Dash Panel Templates – First Revision

This afternoon was spent working on the computer instead of out in the garage.  I’ve been using lots of photos of the interior and measurements from Nitro’s dash panels as reference material.  From Nitro’s panels I could get scale measurements by knowing that the small gauges are 2 1/6″ in diameter.

I’ve been creating the panels to scale in Gimp and keeping everything in separate layers so that I can move them around.  I had to adjust the width a little bit because the center panel area on my dash is 17″ wide.  My center panel is 16.5″ wide and I’ve been trying to keep the dials, switches, labels and lights as close to the original as possible.

Of course there’s some artistic license being used to fit the lights, dials and switches that I already have.  I’ll be sure to post up the full Gimp source files once I have the panels completed.

More Fuel Cell Progress

It was another warm day yesterday which makes a good day to work on the BatBerry.  I spent the morning finishing off some work around the house and then it was back into the garage to tackle the mounts for the fuel cell.

The above and below pictures show the finished mounting of the fuel cell which shows the issue I have for being able to use the fuel filler doors.

Getting Closer with the Fuel Cell

I took two steps forward and one step back this afternoon.  I started creating the floor for where the fuel cell will be mounted behind the seats.  The tricky part is trying to figure out what the clearances need to be.  I want the tank to sit as low as possible, but it can’t sit so low that it will be hit by the drive shaft when the suspension is fully collapsed.

I started by welding some supports up off of the cage that would serve as the floor mounts.  The idea was to create an area suspended a little bit up in the air so that it would rest on the supports and let the bottom sump of the fuel cell sit down in the floor between the straps leading to the two -8AN outlets.

I welded it all in place and it looked like the picture at the top of this post.  But after I put the fuel cell in, I found that I could have set the tank lower and I also was also going to need more space above the vent at the top of the tank in order to get a -AN fitting on there.  The vent fitting sits right under the top harness bar for the seat belts.

Started on the Software

Over the past couple of lunch hours I’ve been starting work on the software that will control the BatBerry.  I’ve been using the JavaScript toolkit that I’ve been working on called bbUI.  This is a simple toolkit that makes your application look like a BlackBerry app with very little code.

Getting the Fuel Cell ready

This morning I started prepping the fuel cell and test fitting it in the car.  The fuel cell is a 16 gallon (25″L x 17″W x 9″H) plastic fuel cell with foam inside that has a 0-90 ohm fuel level sending unit.  It has -8AN outlet fittings and a -6AN vent fitting.

My hopeful goal is to use one of the fuel filler caps on the sides of the car to go to the fuel cell.  However, in order to place the fuel tank behind the front seats and above the driveshaft, it looks like the inlet for the fuel cell is going to be as high, or higher, than the fuel doors.  Running a flexible filler hose would create a P-Trap and keep fuel trapped in the filler neck which, from what I’ve read, isn’t good for safety reasons and can cause issues when trying to fill-up at the pump.

This means that I will likely have to run the fuel filler towards the rear and pop the hatch to fill up the tank.  I may be able to come up with something else.. but it looks like this will have to be the way it is.

30Cals Mounted and Working!

This morning was a very productive morning!  First I cleaned up the back yard and garden shed to get it all ready for winter, and then I headed to the garage to finish mounting the 30cals.

First off I had to take care of the wiggle in the sliders where they would tip forward and backwards because the actuator was tipping.  I welded in two pieces of tube to hold the actuator upright which solved the problem 🙂

Fun with Linear Actuators

On Halloween day I thought that I had made some really good progress on the 30cal sliders for the BatBerry.  Well… I found out today that I had to scrap that work because the sliders were going to be too tall to fit under the hood.  So it was back to the drawing board 😦

I was able to keep the same concept but I needed to offset the actuator from the sliders, and I also needed to shorten the whole unit.  While I was test fitting the old ones, I found that the perfect alignment would be just offset from the frame.  That gave me an idea.

I could make the slider tubes as long as I wanted and simply have them stretch down beside the frame which would give me lots of length for when they were extended up, and it would also line the guns up perfectly with the hood openings.  It was a bit of a blessing in disguise.

The BatBerry Makes An Appearance!

I’m happy to post that I was able to meet my goals of getting the BatBerry out on the driveway for Halloween… and man was it a BLAST! 🙂

It made Halloween extra special for a lot of kids, and it also gave parents from the neighborhood who have seen me working on the car an opportunity to ask questions and take pictures with their kids.  The goal next year is to have it fully functional and on the driveway!

I had originally thought that I was going to have to get the bump stops sorted out in order to roll the car out onto the driveway, but then I had an idea…. why not install the rear air ride from Altered Altitude and just inflate the suspension to get the clearance that I needed.

Progress on the 30Cal mechanism

After I prepped the BatBerry for Halloween night (more on that in an upcoming post), I started in working on the sliding mechanism for the 30Cal machine gun mounts.  I had finished up how the machine guns will attach to the mounts, but I needed to work out the mechanism to raise them up.

I had purchased some 9″ throw linear actuators to raise and lower the guns, and now I needed some sliders to connect them to.  I took my Que from Jack’s gun sliders, and started in.

First step was welding some plates and some smaller tubing to the bottom of the mounts making sure that everything was square.