from having to do that research again when I forget everything.