build diary

January 17, 2006: I took a battery from a power supply home.
It's pretty close in size to the Odyssey I've been considering. Wow, the packaging options are good. I can tuck it up against the passenger's feet, right near the starter, alternator and my main power distribution block and a grounding point. That alone will probably make the price worthwhile, allowing me to move some weight up front while shedding 10 pounds plus cabling. I'll have to open up the transmission tunnel again to remove the old cable but I think it will be worth the effort. It's nice to see something make the car lighter for a change. I'll add in a battery cutoff switch for security, safety and ease of working on the car.

I've been learning about hood manufacturing. Those who are in the business of making metal change shape have been sitting back and laughing at my floundering around. It appears that I could make a hood in a few minutes with access to the right tools. It would also help if I started with the right alloy of aluminum.

And now, the suspension. I've given up on SolidWorks for the time being (cool stuff, I'll come back to that) and I'm using an Excel spreadsheet that someone worked out to determine my suspension behaviour. It's not telling me any good stories - camber loss of 1.8 degrees with 2 degrees of roll. Ouch! The rear looks a bit better, losing about 1 degree. That explains why the car turns in nicely but then understeers in sweepers. I'm still guessing at ride heights from the way my control arms looked at rest. Interestingly, the front roll center appears to be right at ground level and the rear is pretty close as well. No indication from the spreadsheet about how it moves around. I might try entering the numbers for the stock Miata rear suspension to see how it behaves. I'm tempted to stick that in the back without modification and build a front setup that has similar behaviour to the stock Miata front. Ah, who knows. I'll probably hear about a track day and scramble to just reassemble everything.

One note about the aluminum fenders from Coveland. They weigh 1.7 lbs for a 9.75" wide front and 2.8 lbs for a 11.75 lbs rear. I'll have to pull mine off to compare, but right now I'm thinking I'd rather put the aluminum rears on instead of trying to repair my battered unit. Or maybe I'm just scared of a bit of work.

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