Gas, tires, oil.

On recent trip, I was looking up a place I wanted to hike (the devil’s ladder), and noticed that there are a large number of places and geological sites that are named “The Devil’s whatever”, like devil’s tower, devil’s postpile… I thought it would be interesting to try and see how many of these sites I could visit. So I hit 4 in just this first trip.
First, “The devil’s ladder”:

This is at the top of Carson Pass, it got its name from settlers who had to winch their wagons up over the top.
Next, in a nearby valley above Upper Blue lake, “The Devil’s Corral”:

It’s a box canyon that opens to the left in this pic, sorry it so crappy.
Then we went through “The Devil’s Gate” on Monument pass:

And lastly, above Yosemite Village is “The Devil’s Dancefloor”:

Anyone know of some other spots with devil or diablo in the name? Post suggestions in the comments.

When I bought my trike, the rear uprights that supported the bed were welded to the frame. Unfortunatly, this trapped the rear axle in the frame. I wanted the new supports to be removable. What I did was find some 3/8″-16 coupling nuts that barely fit inside the 1″ tubing that made up the frame. I tapped them in place with a hammer and then welded around them. This allowed me to bolt on the uprights.

In the front I welded the cross piece to the frame, but did the same trick with coupling nuts. The cross piece is 1″ square (the rear fender brackets will bolt to it), so I needed a bigger coupling nut (1/2″).

So here’s a shot of the whole bed frame:

I’ll probably just make a flat bed with some boards, maybe redwood.

I have previously posted about my plan to upgrade the manual trans in my ‘55 to a 4-speed, overdrive with syncros in first gear using an NP833. Everything seemed to go pretty easy, I just was able to switch transmissions in a day (including new u-joints). The next day I took it for a ride, when I got to 4th gear it made a godawful noise, kind of like some grinding on an empty 55 gallon drum with an angle grinder. I pulled out, took off the side cover, all the gears looked OK. The bearings didn’t feel bad. I messed around with the detents (I though maybe the shifter was pushing 2 gears too close), put it back in, same thing. So I took it back out and swapped the old trans (had to switch the yokes again). By now I’m getting pretty good, I can switch transmissions in about 20 minutes. I email my ebay seller, he had claimed the trans was in good shape and was swapped out for a 350 turbo for “medical reasons”. He said he was selling for a friend and probably couldn’t get the money back. Shipping on the thing was $75, so I didn’t shipping it back would do either of us any good. Finally, I got $100 back out of my $225.
I pulled the input shaft out and found this:

Thats a chewed up roller I’m holding. Turns out the tip of the output shaft rides inside the end of the input shaft, surrounded by rollers. The bearing surface is the shafts themselves, no races.

To make Halloween a little more exciting for the trick or treaters (we get 100’s), I put my ‘55 up near the steps with a dummy hanging out from under the hood.

Then I rigged up a bosch headlight relay to my ahooga horn, I used an old extension cord to trigger the relay from in the house.

On the other end of the extension cord I attached a remote starter switch.

It’s a real rig, but it was quick, cheap and effective. The best ones were teenagers who would act tough and poke at the dummy, I’d trigger the horn and they’d really jump. For a while I had some people hanging out in the street, just waiting for another person to get suprised. If it looked like I took a couple years off their life, I’d give them some extra candy. I had a strobe light flashing at the car, I think this helped build a tense mood. I’ll show it in another post.

Here’s an overhead shot of the frame with the engine, trans and rear installed.

The engine is a ‘76 455 Pontiac with a Crane Fireball cam and 6H heads. I ended up using a sheet of 3/8″ diamond plate in the in the pickkup bed floor for some weight, otherwise I just couldn’t get traction. Unfortunatly I don’t have any pics of the frame with the x-member installed. I made it out of 1x2x1/8″ tubing, maybe I’ll photoshop it into a pic for illustrative purposes. Next, a new firewall, floor and a chopped top.

I snapped this pic while crossing into Montana about 6 years ago, in case you can’t read that top line, the daytime speed limit was “reasonable and prudent”. I used to call it the George Bush (Sr) speed limit.

