well today I finished off my rear brace, heres how it looks:




much unlike some rice up products out there this is actually meant to do something by using the top seat latch support mounts. I like to have rear passengers sometimes so at no point did I want to lose the use of my seats. So I made it so a thick plate would be jammed between the latch and the car body. I also didnt want to trim off too much of my interior trim to make room for this thing, I had to be light, small, neat and easy removed.


I used some light gauge Cro-Mo pipe which I think is a far superior material for braces than aluminium, but that's my opinion. I bought this from the helpfull trike building guys at Greenspeed in ferntree gully ( www.greenspeed.com.au ), no Cro-Mo is cheap and this peice was about $25 worth.


I started by cutting the plate out and I also modifed the seat latches a little to suit. I then very carefully measured how close I could go with the bar to the seat. I knew that the closer it would be the better.

I intitually made the pipe to the exact size and I proceded to tack weld it on. To my horror I found that there was no way this was going to slide into position even if I took the trim off. So I had no choice but to shorten it and use a shim. I did this and cut a peice of 5mm thick PTFE (Teflon) impregnated plastic to suit. I finished my welding and then slid the bar in followed by jamming in my plastic spacer. I also found some longer toyota bolts and used them instead. Finishing it up I painted it and put on a sticker that came with my shockers.



Heres the passenger side mount:





and the driver side with the spacer for fitment, also of note is that that black line on the plastic is a texta mark:




Testing this I found that the seat hits the bar but still latches in, the release mechinism also has more restriction in use but still no big deal. So I think I managed to get the distance right on.


Also of note that this thing weighs roughly a quarter of a kilo and it was able to support my whole body weight when it was supported by just the ends and thats when it was just resting on something not actually bolted up.

[Updated on: Thu, 17 November 2005 15:03]

Also on the same day I did a dummy fit of where I want to place my air filter, although I am undecided now for water reasons, see my forum thread on it here:

http://forums.toymods.org.au/index.php?t=msg&t h=72367&start=0&rid=4385&S=573a8e831e0 e3a17dd875dd70a214606

anyhow heres a dummy run with it in place in roughly the right spot:

[Updated on: Thu, 17 November 2005 15:11]

did a quick drawing for an idea I had on a set of extractors. Seeing I am so desperate for that extra length on the primaries I came with this breifly:



I would if I did this use every last bit of engine space I have, and I would flare it out to go close to the strut tower and strut brace. Basicly my aim would be the max length using every last bit of room I have, I think I would have to run some pretty elaborate heat sheilds too to protect everything. I know I wouldn't get it but I would want 1.2M of length in my primaries alone and still be a 4-2-1 system. But for now it's just an idea I am playing around with in my head, it would be interesting to try it though I think.

[Updated on: Thu, 17 November 2005 15:15]

I finished the main part of my rear water re-routing plate:



The taped hole is for one of the two sensors the engine needs, I think I will fit the other one to the top outlet pipe of the engine instead.

[Updated on: Thu, 17 November 2005 15:20]

[Updated on: Wed, 13 July 2005 02:51]

[Updated on: Tue, 30 August 2005 21:44]