Zach’s Electric Diablo

Last night my friend Brandon came over to help work on the car. We got some of the more complicated brake lines bent. It was a big help having him there.

As part of the brake line installation, I needed to weld on the bulkhead tabs. I’ve done a fair amount of welding before, but it was all TIG. I just couldn’t get TIG torch into the space where these tabs were. So, I tried MIG welding for the first time.

I wouldn’t say it’s a “good” weld, but it will get the job done.

I also spent a little time cleaning up my workspace:

I also installed some lights so I can work past dark (it gets dark very early this time of year).

For about a month I have been sitting here with a big beautiful motor just sitting in a box. Today, I decided I wanted to see it spin. I picked it up with the forklift and connected it up to a 12volt battery.

Man is that motor smooth…
I also did a little more work on the brakes. I successfully made 4 flares and a number of bends (yeah, I get excited about even the small accomplishments). I would have taken some pictures, but it got dark very quickly. Winter is coming and our days are getting shorter…

Today I started installing the brakes. The first step was to remount the master cylinder (see a few posts back when I took it off to fit the body). In order to do that, I needed to chop out the interior of the front trunk.

It started like this:

…and ended like this:

Then I started bending tube. Even though I’ve never bent a brake line before, this part turned out to be very easy:

The hard part turned out to be flaring the ends of the brake lines. I bought this tool from Pure choice Motorsports (the same place I bought all my brake line fittings), and it was supposed to be “easy to use”. Well I spent a good hour trying to get I nice 45deg double flare, before I finally broke the tool. Tomorrow, I’ll give them a call…