Finally, an update. The car went off to be painted and came back more than a week ago, but I've been away on business so short of driving it back from the paintshop, I've not touched it.
Still, now I'm back and raring to go. A few odd jobs to do today to prepare for exhiibiting the car at Supercar Sunday at the Gaydon Heritage Motor Museum. Did well there in the GTR last time (2nd in the Supercar of the year competition), so will have another go to see if we can't go one better :)
The first addition was the result of my experience of long trips in the GTR. Due to the low seating position in the car, your thighs tend to ache after a while as your heels have nothing to rest against, so your upper legs do the work of supporting themselves. With this in mind, I came up with the idea of fitting a little heel kickplate to the driver footwell, just in front of the pedals. I got a batch made up (more area available once I've worked out how much they are!) and they're easily fitted with rivets or rivnuts. The result should be a more comfortable ride for longer journeys - should be able to find out on Sunday!
Next, was to clean up the dash trim edges. For some unknown reason, my dash trim came un-seamed at the edges. I didn't realise until I was 3/4 of the way through fitting it, so had to go with it and work on a solution later. I could have just blackened the edges, but that would be a bit rough, so I got hold of some rubber trim from Woolies Trim and bonded it in place with epoxy resin (impact adhesive doesn't bond it). The result is very neat and finishes the dash off professionally. I think that the dash kits are now seamed on the edge, so hopefully you won't have the same problem if you order it from the factory.
Next up, a rear view mirror of all things! Despite having made the provision for a rear view camera, it seemed just as practical to fit a mirror. I got hold of a decent, unobtrusive dippable one from Halfords and simply bonded on with the supplied sticky pad. Obiously you get the wing, but I was pleased at just how good a view you get with it. Gotta keep an eye out for the blues and two's after all ;)
Of little or not interest was the fitting of some Willans pads for the harness shoulder straps. Hels found that the 2 inch straps cut into her a bit, so I put a pair (or pairs) in. Got to keep her happy after all :)
Other than that, it was lots of elbow grease polishing and cleaning the unavoidable detritus post painting. Spray dust gets everywhere!!! :( Never mind, the car sparkles now. I didn't get a chance to take any outside shots showing the new colour - so you'll have to wait :p But it looks gorgeous I can tell you!
Well, as 120,000 Brits were soaking up the atmosphere in Le Mans, I was busy sweating my bits off in the workshop, prepping the car for a trip to the Heritage Motor Museum at Gaydon for Supercar Sunday.
Now that the dash trim was fully cured, I could remove the tape that was holding it in place. The results are much better than the just having the unfinished edge. I would have preferred a leather seam, but short of retrimming the whole dash, it wasn't possible.
Next job was to get the air/fuel guage working. I'd traced the problem to a faulty lambda sensor. The original was sourced from eBay (no wonder it was cheap), which despite being new, failed to work. A lambda sensor works by creating a small voltage from a chemical reaction in the sensor itself. In ideal stochiometric conditions, this is about 0.6V. To test the guage, I connected a partially discharged AA batter, which was putting out about 0.4V which duly regisered a slightly lean reading on the guage. A trip to a local motor factors relieved them of a new single wire sensor and me of 30 quid - ouch! Still, once screwed into the header, it worked straight away :) Unsurprisingly, it showed a rich mixture, but until the engine is fully warmed you can't get an accurate reading, so I'll keep an eye on it to see how it fares on a longer run.
The chief mechanic popped down for a look-see (Charlie :) He was keen to try the drivers seat for size, but has a way to go before it fits ;) He liked the horn though and worked out how to operate it. That was, until he kept his finger on it for so long it made him cry :-o
I'd also found I had a leaking heater valve the other week further to my problems with it shorting out. I set about stripping it down in situ only to find that the jubilee clips on the hoses were loose - doh! I tightened them up and went for a test run only to find that it was still leaking? Further investigation revealed a missing 'o'ring in the solenoid housing which, once replaced, stopped the leak :)
So basically, the car was ready to go! Next step was to finally take it home to see if it fits in the garage :-o
I'd actually extended the usable space in the garage when re-doing our dining room, so was a bit anxious as a miscalculation of the available space would have meant a lot of wasted building effort! I've got a very narrow garage at home (oh for a double!) but the Can-Am's scissor doors help immensely in this regard.I needn't have worried however, the car went in a treat, leaving enough space for my bike behind it. The colours almost match too ;) What a great toybox! I'd have liked a bit of a run in the car, but was keen to get home to Hels to spend some time with Charlie. A rare thing that's been whilst I've been building the car.
So, being Father's Day today, it only seemed right that I should indulge in a bit of petrolhead related activity. So, once again we made the trip to Gaydon to the Heritage Museum for Supercar Sunday. The reality of owning a strict 2-seater hit home when Hels had to follow in the pickup with Charlie :( Still, this is also more of a shakedown run, so it was reassuring to have some tools and extra transport at hand for the journey.
A journey which was completely uneventful! The car didn't skip a beat, it goes, stops and pootles along like a winner. The Can-Am driving experience is quite different to the GTR. Not because of the wind-in-the-hair etc. but because it's just so user friendly! It really is a joy to drive especially when you don't have to watch the guages for fear of overheating etc. True car enjoyment is as much about reliability/dependability as it is about performance and from that perspective, my intentions of building a road-biaised, cossetting and, dare I say it, luxurious Ultima have proved to be well founded. The car really is the beast I wanted it to be. Happy to sit idling in traffic as it is redlining through the gears with ballistic performance. Despite high ambient (for the UK at least) temperature, I didn't have cause to use the aircon at all on the journey up to Gaydon. engine temperatures were a steady 86 degrees and the fans only came on just as I was parking up outside the museum having sat in a queue of traffic waiting to get in. All in all, I'm hugely pleased (and partly relieved) that the car has turned out so well. The fact that it looks so good is almost secondary!
