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Reply to "Thunder Ranch build thread"

Spyder visited Hoopty Haus yesterday: 50 miles each way on the tollways without disaster.

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Mr. Drake was also kind enough to drive a lap of the Herald Harbor Hoopty Proving Grounds and critique my handiwork. This was a great honor to me, and moreso that the machine passed the audition:

Brakes: excellent. Handling/tires: excellent. Shifter: tight, but good after warmup. Throttle response: fair. He rightly notes a too-long ramp-up on the pedal, which I know I can adjust. Fit/finish: very good. Being Cory, he immediately noticed that all three gauges are just slightly off plumb/level. He gave me a pocket level to remedy this. 

On a wooded 2-lane straight, he wound it up to 5000 rpm in 3rd (i.e. 83 mph) and I got skeert.

With him and me both in the car I noticed some front tire rubbing again. So I will lift the nose up just a little bit more.

Now to the mishaps:

*Hood latch release pull failed. Needs tightening at the clamp end of the cable.

*My spare coil fell out at some point. Out of it's too-loose holder and out of the car. Gone; tumbling along the roadway somewhere probably at 50+ MPH. This is damn embarrassing.

*Headlight low beam relay failed again. Second time for that; I replaced the first one some weeks ago and have used the headlights most of the time ever since. That it would blow again so soon makes me think I've got a weird intermittent short somewhere—or a straight wiring fault that somehow heats them up and slowly cooks them. The high beams work but they're almost never on. Advice from wiring aces welcomed.

*Accusump is leaking. It's not my fittings, it's something in the unit itself. We had a couple tablespoons of oil pooled in the body cavity just outside the frame tube when I got to Cory's place. Apparently these things are trickier to operate than I realized. I will read all the instructions and notes associated with it and see if I can troubleshoot. If not, it's coming out for good.

Meanwhile, I received new sump hardware, valve covers and bails, and jet doctors from CB Performance. 

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