I have always heard a little adage that “IF you wash your car, THEN it will rain”.  

The transformation of Sherman in to a VEGECAR car conversion is nearly complete.  The automatic system I built works perfectly and in full auto mode, I am getting 24 MPG on waste vegetable oil, and  really dont know how miles on diesel fuel since I haven’t gone to a gas station in over 2 months (still have 3/4 tank of diesel).  I am going to have to switch to diesel for a while to just use it up and take a few pounds off Sherman’s legs.   Put him on a diesel diet.

Since it was such a beautiful day in Charleston and having not spent enough quality time has been spent with Sherman lately, I decided he needed a good cleaning and spruce up. 

A good wash, a some fine compounding, lots of high quality carnauba wax was and he is looking good now…

Looks even better with his daddy in the picture.

The hat I am wearing has an interesting story.  On the way up to Oshkosh this year I stopped by to visit Jack Morrison’s new EZ racer.  I’ll have to post more pictures of Jack’s fantastic work.    What a great plane he is building.

Well, after seeing his plane and having lunch together, I prepared to leave and while packing the plane, I noticed my favorite hat was gone….  Shit, it must have flown out of the plane while taxiing to Jack’s hangar.  It’s gone……  

As I was taxing to take off, I saw my hat in the distance.  It’s still there looking good!

As I slowed to pass it, it became apparent the hat went through the prop (the second time the prop has chewed up one of my hats).

I was just going to leave  it there as I was to0 embarrassed to deal with it, but I called the control tower and said “Tower, 29TM, there is a hat on the taxi way.  I’ll stop and pick it up for you”.  Tower was more than happy to have me get rid of some FOD for them, and they thanked me for picking up the trash.   Later at Oshkosh, I wore the at some canard events, and when asked, I just said “The plane ate my hat”.  Ah, the joys of having a pusher airplane.   

Sure enough, the old saying worked.  Later today, we had two torrential rain storms.    I like the way the water beads up on the a car with a fresh wax job.

Reassembly of the interior was started.   This takes a huge amount of time, because it is the final assembly.  Everything must fit properly, screw lengths and lock nuts be be properly fit.  I am installing all new hardware (nuts/bolts) and shining up the aluminum parts for that new plane look.  It is finally starting to look like a real plane!

It is great to work without an instrument panel installed.  It makes getting around the  interior fitting the parts so much easier.

Here you can see the heat duct running down the port side with the alt hold servo installed.  Brake system…DONE.

This is a good shot of the front seat heater control door, the Grand Rapids gyros to the right and the landing gear system cover.    Heating system…DONE.

The HID light install …DONE as well as the fuel system with the new Andair fuel selection valve.   Cabin fuel system ….DONE.

Today was spent getting the plane ready for painting the interior.  It took me a full day to tape and disassemble the interior.

All the interior parts were hung outside like Christmas ornaments

Ready for painting.

I have started writing on my blog again.  I will not go into the reasons why, but it was for a very good reason, which I will as for now keep private. 

So, I guess I have a lot of catching up to do.  I am going to try and add about two or three enteries a day until caught up…..

  July 1, 2010

Tim Coil a neighbor friend stopped by in is 1916 Franklin roadster.  What a cool car.  Wood frame, and it has an AIRCRAFT Franklin engine in it. 

The engine has no valve covers

So you have to oil the valves regularly with your trusty oil can which is conveniently located under the airbox cover.

The engine is air cooled with a fan on the crank shaft to “updraft” cool the engine.   

Very interesting car for sure.

It is hot, Hot, HOT in Charleston, SC today.  The heat index should be about 110 F around noon today so painting on the the plane started at 6:30 am since the shop doors need to be open for ventilation.

The ADS-B antenna installed on the bottom of the plane.  I like the way it looks between the gear legs.  A hanging male appendage.  Not as big as the one on my plane (the engine air intake), but for this plane its approprate and will get the job done.

You can see the cooper foil in the hell hole I used immediately above the antenna.  The book requires a minimum of four square feet (the copper is only about 1.5 ft sq).   A ground wire was installed to connect the copper to the copper paint on the bottom the plane.  Ppod should have the equivalent ground plane of a standard aluminum plane (at least 14 ft sq in this case). 

It took me at least a full day to take all the parts out of the plane and tape it off for painting.  I’ll weigh EVERYTHING that goes back into the plane for my records.  Should be interseting to see how much the “extras” add to the base weight of the plane.

I am not overly worried about over spray on the plane since it will be stripped completely and repainted immediately after arrival in CA.

I like the change of look of the plane in epoxy gray. 

Finished in white sandable primer….

I really like the look of NO access door.  

It is now 10:40 and time to cool off in the pool.  Next up is painting the interior, the real challenge.  It will have to wait until Monday when the temps are a bit cooler.  I am wasted….

Most of today was spent researching, planning and ordering materials for the “blended winglet” modification I want to do on the wings.   What is it?    The blended winglet design was first introduced to the canard community by Jack Morrision on his E-Racer about 3 yrs ago.  A beautiful plane which was later destroyed in a fire.    Jack is working on a new plane which looks just as incredible!  His a very innovative guy!

The blended winglet is the latest “craze” in the canard community.  Once you see on on a plane, you’ll know why and will have to have on. 

 The interesting thing I found out from the ordering/research,  is that  if you were building new wings from scratch the blended winglet would only add about $50 or so to the cost of each new wing.    It makes the wings look much sleeker, reduces drag, and provides a real and permanent speed improvement.