People in California sometimes ask me how Montana is different, I like explain that when I first came to Montana you could legally ride in a car driven by 14 year old, with no smog or safety inspection, have a loaded, unregistered gun in the glovebox, drink a beer and all the while travel without a set speed limit (not that I recommend this behavior). Meanwhile, in California, they’d lock you up and throw away the key for these same things. Unfortunatly, Montana is filling up with Californians who want ruin it like CA.

I picked up this transformer somewhere (yardsale maybe), its made to run the ignitors (like big spark plugs) in an oil burning furnace.

I decided to make a jacob’s ladder out of it (you know, like in the horror movies, an arc strikes between 2 rods, then climbs). I threaded a couple inches of the ends of some 3/16 brass rods, crudely bent them, and threaded them into a puck of scrap PVC. I can rotate them to adjust the minimum arc length.

Here’s the arc after it has risen. The arc strikes at the closest point, but heats up the air inbeween. That air rises, but because it is ionized, it has less resistance than the lower, closer gap. The arc rises until the distance gets too great, then starts over again.

Click here to see a jaw-dropping video of a 20′ arc rising to 100′ at 500,000 V (1.5mb mpeg video), via long arc.

Ed asks:
It looks like you’re shooting this outside. How do you avoid getting dust and grit in the final coat? Also, in the last shot where it shows the very shiny and sharp looking finished product, is that clearcoat pooling at the very bottom lip or is that just a reflection?

I thought I would put the answer in a post because it introduces an interesting topic. To answer the questions, yes I am painting outside. Calm, wet days are best, and I make sure that I have something on the ground so air from the paint gun doesn’t kick up dust. But dust is inevitable, and greater problems (leaves, large bugs) are possible.
And yes, that last shot shows a little sag in the clear coat. But I don’t care (not just because it’s my daily driver and I don’t care what it looks like).
I don’t care for the same reason that I don’t care about the dust: it is fixable.
This is the great thing about base coat/clear coat paint: touch ups are easy at any point. If I get dirt or a run in the base coat, I can just wait an hour and wet sand it. If I break though to the sealer, I can just blend it in with more base coat. Same goes for the clear coat, sags, runs and dirt can all be sanded out the next day. Then polished or flow coated.
Before base coat/clear coat the easiest paint to fix mistakes with was lacquer. It dries almost instantly and mistakes can be sanded and blended. But lacquer has problems: you need a much better surface to start with (usually a final sanding of the primer with 600 grit). It can craze or lift it applied too wet or too dry. It is hard and brittle, so that it can crack (especially when cold).
As a side note, some base coats must be repainted after sanding. Large flakes or solids that are not the same color all the way through (color shifting paints like House of Kolor’s Kameleon) will damaged by sanding or show different colors.

I found this old pic of my ‘68 Lemans, and I thought it might be nice to show the difference between a 2 door hardtop and a 2 door sedan.

The Lemans is a 2 dooor hardtop, that means there is no rim around the door window, or when you roll down both the front and rear side windows there is no divider left. My recently purchased ‘68 Tempest is a sedan.

The hardtop is generally considered more sporty, but the sedan is actually lighter (by about 40 lbs). In order to maintain strutural integrity, the hardtop needs more bracing in the body, causing it to weigh more (with convertibles weighing even more yet).

Lets finish up on this fender. Last time I showed the wet sanding, now I need to mount it so I can paint it. I like to screw this sort of thing down, below you can see how I made a jig out of some scrap wood. I’ve had bad luck hanging stuff from wires.

I’ve already shown the black base coat and marblizing on another piece, so let me talk about the clear coat. I’m using a ureathane clear, in this case UFC-35 from House of Kolor. Its a flow clear, really made for a final flow coat after a high build clear (UC-35). But I’m not going to be color sanding and buffing, so I’m just using it as a single top coat. I put on 4 coats, you need to wait between coats til the paint is just tacky. You can test a taped spot (or the jig in my case) with your finger. Below, you may be able to see tiny strings stretching from my finger tip. It’s ready for the next coat when it stops stringing.

Here’s a closeup after the last coat: