Workin' for the man every night and day.

I've never been to Australia, but I hear it is quite the experience. A kid I knew in high school just moved there, and he posted a picture of a koala in a eucalyptus tree. I thought that was pretty neat, it doesn't get more Australian than that. The wildlife there is crazy, you are never know just what you are going to find in the outback. Both my boss and Ray from www.turboford.org independently sent me the this picture of a nesting Falcon down under.

For some reason it makes me think of Rescuers Down Under

A couple weeks ago I found a good deal on a Borg Warner EFR 6258 turbo and stainless steel header. I'm definitely not at a stage where I need this turbo, in fact I don't NEED a turbo at all as the engine going in this car currently has a Holset HE351 turbo with a header I built. I knew however, that I would be wanting this exact turbo at some point down the road, so I scooped it up. The turbo itself was pretty excited as it was going to be escaping the Great White North and moving to SoCal in the middle of the winter. The EFR turbos have ball bearings and a lightweight turbine so they are very responsive, and this turbo maxes out right around 450 hp, just above my target power. It came as a package deal with a stainless steel header made by Marc Bean. Marc has a Mustang SVO with a 600-ish HP 2.3 liter engine, so I figured his header would probably be OK.

On saturday, my goal was to leak test my fuel tank and finish the brake lines. It wasn't anything huge, but I was pretty happy to get both done.

To test the tank, I plugged the tank outlets and filled it with water. I found two leaks in my fuel tank welds, so I ran new beads all around the sump. It sealed the leaks and improved the looks significantly. While I was at it, I modified the original style fuel pickup. Since I built the sump. the original pickup was no longer needed. I cut the fuel pickup tube and welded it shut, as can be seen in the last picture. It was all pretty simple, and went about as expected.

That's all for this week, folks. I didn't get any interesting pictures of the new brake lines so until next time, to quote Joe Dirt, keep on keepin' on!

Sweet Land of Liberty

This week I made zero progress on the Falcon. But that's OK. I got to go home to Utah for an extended Thanksgiving weekend. I love going t Utah and I love seeing my family. I come from a nerdy family. Not only am I a Mechanical Engineer, so are all three of my brothers and my brother in law, so when we all get together the topic inevitably turns to some sort of heated discussion about thermodynamic principles. This time it centered around an assembly of ABS pipes.

Thanksgiving arts and crafts!

Ready for glue.

The potato cannon was a big hit. I think my pops enjoyed shooting it more than he's willing to admit, and my brother in law, Joe, couldn't think about much else all weekend long besides the design and analysis of potato cannons. He's already getting psyched up for Christmas break because he wants to hook some pressure sensors up to the chamber to log data and experiment with fuels.

On Sunday I went for a walk to a place I call Death Row. It's a line of cars out behind my dad's cabinet shop that no longer run. Most are FoMoCo products because gramps was a Ford salesman back in the day. I walked along and took pictures of some of the cars there and had a major ah-hah moment. At some point I realized that I have another child that I'd completely forgotten about. I am actually the owner of a 1959 Ford F100.

When I was in High School my buddy Jonnykat had a 1958 F100 that we were trying to fix. We didn't know much of anything in those days, but he knew a guy with a F100 he was willing to give away. We went and hauled the truck back to Jonny's place. When Jonnykat abandoned the project, he gave this parts truck to me. I hadn't thought about this truck being mine since I was about 16. I'd never realized how pretty it's patina is. Maybe I'll see if I can get it to fire up next time I'm in Utah.

My borhter's '49 Chev.

1964 (I think) Fairlane 500 Sports Coupe

This is Pa's High School truck. It's a 1960 F100 Custom cab with wraparound rear window.

Here's the car that started it all, my inspiration for buying Grace.

Fuel tank for no reason at all.

There are many other cars on Death Row, I only featured the ones that caught my eye this time.

Enough of my ramblings. The next post will be about Grace.