In a retrofit situation, the rebuild will cost around $250 or so (less epoxy) per wing.  As I proceed into this phase of the project, I’ll refine the numbers for a more accurate cost of the mod.

I spent some time working on the fire suppression system.  Had to scratch my head a few time on exactly how it was to be done.  As usual, I give myself a seemingly impossible challenges for which in the most part can eventually be worked out.  After an hour or so of fitting, I was able to solve the problems such as routing of the discharge line, activation cable, mounting, having access to the spar wing bolts, viewing the tank level,  etc.  The bottle will limit the storage capacity of the spar area, but if I need more baggage space for a trip,  I can put on some of  beautiful carbon graphite baggage pods P1 Cmposites is now building.

 The cable is routed through a soda straw to allow it to be removed.  I need to go the movies shortly as I find they have the best straws for glass work.  I usually grab 3 or 4 at a time.  The straws are really long and have a large diameter t0 guzzle down those super sized drinks you have to mortgage the house to buy (along with the popcorn).

After the plane work I tested out the next phase of my grease car project.  The filter system I made out of  some bag type filters I purchased at Duda Diesel.  Buying this kind of filter (bag type) is much cheaper than buying cartridge type filters.  For this test I have a 1 micron filter (size of bacteria)  which is smaller than the 10 micron filter in the car.  Worked great!

I am finding I hate the filter and pump stuff in the shop.  The next step is to buy 2 plastic 50 gal drums ($20 ea)  and install a underground pipe line from the front driveway to the back shed (the pipe is free) and move all the filter/storage crap to my shed.   I’ll have to disassemble my cart, but I can reuse all the hardware. 

 Then I’ll just pump the dirty oil from the drum in the truck  (via the pipeline) to the shed , filter it, store it,  then pump the clean oil back to my driveway (via the same pipeline) and into the car.   Clean, neat and out of sight when not needed.  Sweet.

Wow, Spoleto has come to an end already.  I had a wonderful opportunity to see a lot of great shows.  Tonight my finale was a ballet “Giselle” performed by the National Ballet of Georgia.   It was excellent! 

Here is some things I noticed tonight.   First there were a lot of really tall people at the performance.  Most of the time I am about average in height to those around me, but tonight I was really felt out of place.   Lot of patrons were towering over me.  Now I know how Dr. Ruth feels. 

For some strange reaion, there were also lots of  ladies at the show, and the average age was much less than at the Beethoven concert.    Young, good looking, tall people go to ballets…  interesting.

I think the reason all the young gals were at this performance was to check out the dancers.    I dont think the male dances know what a “cup” is or maybe they dont even wear underwear beneath there VERY tight and revealing tights.  Talk about tight buns and  packages.

It was hard for me to watch some of the dances without doing some quantifable comparison checking.    I an’t got nothing to worry about for sure….  Of coarse the male lead dancer seemed to have a the largest well  anoyance.     Hum, maybe when you are the male lead, you can stuff more junk down the front of your pants to impress the tall young gals.    Anyway, for the second half I sat up in the balcony, a little further from the stage and really enjoyed the show with a few less distractions.

What I found most interesting was how the performance seemly like a silent move.   I did not ready the program before the show, so I had no idea what the first act was about.    Through the music, pantomiming on stage and facial expression, I basiclly knew  what was going on and upon reading the program during intermission, I was right on.  It was fun and I really enjoy it ..with the exception of the guy thing….

I heard the most fantastic acoustic jazz guitarist tonight.  Julian Lage is only 21 years old and it the “official guitarist” of Spoleto and Grammy nominated and I can see why.    He was on stage with one of his band member, an acoustic bass player who in my opinion was equally as good.  I was fascinated by how the bassist would play cords, pluck the string, slap them and produce wonderful sounds I couldn’t imagine coming from this instrument.   The performers really had a great time on stage, lots of energy and amazing playing….  Most excellent!

The cello performance was “Block Ice & Propane” by Erik Friedlander at the Memminger Auditorium at 7 pm.     I was busy in the shop, mixed up my arrival time so I arrived 45 minutes late for my usher obligation.   Fortunately I arrived in time to meet the coordinator before he left and get acounted for as “late” instead of a “no show” (a black mark on my record). 

The artist was most interesting because while he occasionally used his bow on the cello, he mainly plucked it which made the instrument sound like a guitar.  Very interesting.  The performance and cop0ositions were woven around stories of his youth in a multimedia memoir of Friedlander family road trips complete with campers, tourist traps, truck stops, and visits to kooky relatives. 

It was most enjoyable.

Tonight’s show was “Present Laughter”  presented at the Dock Street Theatre  ($40 – $75)

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The historic Dock Street Theatre reopens in 2010 after a three-year-long restoration – how better to commemorate the occasion than with the return of Spoleto favorite the Gate Theatre in an effervescent production of Noël Coward’s brilliant comedy of manners Present Laughter. Elegantly staged and luxuriously costumed, Present Laughter – an absolute sell-out success during a recent Dublin run – is a delight of barbed witticisms, ironic comedy, and, upon occasion, chaotic farce.   Approximately 2 hours, 45 minutes
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This show started at 8:30 pm for and supposedly ended around midnight.  It had the typical drawn out British humor but I was really tired, the ushers had to sit on the floor and I was having a hard time understanding the strong British accent.  I left at intermission with 1.5 hrs to go.