Powder looks great!

The other day I made two sets of spark plug wires, although I'm all out of a few boots and the wire separators, so these wires get bagged up until my new stock comes in.  I also ordered more red, blue, and black wire.

As I said in my last post, on the 25th I did a whole wack of powdercoating, and it all turned out perfectly! 

I've been working nights, haha, here in the shop, usually from after dinner to 3am, converting my milling machine to CNC control.  It's a ton of fun, and the results will be incredible.  Here's just a few pics of what I've been up to for the conversion.

 

 

Just got my new powder in this morning! Lots more chrome and lots more black. So I'll spend all day today powdercoating these big strut braces. I'll finish welding the firewall braces early next week, then rush those into powder as well. I'll make a video of the powder action today too. Lets see, today I'll be doing 2 sets of chrome, TONS of black, and 3 sets of white. Then maybe tomorrow I'll quickly do the translucent blue, which gets sprayed over chrome.

Last night I got one of the bars rough polished, I used a 180 grit flap wheel on my dremel over the whole thing to get rid of the oxide layer, then #3 steel wool by hand, I need to buy some finer steel wool and give it another go, then onto the buffing wheel. I've got one more to polish after this one, so I'll take pics of the process.

Yesterday was again a very productive day in the shop.  After making all those shifters it got me thinking...  Since I've already got the tools all lined up and zeroed in to produce these shifters (which takes quite a while) and they're repeatably coming out perfect, maybe I should run to the metal store and buy a bunch more tubes and make even more shifters.  I made 12 in that last post, which fills all the orders that I have on the table, yet leaves me with no extras.  So I ran out and bought 12 more, 6 normal ones and 6 shorter ones for M90 shifters.  I spent yesterday machining those and every one turned out perfect.  Last night and this morning was spent threading the top of the shifters for the shift knob, I'll post a video I made of that soon once I rip it from my camera.

Next up, welding, bending, then nickel plating!

Shifter progress

Today I made 12 shifter bodies, have I mentioned how much I love CNC?? Every one is exactly the same, it's incredible. These take around 7 minutes each to do the grooves and turn it down to size.

The past few days  have been busy ones.  Other pics include some shifter pins, this is the lower "pivot" point that goes through the bottom of the shifter, it's held in on either side by two c-clips.  Now they're ready to be hardened and nickel plated.  Third picture is the needle bearing housing, they're stainless steel.  Needle bearing gets pressed into that, then the hardened pins ride on the needle bearing and provide smooth precision shifts!

Next up is some ballscrews that I turned and threaded for my upcoming CNC milling machine conversion.  The new threading tool that I got from Shars kicks butt!  Huge thumbs up.  Last one is a pic of the DCMT 1/32" radius insert that I smoked while turning through the hardened layer of these ballscrews, they're tough! 

Lastly I had to take a bit of meat off the nose of my turbine wheel because it was too long and not letting the nut thread on all the way.  No problem for this machine!  It was easy and turned out perfectly. 

Loads of videos

I just posted 7 new videos to my youtube page, a few volvo ones and a bunch of machining videos.

Here is one of them, a continuation to the one posted below.

Video of some CNC machining

Here's a video I made this summer while machining some endlinks for a group buy of BIG strut braces.

September update

After a busy summer trying to get things sorted I'm finally opening the store up again, save for a few products. One big change to the website is that I've put a note next to almost every product describing the inventory situation. I think this will be very beneficial to some customers who seem to expect me to keep everything in stock by the hundreds and who want the product at their doorstep the very next morning. That just isn't the case with a relatively small business like this one, unfortunately.

I've got several big and important projects on the go so I don't want to bog myself down with lots of huge orders, not leaving much time to get anything done at all. Everything except shifters and strut braces will be readily available, however spark plug wires will depend on my current inventory. I think I will still accept order for shifters and strut braces, however please be aware that it could be several MONTHS before you'll receive it. Those items just seem to take a very long time to produce, maybe that's because I tend to wait for a while and do them in large batches of 10-20. But that makes each individual piece go quicker because I can set up an assembly line. So, more time overall, but quicker per part, pick your poison.

I want to personally thank everyone who has ordered from us in the past, without your constant support and enthusiasm I wouldn't be able to continue running this incredible business. I'm having a blast, this is my dream job! However I've gotta admit, running your own business is a heck of a lot of work.

It's been a great summer for me. As you can see below I've developed a new product, my blow off valves, which I will be selling some time in the fall. I've been using that first prototype on my car for a few months now and there are a few small changes I'd like to make. Namely the way it sounds. At low boost (<10psi) it makes a great loud Pshhhhhhhhh noise, just was I was hoping for. But above 10psi the release happens much quicker and the sound gets higher pitched, similar to the bird chirp like HKS SSV thing. I believe that a simple change in my piston design will have a big impact on the sound output. Also I have to do some more playing with spring pressures.

In other news I have completely re-wired my CNC lathe for a much cleaner install, and also wired nearly everything required to convert my milling machine to CNC. I think all that I have left to do is make some stepper motor mounting plates, machine the ballscrews, then bolt everything together.

At the end of July I held a group buy on turbobricks for a HUGE strut brace which is 1.5x bigger than my regular ones, they sold out very quickly! It's early september and I am just about finished making them, they took a lot longer than I was anticipating, but that's just how things seem to go. After having the plates waterjet cut, deburring them and bending the brackets, I got to finally learn how to TIG weld! It's something I've always wanted to do, and always hoped that I'd be good at it. Well, I was right. The past year and a half of oxy/acetylene welding has really paid off because they're very similar techniques. After practicing with the TIG torch and the pedal on some scrap metal for about 30 minutes I started welding the big strut braces and did a great job. Gotta get myself a TIG welder one day, boy ohh boy.