Visit to see another Monaco

I was able to catch up with another builder while in Brisbane a couple of weeks back.

Alan is building the same design, and in some ways more importantly, is using the same engine.  While I loved looking over his build, looking at the engine and discussing how he has or plans to overcome various hurdles was very interesting.

Alan is using a 1UZ-FE it will be a UCF 10 or 11.  These were the first series of the 1UZ's.  I currently am planing to use a UCF 20/21, the major difference is the 20/21's have VVTi and have coil over plugs, the latter gets over the issues with spark proofing the distributors.

Alan bought an engine that was complete with g'box.  He has removed the G'box and is going to mount a 72C g'box up to the original bell housing.

The 1UZ's when used in Automatics didn't have a fly wheel, in addition, if he was to bolt his damper plate to the ring gear flex plate then the input shaft on the g'box wouldn't be long enough.  So he has cast his own fly wheel that has a pronounced step on the outer rim.  The original ring gear will be shurnk on to the fly wheel and the damper plate will bolt to the step which brings the plate about 2 or 3 inches closer to the g'box.


So right now I am on the hunt for a suitable engine.  Problem is most of the VVTi versions on trademe are missing the security ECU and associated bits.  That's a problem as it is reportedly difficult to bypass and wont run without it..

There is a half cut on trademe at present for $3500, seems a little steep.

The second layer continues

Progress has been a bit slow of late, due to spending two weeks in Australia for work.  Currently working to complete the second layer.  I had the same fairing issues on the starboard side that I encountered on the port.

I made an interesting discovery.  For the last couple of months I have been getting very poor results from my brad gun.  What seems to be happening is the hammer is coming down the side of the nail, this generally results in a brad that is only set about 2/3rds the way in.  This hasn't really caused two many problems, just looks ugly.

So on the weekend I nailed a bunch of strips, and then went on to another job, and then came back to nailing some more.  In between I had unplugged my compressor.  As I was coming to the end of my glueing / nailing session, all of a sudden my brads started setting perfectly.

Turns out I have been using way to higher air pressure.  The compressor had bleed down to about 4 bar.  I did some experiments and through ply they work perfectly, if the hit sapalle then they tend to still sit quite proud, but the hammer hasn't gone down the side and munched them up.

I did experiment with pressure a while back, but I don' think I every went below about 5 bar during those experiments.

No photos, because you can't see a difference.

Just checked my schedule and I've slipped about 3 weeks already for the year.  Not helped by the aussie trip.