Getting ready for assembly

Eric Langbein tells me that his work is nearly complete, and I can pick the car up on Monday afternoon. So today I borrowed my dad's hand chassis stand. He built the stand to assist with the conversion of his Swift DB1 last winter, so it is "Fit"ing that we keep it in the family for my conversion.

So tonight I did a little cleanup and begun to get ready for the reassembly process. Tomorrow I will finish organizing the garage and move all of the extraneous stuff out to the trailer and my other storage closet.

Other recent developments:

Wheels - I got the Panasport Ultralites in this week only to discover that they will not work with the ICP (LD20 size) calipers on my car. So it is looking like Megalites are my only option at this point. (I am also considering the new OZ and Jongbloed wheels, but they will not be available until May). Neil Porter has been very helpful in this area, and has shipped me a 'dinged' Megalite to trial fit. If that works I will probably order two sets (definitely breaking the budget I had in mind, but what the heck they are nice and very light).

On a related front, I posted a call for help on ApexSpeed earlier in the week to identify the 'rains' that came with the Citation. Keith Averill was right on the spot and ID'ed them as older (circa 1990) Panasport C4 wheels. They are very nice wheels, and talking to Keith, I can still get the proper rim halves (special ordered from Japan) to make them work for FF. So while they will not be quite as cheap and simple as the Panasport Ultralites I was hoping to use, they will work and they look pretty cool too.

So my working plan for wheels right now is to run Megalites for VIR and hopefully get the rim halves in just in time to make the C4s my rains. If not I will probably pray for dry weather and keep the rains unmounted and only mount them on the second set of Megalites as my contingency plan. (It will probably rain all weekend now at VIR).

On a related note, Rodney and the good folks at Appalacian Race Tire shipped me a new set of rains this week. So those are now sitting on my office floor waiting for me to figure out what to mount them on. At some point soon I will need to mount something if only to get the car aligned and set the corner weights. I understand that the series spec tire should be availble soon, so hopefully I can get a set of those on the way to me next week.

AIM System - Ellen Ferguson tells me that I can expect my EVO4 system and dash delivered to me Thursday. Just in time to keep my wiring process on track. Now I need to put together the rest of my order from Pegasus for the fuse block etc.. With a little luck, I should be able to get all of this together over the ladder part of next week and the weekend. It may be dreaming, but I can envision having the car running by next Sunday afternoon.

Shocks and Suspension - Steve Lathrop tells me that the shocks should be ready by the end of the week, also just in time for reassembly. After much hand wringing and discussion (and some good advice from Eric Langbein) I have decided to retain the rear suspension setup as it was when I purchased the car. The lure of running the updated bellcranks and pushrod geometery was strong, but changing all of this out this late in the process is just a recipe for disaster. Steve tells me that the current setup I am planning to run is identical to what John LaRue used to win the Runoffs a while back, so I think I can live with that. Hopefully I can fit the suspension updates in shortly after the VIR debut. One less thing on the to-do list and one less stress to deal with...