Alan has been tied up at work, so I, (James) am sending out the newsletter this time.
Not a lot of big things got completed these past two weeks. We had to clean out the trailer from the race June 10th. We added a small electric winch to the trailer so that the car could be loaded safely by one person. (safe for the car AND the person).
We’ve worked on the canopy by building an inner piece that is fitted to the car. We also trimmed out a hole roughly where the Lexan windshield will go. The inner and outer pieces were trimmed until the fit together, and then they were bonded together with more fiberglass. A lot of discussion went into how we are going to attach the canopy to the car. The plan now is to have a hinge point about 4 inches in front of the canopy, that will swing it clear of the dashboard. If possible, we would like to "motorize" it with a pneumatic cylinder, that will allow the driver to open and close it while strapped in. The emergency releases will be small pneumatic tubes that will drain off the air pressure.
We added, and then sanded off, a lot of Bondo, to smooth out little imperfections in the body.
We also came up with plans for how to deploy the parachute.
Finally, the moment some of you have been
waiting for… We got out the Hayabusa motor, and put it next to the car
so we could compare it to the engine compartment. It looks like it will
be a tight fit, but we think it will work without cutting the rollcage.
Mark took the Hayabusa home with him to uncrate it, and get it ready for
installation in July and August. (For those of you who don’t know about
the Hayabusa motor, it is a Suzuki GSXR 1300cc motorcycle engine, the most
powerful stock motorcycle engine ever made. The stock HP is listed at 175hp,
and with the modifications ours has, it should be just over 200hp. The
stock motorcycle is easily able to run at over 190mph. We should have no
trouble going faster than that.)