weekend blowout

This weekend I had a guest in from Austin on Friday night, until Saturday afternoon.  He helped me measure out the centerline of the back window, to get ready to measure for the placement of the blowout straps.

For people wondering what blowout straps are, it is a pair of straps that run over the back window to keep it from blowing out.  When a car is moving at high speeds with the side windows open, it can create a pressure difference across the back window which can potentially suck the back window right out.  Blowout straps are common to a lot of production-car-based race cars, and I just like the look of it.  I thought that it would be a good way to have a subtle design cue that would make the car look more like a race car, without having numbers and sponsors painted all over the car.

Similarly, at the front of the car I plan to have a pair of hoodpins put in.  These are pins to keep the hood from blowing open, another common feature of production-car-based race cars.  I know I could do the hoodpins myself, but right now the hood doesn't really latch right, so that will all have to be re-aligned by the body shop, and I figure it just makes more sense to have them do it before they paint the hood, rather than me doing it afterwards.

I think the mounting points for the blowout straps will be one of the most fun parts of the project, and I will document that in more detail when the time comes.

On Saturday, my guest helped me remove the driver door window and crank mechanism.  I'd been going back and forth on whether or not I wanted to mess with that, and by the time I was done removing it, I'd about decided that I wished I hadn't.  Guess I'll put it back together and let the body shop mess with it.  Pretty much every bolted connection in that assembly is slotted, so everything is adjustable, and I'd just rather let them adjust it, because I want to be sure that the windows will seal right, and they probably know how to do that better than I do.  Plus, I will have plenty of other things that I'd rather be working on while they do that.  Anyway, part of the reason for wanting to pull it out was just to learn how it goes together, so now I know that, I guess.

Aside from those minor accomplishments, I also cleaned up some stuff in the garage, and did an oil change on the Corvair.  Feels like I didn't get much done, but I will try to do some more work in the evenings this week.  Also waiting on the arrival of my transmission so I can test fit the drivetrain.