So Saturday morning I had a full day's worth of car work planned
for myself and a couple of friends who would be stopping by. The
first part of the day saw Miq Millman and, ah, Miq, should I tell
the list what you bought? :-)
Y'see, Miq works at SGI, so I'm used to seeing interesting simulators
from him. On Saturday he brought over the most interesting simulator
I've seen yet. It's a very close simulation of a British roadster,
with many of the right sound effects but a few bugs that I think need
to be worked out. The simulator is called a Miata.
The good parts are the digital sound (16-bit, I think they said). It
really has a sort of homogenization of MG, Triumph, Alfa and Jaguar,
a sweet rumbly growl that gets your attention from half a block away.
But the simulator stopped short of the actual experience because
there's only the exhaust noise -- real British roadsters have a
symphony of mechanical sound effects (gear whine, valve clatter,
timing chain clink, exhaust system leak puff, etc.) to go along
with the vroom from the tailpipe.
We also ran a couple of benchmarks on the simulator and it fails them
in a few serious ways. For starters, we tried the old let's-wash-the-
engine routine. Failure 1 was that we were able to put the top up
while seated (and belted) in the passenger compartment. This is just
plain bad research on Mazda's part; everyone knows that for a Real
British Roadster you have to climb out at least three separate times,
pulling on the hood bow while someone else leans on the Lift-The-Dot
fasteners. And we didn't break a single fingernail. Then, once in
the bay of the engine-wash place, we hosed and sprayed and sprayed
and hosed, and after pumping who knew how many gallons of water over
the engine bay, the car started. Another place where simulator research
failed in a fairly serious way.
On the plus side, though, they did a good job with the oil filter
location. There is a way to get to it without pulling the engine,
but it requires bending your arm in several axes that nature never
intended, and you will end up scraping and burning yourself while
you get the wrench on the filter. Note that the only way to do
that is with a little wrench that fits over the end of the filter;
also note that the filter is a very silly size, about the size of
the bottom half of a Coke can. The ludicrously inadequate appearance
of this part is as British as bangers and mash.
The simulation of British suspension is also only moderately thorough,
but the floorpan is pure MGB, down to the long chassis legs that run
under the seats. It just looks like an MGB that's been sectioned and
widened about 10" in the middle. The steering knuckles look an
awful lot like the Spitfire's units, but the effect is ruined by
having a long shock pass through the upper unequal-length A-arm and
have the spring mounted completely above the upper arm. Sure, there
are sound engineering reasons to do it this way, but we *are* talking
about a simulator, and it just misses the original mark.
The other crucial ways in which the simulator misses the original is
in a lack of wind noise or chassis flex in operation. Also, the
frame rate's change curve when you operate the accelerator pedal is
a little wrong, with an exponent that increases instead of decreases
(and the rate is a little quick if you're trying to model the behavior
of a TR or an MG -- the scenery flies by the viewing frustum at a rate
more in keeping with Jaguars than with MGBs). And they really should
dial some kickback into the hydraulics that work the seat, wheel and
brake pedal. You don't have the feel of driving on an actual road in
this simulator; for a little work they could give you the feel of a
bump or of uneven pavement, or better yet make the open chassis flex
or creak when it does so -- there was none noticeable in this car.
Next I started in on the Biscuit Tin of Steel, which is not a simulator
but rather an update on a Mini Cooper S backplane clone. Filter off, oil
out, close back up and add the requisite number of quarts of Mobil 1 to
keep bearings from journals, and test for leaks. Along about this time
Chuck Fry showed up, and got to help with his favorite part of the
oil change, pouring in the new stuff. To help with the British feel,
the Biscuit Tin of Steel (an '84 GTI) decided to throw a plug wire out
of the distributor cap while Kim was on a trip to the library. When
she returned, I eventually found it (tip for the day: wires have TWO
ends) and restored full power and smoothness.
Then we decided to install the belts I'd purchased the preceding weekend
for the '65 Super Sport tow car. The power-steering drive belt turned out
to be the wrong size, but we managed the alternator belt (which was a
better fit with the smaller pulley on my brand-new, lifetime-warrantied
$26 alternator from Kragen). There are advantages to domestic cars, as long
as you get them when they're old enough that they have some character.
Then it was time for The Green Car. I've needed for some time to get a
few things repaired in order to pass smog; I've had the belt for the air
pump but it hasn't been installed, and I've had the leak in the exhaust
system that needs two people to work on it easily. So Chuck pulled the
air cleaner covers while I loosened the air pump.
To no one's surprise, the bracket that was holding in the air pump didn't
want to work with the belt I had for it. But hey, this is for the MG. I
took out the bracket -- actually the strip of metal with a bolt hole at
one end and an elongated slot at the other, used to take up the slack in
the belt -- and realized that the bolt that holds the air pump in place
should be about halfway between the end of the slot and the fixed bolt hole.
