Rod C's Ohio RCR40

[Rod Chaffee]

I need a bit of a break from working on the body and am going to start prepping my dashboard. I cut the holes for the gauges. This is not for the faint of heart, as getting the holes positioned correctly is a necessity and (if you have ever used a hole saw) the hole saw can grip quickly which pretty much breaks your wrist and destroys whatever you are holesawing simultaneously. Luckily I made it through with minimal damage.

I have ordered a bunch of switches.

off-on-on for lights (off, park, on)​

on-on for low/high beam​

on-off-on for turn signals​

on-off-on for low pressure fuel pumps (right and left)​

off-on for high pressure fuel pump (wired so power only available if a low pressure pump is on)​

off-on-on for ignition (off, acces, run)​

off-on-on for wiper​

off-on DPST for engine bay cooling fans​

Horn button​

Start button​

I have also ordered indicator lights

2 green for turn signals​

2 red for oil pressure and water temperature​

1 blue for high beams​

I will likely only use one turn signal indicator. This will give me 4 indicator lights which I can space around the tach of center three gauges.

 

[Rod Chaffee]

In other news...
My daughter hit her 2nd deer in about 4 weeks, this time with her new-to-her car she had for about 2 weeks. This pretty much sucked all around. Luckily nobody (except the deer) got hurt and the damage was not too bad. Did you know you can buy a pre-painted bumper from Amazon for a Hyundai Elantra that is shipped folded up?!? It simply unfolds and bolts on. Saved me some painting.

I went to Alaska, looked at some mountains, saw a glacier & a totem pole and caught some Salmon

The battery in my NSX blew up. I have never has this happen before. I keep all of my batteries on tenders. NSXs are notorious for draining their battery in about 2 weeks due to the security system. This was a genuine Acura battery (don't ask), well over 10 years old. The car started and ran fine. My daughter took it out for an evening and called from a restaurant because the car was dead. We had a heck of a time getting it to jump start. Eventually it started and I brought her home. If you do not know, the battery on these NSXs is buried up behind the dash in the middle of the car. They say it has something about low center of gravity and weight distribution. I know they are difficult to get to. Once I got to the battery , the problem was clear. Optima redtop to the rescue.

 

[Rod Chaffee]

I am back at it after a bit of a break. I had been working on body fitment while I wait on the remainder of parts from RCR. This is tedious work but I am getting things dialed in. The doors are A LOT of on, off, on, off, on, off, on, off. My doors are long & I am concerned about cutting fiberglass off of these main parts. I was making pretty good progress - door handles mounted, door latch mounted on the doors and a strengthened bar fiberglassed into the doors.
Then I bought a pair of 1974 Yamaha DT 100 enduro motorbikes and rebuilt both of them. I spent most of the winter working on those two little buggers. My daughter wants to ride one to school her Sr year.

 

[Rod Chaffee]

I recently received my AC unit, steering rack & I am going to pick up my transaxle from RCR this week.
So I shifted back to this car and went to work on the steering rack. I printed spacers of a variety of thickness on the 3D printer to get the height of the rack correct, red things. I had to slot holes a bit to get fore/aft alignment, but seemed to do fairly well. I will use doublers on top although likely not necessary. I ordered actual aluminum spacers from sendcutsend once I figured out the height I needed. Once those parts come in, I will permanently mount the steering rack.

 

[Rod Chaffee]

With the rack in, I worked on figuring out how to route the steering through the dash. Like many others I cut into the understructure to raise the steering components higher over my feet. I had to weld up a bracket to raise the support. I also took a lot of time to ensure near perfect alignment of the steering wheel out of the dash and into the center of drivers seat. This is a lot of laying on my back working upside down. It is kinda like doing yoga in my workshop.

 

[Rod Chaffee]

Then I went to work on the AC. There is a lot to understand and figure out with this thing. My unit has an electric floor/vent/defrost damper. I figured I might as well take advantage of all three and actually use the defrost outlets. I have seen many cover or plug the defrost outlets and not use them. I opened the defrost holes and plan to use them as defrost. It took me some time to figure out how the dash, plenum & AC unit all work together. I made a template, cut 5 holes in the dash, trim, trial, trim, trial, trim, trial…well you get the picture. Eventually I got it all mounted up. I trimmed and modified the bracket between the motor and the ducting to use as the 3rd mounting point.

 

[Rod Chaffee]

I had to shorten the plenum because of my roll bar. First I just trimmed the ends off and planned to fiberglass new ends. Then I read in someone’s build log to just cut out a section in the larger area. This worked out very well. Another tip - hot glue gun. Hot glue sets up fast and holds well. It really works good on these fiberglass parts to hold things together. I will fiberglass the back together for permanent finish, but hot glue has been my friend.
Also, cutting out the stiffening bars under the dash sucks. I used one of those oscillating cutters. It is the ticket for this tough job.

 

[Rod Chaffee]

On the AC unit - filing off the little locking tabs resulted in holes in the vent outlets on the unit. The tabs seem to be punched in vs molded in. So when I filed them off to be flush with the outside of the outlet, a little hole appeared, on each one of them. I used black RTV to fill the little holes.
I also have a bunch of ⅛ holes in the aluminum dash surface that were covered by the strengthening bars. I plan to fill these holes with black RTV also.