Progress

I am making some progress again, despite having to wait on a bunch of very small parts that my kit from Hurricane was lacking. I sent an email to the new owner, Chris White a week ago, and I am hopeful of seeing a package from them soon.

Meanwhile, Paul Proefrock came by my house a week ago. He needed to verify some dimensions for his build. He is trying to do a special perfect alignment job on his car and wanted to check some measurements on mine for comparison. So after he did that, I had him check several things for me. It was extremely useful and just about everything was fine.

We did both agree that the steering rack needed to be redone. This was because he bushings that hold it in the proper place were not fully inserted into the frame because Hurricane sent me one with holes drilled for a manual steering rack instead of my power rack. I had opened the holes most of the extra half inch needed, and ground back the frame for the larger steering shaft housing, but just not quite enough. The Ackermann effect would have been wrong. So I ended up partially uninstalling the steering rack, enough to have clearance to fix the frame to properly accomodate the rack. Hard work, but now it is beautiful.

Next, I ran connected the emergency brake cables to the brake housing. I ran the cables and temporarily installed the handle, but until I get the missing clamps from Hurricane, I had to let that sit for now.

Finally, I tackled the most infamous part of the Hurricane kit, the fuel tank. It is affectionately known as Frankentank by other builders. Basically, the kit comes with a polyurethane tank that requires relocating the fuel filler neck and the vent tube to the other side. This means you have to seal off the existing holes and drill a new one on a bad surface on the other side. The worst part is blocking off the old holes. The tank comes with rubber gaskets that tend to leak, so I made my own cork ones and it require special fuel-safe sealant that is very messy. What makes it very difficult to work with is that there is a backing plate that you have to insert inside the tank and bolt the block off plate onto it. Holding that plate in place inside of the tank requires some real trickery, and in my case a good pipe cleaner. I just finished sealing it tonight and will have to wait and see in a day or two if it holds by filling the tank with water and seeing if it leaks. God, I hope it holds. That was not a fun job.