So I calmly found my Dremel and drill and proceeded to make a hole in
about the right place, figuring that I could Dremel out the slot if it
needed adjustment. While I was enlarging the hole, I wondered if I
would have been so nonchalant about making even such a simple modification
before I'd built the race car.
We slipped the bolts through the holes, tried everything on for size --
and it fit as perfectly as if I'd measured it with micrometers. "You
must live right," Chuck said. "That isn't it," I replied. "This is one
of the reasons why I keep a brick from the Abingdon factory on the mantle."
About that time an even more exciting sound came down the block and
Michael Sands arrived in his Caterham Seven. I thought that a British
Racing Green MGB with a kid's seat was the coolest thing, but I now
believe that a black-and-aluminum Lotus Seven with a kid's seat in
the passenger's side is even better. It'd only be better if it was RHD
and Dustin was on the "driver's side."
We inspected the car in a general way for few minutes, and then got down
to the serious side of the day. The clutch cable that Michael has in the
car works and feels well, except that it reaches full extension at the
clutch when you press it about halfway to the floor. So rather than risk
hyperextending the clutch fingers and weakening them, Michael only uses
the first half of the clutch travel. Unfortunately, an idiot previous
owner hacksawed off the mounting ear on the alloy bracket that was meant
to hold the brake and clutch master cylinders, which is a shame, as it
would have been fairly easy to fabricate a stop that hooked up to the
upper mounting ear. I still think the best solution would be to make
some kind of bracket, out of fairly heavy-gauge sheet metal that would
be welded and triangulated for strength, that would bolt to the alloy
pedal brace and restrict the rearward movement of the upper lever of
the clutch pedal. When you have some more time and I'm not so awestruck
over the presence of the beast, I'll think about it some more.
The final serious piece of work about the Seven was the test fit. For
some time I've wondered whether I could in fact fit in a Seven. The
story goes that Chapman built the original Seven to his own specs, and
that if you happen to be sized differently, you're out of luck to one
degree or another. Well, I'm a little larger in a few dimensions than
Chapman must have been, so I have been wondering about whether I would
really fit in a Seven when the time comes and I finally buy one.
The answer is a tight yes. I can just work the pedals, though my head
clears the roll bar by a good three inches; the wheel isn't too close,
but an F1-style quick-release wheel would make it a lot easier to get
in and out of the car. (So would practice, I think.) And the width
isn't a problem, at least not for short trips, but I now see one reason
why Gary Neuer said that the Seven is great fun for about the first
fifteen minutes.
Michael and Dustin drove off just after Kim and my own girls arrived
(Torrey approved of the Seven, though this morning she went wild over
a red 911 in traffic -- I gotta have a talk with that girl), and Chuck
and I went back to The Green Car to close it up. The last piece of
work was tightening the nuts that hold the downpipe to the header.
We managed to get three of the six to move, but one stud is missing
a nut and the other two were unreachable, so we buttoned it up and I
took it for a test drive.
I was shocked to hear the difference in engine noise. I had become
used to the popping of exhaust pulses from under the hood, and to the
metallic rattle from the downpipe flanges (which were alarmingly loose
when we tightened them up). There's so much less noise coming from
under the hood that I wondered if the Miata hadn't let a software
virus loose in my garage: now 80% of the engine noise comes from the
tailpipe, instead of 50%. And it's not finished yet; I'll probably
go to the extreme of paying a muffler shop to install the ANSA setup
I've got in the garage, and to replace the downpipe gaskets while
it's up on the lift.
There's also no difference in performance, at least no discernible
difference, now that the belt is back on the air pump. There is,
however, a slight squeaking noise from the air pump's bearings. I
think I'm going to be glad I have a spare in the garage. Are the
pumps rebuildable? Can I try spraying some light oil into the
pump's air intake and see if that helps things any?
As the day wound to a close, I realized that I had worked on four cars
that day, and furthermore that I had worked on cars from the Sixties
(the Chevelle), the Seventies (the MGB), the Eighties (the GTI) and
the Nineties (the, uh, simulator). Four decades of automotive design.
Oh yeah, then on Sunday we started a bare-metal restoration of Torrey's
pedal car, which looks an awful lot like a late-Fifties Ferrari or
Vanwall GP car. We're currently negotiating the color; Torrey wants
it to be pink, and we're trying to convince her that British Racing
Green with yellow stripes (or orange, or Burgundy Cherry Metallic, or
almost any color BUT pink) would be better. It's now grey, but that's
just to seal the metal; there's some more sanding we need to do down
along the sills, and then I'll want to figure out how to take the
wheels off and paint the suspension. This is going to be a pretty
cool kiddie car when we're done. Maybe I should take pictures and
sell them to Road & Track for their April Fool's issue...
--Scott
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