Eagle's Lair
Members Roster

January 27, 2007

Ladies & Gentlemen:

Today's work party had Ed Shadle, Keith Zanghi, Jon Higley, Von Armstrong, John Drury, Omar Chramosta, and John Winchester present to continue work on the car. Sam Yellowbird stopped by briefly to say "Hi!" to team members.

Two friends of Keith's, Larry Dowty and Dick St. John, old drag racing friends from years past, came by the hangar today to see the car and talk with Ed & Keith about the project.

Today's task involved the draining of the main hydraulic tank, removing the orbitrol valve from the front of the cockpit through a bulkhead openning, and the removal of one of the mid-axle hubs in the hangar.

While Jon Higley spent time on the shop computer answering questions for another article to be published in one of its sponsor's industry magazines, Von removed the hub from the mid-axle and later John Drury and Von drained the hydraulic fluid from the main tank.

Then, John Drury, Von Armstrong, Omar Chramosta and Jon Higley all worked together to remove the hydraulic valve on the foward floor of the cockpit from its mount. John was finally successful in delivering the baby, pictured at right above. The removed valve will be replaced with another valve like it that has a proper closed valve system configuration for our system needs.

John Winchester, our new parachute specialist who has graciously agreed to step into the big shoes of Ed II's former position, showed the team his suggestion for correcting the parachute canister release problems we've been experiencing. He also spent time going over some issues involving the rebuilding of new canisters to be built for our mid-range to high speed runs coming up next summer.

With that done, Keith, Jon, Omar, John and Von all made their way over to the school bus recently donated to the project by one of our new sponsors, Cavemen Coffee. Work on the bus involved an attempted removal of the rear bumper for strainghtening out a slight misalignment dent, but it proved too difficult. The team's concensous was to wait until the bus could be driven back to the hangar and have the badly weathered bolt heads torched off for more easy removal later. So, focus shifted to the engine's fuel leak. It proved to be a cracked rubber hose which also turned out to be too stubborn to loosen completely. Keith will have to get some crow's feet wrenches to get at the tight spot for one end of the fuel line to be replaced.

Next week several parts will be trucked north to Eagle Machine in Abottsford, BC for work by Steve Green. He will do modifications on some, while completely rebuilding others.

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