All righty then, today was the day for a check ride on Buzz......we headed out due north on I-29 about 11 this morning, it was already about 65* so a good test of the cooling system. The major change is that I put a smaller water pump pulley on so it would turn the pump faster - and I'm calling this a total win! I did not open the valve to the additional core I installed the whole trip - however it may become necessary when it's 95-100 out next summer. Here's a pic about a hour up the road......we had a pretty stiff tailwind all the way up to St. Joseph and those new tall gears really let it run! And here's a pic when I was almost home, pushing that same wind for about an hour coming south again and temps in the low 70's. Despite my best efforts Buzz is still living up to his name - I can not believe all the rattles and buzzes I still hear! Some of them are going to have to wait till after the November run, but I may have located a couple I can cure before next week anyway. The new Miata seat was fantastic, now all I need to do is make an armrest and get my cruise control installed before I head to North Carolina in the spring. That and see how many more noises I can fix!
Nothing done right is ever done quickly. Now you get to enjoy Buzz for a while before you tear the rear end apart.
I don't use cruise much, but boy it is great on those long highway slogs. My Miata was cruise-less & I added it.
I absolutely need cruise control for long trips like going to and from the Dragon. My old back and especially right leg get craped up sitting in the same position for 10+ hours. That is the only time I every use it because traffic around here is nuts.
Exactly, even on our 3 hour drive yesterday my right leg was feeling it, let alone on a long two day drive to the coast. It's going to be a challenge figuring out how to adapt the throttle opening part of the program, since the cable wraps around a drum to open the throttle rather than a straight pull. I've got a few ideas already, I just have to do a bit more studying on it first. I may wind up putting the actuator in the glovebox!
Actually, the speedo is a little fast, about 10 mph at the 75 I was driving.....which is the speed limit there.....
1. Did the screw rattle out? 2. You were doing 5 under per what I saw! Good things are working out and congratulations. Don
Yes officer, the speedo is off about 10 mph, so I was going exactly the limit *Wink, wink, nudge nudge, say no more..... So no one is surprised that my Mini can bury it's speedo, and it feels like it has plenty more in hand? I don't know what the theoretical top speed is with this gearing, but I'll bet it will do the ton, given enough road and a favorable wind! Given the 90 mph speedo, I'm guessing it ran out of gears rather than engine in the original configuration.......
And now for something completely different...... Sunday I did about a 125 mile run with the KC MINI Club, it was mid 60's and half of the distance I drove was the round trip highway drive up to Liberty where we met up. I now seem to have the opposite problem as this summer, despite putting a higher temp thermostat in I can't get the engine up to high enough temps! This summer on an 80* day it would climb over 200* in just a few miles, now only 15* cooler and it wants to run about 165* with a 180* thermostat, when I slow down coming into town it drops even more, tho it comes back a bit again. On a long uphill run at about 70mph after driving about 20 miles on the highway it got up to 180, but then when I eased off the gas on the other side of the hill it dropped back again. On my trip earlier in the week it was in the 70's and it never went over 180*. The only real change I made was getting the smaller pulley on the pump which spins the pump and fan faster. I'm thinking for this winter I may need to take the engine driven fan off completely - as a test anyway - to see if I can get it up to the thermostat opening temp at least, otherwise I won't get much heat out of the furnace this winter...... And I have GOT to find the remaining rattles and buzzes and fix them! :crazy: I also cannot seem to get the tires balanced out, I've checked them twice on the school's balancer and they always check perfectly, but I still get a lot of shake and vibration - speed dependent - which helps set off the cacophony of rattles, buzzes and vibrations thruout the car. I may break down and take them up to the shop that balanced my buddy Don's 10's on his P'up, his run smooth as can be. I'll be teaching steering and suspension next semester so I've been practicing a lot on the new Hunter alignment machine (the one with the frickin lasers! ), Sat we put my buddy Seth's classic on - he's had it aligned three times and he said the car was as squirrelly as can be especially on the highway. And no wonder, the rear tires were both pointing to the right (left toed in, right toed out) and the fronts the opposite. They did have the caster and camber in pretty good shape, but we decided to dial in a bit more caster on the right side to compensate for the very crowned roads we have. Once we got it all dialed in accurately the car drives beautifully, no more squirrelliness, no more chasing the crown of the road, just nice straight cruising. He also said it was harder to steer one direction than the other, adding the caster to the right side fixed that too. Job done! It was a bit of a challenge to get the machine to work on the Classic, with such a short wheelbase it didn't sit on the moveable rear pads so we had to lift it to make the adjustments in the back, and it just barely cleared the inner rails on the rack!
Love that Mini. Your posts are a "must read" for me. I don't know if this question has already been asked, but how do you drive around on U.K. plates?