There is an old cartoon that I remember that goes like this:
A man has just reached the summit of a peak and sitting on that summit is a man dressed like a guru— white robe, long white hair and beard. The man climbing the peak says to the guru, ‘Tell me the meaning of eternity’. The guru responds, ‘the NBA payoffs.’ Well, I like basketball and love building the roadster but it does seem to be taking me a long time. I have spent part of the time since the last blog entry in the desert trying to avoid COVID-19. But I digress…
You will see that I’ve updated the sections on the fresh air system and some of the electrical work. I decided to split up the instrument panel and electrical system sections although they are clearly linked.
The addition of the air venting system required creating a pass-through for the tubing going from the Atwood blowers into the cockpit through the front splash guards, i.e., the ‘elephant ears’. As with many things in the build, what seemed like a difficult problem turned out to be not so complicated as long as I took my time and planned it out.
The wire loom will be protected from the Al edges using a grommet; the vent hose will be protected using Trim Lok. I also learned of another neat tool. Often when faced with a ‘How do I do that?’ moment, I’ve discover that someone has already figured it out. Probably long ago, too. A cable loom insertion tool allowed me to feed the blowers power wires through the already-occupied headlight loom.
The completed aft-section of the air box vent system, looking from the front, below. The wires for the PS blower will run in a loom adjacent to the vent hose.
The remaining tasks for the vent system are: 1) running the butterfly valve actuator cables through the firewall; 2) connecting the blowers electrically to the blade fuse box (https://www.amazon.com/Terminal-Negative-Indicator-Waterpoof-Automotive/dp/B07HDZVW3P); 3) completing the front section of the vent system, from the blower to the nose inlet. The inlet will be through an Al panel adjacent to the radiator.
I also started on the battery system by purchasing a Breeze battery box for a Group 51 battery. This is described in my 12/16/19 blog. Since then I tapped the chassis for the electrical system ground and added the 4 AGW grounding wire.