We made the same mistake at Gaydon as we have in the past, namely, by turning up too early! It's not a bad day out, but can be a bit boring once you've seen all the cars on display - even the threee Enzo's seemed a bit ordinary :-o Maybe I'm just a bit car'd out at the moment? We'd had a good result in the Supercar of the year in 2003 with the GTR where we placed second, but the judging doesn't take place until 4pm! Charlie was getting a bit of a handful by 2, so we decided to cut and run a bit early. Shame in a way as I wanted to see whether the Can-Am would have been picked for the final, but there you go. The joys of parenthood! Steve D was the only other owner to turn up and I heard subsequently that we placed third. He was confident that we'd have been in the ring too had we stayed. Not sure if I feel better or worse knowing that ;)
Anyway, to avoid the risk of a soaking as the clouds were thickening up, we drove home. Another completely uneventful journey made a little rustrating by the constant stream of (ahem) supercars passing me on the motorway whilst I convoyed with Hels in the Navara :( Never mind, I did give a few 'fly-bys' to eager onlookers who seemed to thoroughly appreciate it. Whilst the Can-Am feels very 'normal' to drive, it's anything but in the eyes of the general public.
So what now? Well, fitting the roof I guess? Having to keep an eye on the weather is a new one in terms of the Ultima ownership experience, so it looks like the sooner I get it on, the sooner I'll have peace of mind on that score. I looks to be an err... 'interesting' job, so I'll let you know how I get on with it!
As I've said before, it's a truism with self build cars that they're never really .finished'. Why? Well, because you constantly have the urge to improve/fiddle with the damn things :) Case in point, following my trip to Gaydon last weekend, I decided that I wanted to improve the cooling a bit. Not because it wasn't working, but because it wasn't working as well as I'd have liked. My experience with the GTR has made me rather over-sensitive to cooling issues and given that I want to use the car regularly on the road (so heavy traffic is an inevitable issue), I wanted to make sure that I had peace of mind with the cooling. So, I decided to uprate the fans, which is a simply modification that I also made to the GTR.
The standard factory fans are 10" Tripac's. These flow 575CFM of air (so a total of 1150CFM across the rad), which is adequate to cool a V8 chevy. However, I still saw the temps get up to 105 degrees where I'd have been happier with them staying below 100. Also, when the fans came on, they didn't go off, so they were holding temp. rather than actually cooling things. The replacements are 11" Pacet Thinline's (part no. CF1111 - NOT 'T'CF1111 which includes a thermostat and other gubbins you don't need). These are not only larger, they are more powerful (drawing 7.5Amps each which is fine) with the nett result that they flow a whopping 1180CFM each (so a total of 2360CFM) - more than double that of the standard Tripac's. You can go for a 10" replacement (CF1011) which will utilise the existing ally brackets, but they flow slightly less. I wanted maximum radiator coverage over the area that's directly below the vent in the front clip - so 11" was the way to go. Regarding fixing, this is a doddle with the Pacet fan fixings. These are 'single-use' (and that MEANS single use) fixings that thread through the radiator and are held in place with a one-way errr... ratcheted collar, a bit like a cable-tie. Thick neoprene washers keep the fan housing from chafing against the radiator itself. Just position the fan on the rad, thread the fixers through and it's job done!
The difference, like the GTR, was instantly noticable. The breeze of the Tripacs was transformed into a veritable blast from the Pacets! If you have a monster engine, you could even go for the Pacet Pro-Fans which have an even larger motor (that's what I had on the GTR albeit 10" versions), but you will need to remove the grill in the front clip to fit them as they're almost 100mm thick and will chafe against the grill mesh. For the record, an 11" Profan flows 1242CFM (so only 60CFm more than the Thinline which allows you to keep the grill) so a total cooling capacity of 2484CFM.
After a quick trip over to see fellow Can-Am owner 'crazyofcookham', I ended up stuck in traffic in a local town, with the ambient temperatures well into the 80's. The car was absolutely fine and the temperatures didn't get above 100 the whole time :) I left it running on the drive when I got home to test that the fans cut in and out, which they did. On at an indicated 95 degrees, rising to 100 max, off at an indicated 95 degrees (which was actually more like 85 degrees at the rad!). After checking with the factory I found that the rad switch is set to turn on at 95 and back off at around 90, I'd prefer it to come on at 85, so I'll be replacing it soon. That said, it's job done :) Even with a blocked rear scoop, the Can-Am's cooling system is well up to the job, even in crawling traffic.
With the cooling nailed, I moved on (appropriately perhaps) to the ICE in the car! I'd splashed out on a Pioneer AVIC-X1R for the Can-Am, which combines Radio/CD/DVD/GPS and built in vehicle dynamics displays, all accessibly via a fold out touchscreen. Given that I'd already made all the connections and tested them including an iPod interface, it was just a question of removing the head-unit blanking plate I'd put in and connecting it up. I continue to be impressed with this unit, especially with the GPS which almost instantly acquired the satellites to show the car at home in the garage! It seems that even solid walls don't stop it! I've got some calibration to do on the unit before the vehicle dynamics are working (need to set up the pulse generator on the rear wheel), but that'll have to wait until next week. It's too damn hot today :) The head unit drives an amp for the front 4 speakers, whilst the rear 4 are driven by the head unit's internal amp. 8 speakers - nice!
So I've now got a cool car with an ICE system pushing out 600W of audio power upon which I can watch films (why the hell I'd want to is anyone's guess), see how many 'G's I'm pulling (sounds fun ;) or just listen to some tunes. Happy days :)