Final Assembly (sort of)

Dad stopped by again this morning after tennis to help out. On the agenda was a long list of items to get the car ready for the March 11th test day at VIR. This included refitting the bodywork, finishing up suspension assembly, bleeding the hydrolic systems, adjusting the clutch and a lot of other stuff. Dad hung in for a good afternoon session and we got a lot of the work done. It looks like the test day has gone from a "best case scenario" to a reality. Pretty unbelievable given all the pieces that had to come together in such a short period of time!

While Steve Lathrop has convinced me that the original Koni shocks are not going to get the job done for the F1600 series, my new Penske units are still a work in progress. So Steve did the best he could with the Konis and sent them back to me this week to use for the VIR test. Unfortunatley actually getting them home was a bit of an adventure....

My house has two different entrances, and Thursday the UPS driver left me a note on the side porch indicating that I needed to sign the signature waiver for him to deliver them. I dutifully did so and posted his note back on the side porch door where he left it when I left for work Friday morning. Of course Murphy's Law being what it is, I called home Friday afternoon to make sure that they had arrived, only to hear Marsha tell me - "No no packages today, but the UPS driver left you a note ON THE FRONT DOOR." Doooh!

Without the shocks, I was no going to be able to align and cornerweight the car! The Friday test day was looking unlinkely. Crap!

So last night featured a side trip to the UPS processing facility in Richmond. This was like a trip into some strange alternate universe. I was told that I could retreive my package ONLY between 8-8:30. So I arrived at 7:50 to a scene that looked like a military base under Code Red lockdown. I waited outside the guard shack for 20-30 minutes as they let us in one-two cars at a time. While I was waiting I watched the same guards did a full search on ALL exiting employees wand and all.

Any way after a while I got in and after a much longer while they retreived my package from somewhere in the bowels of the plant. And I was back in business. My buddy Jeff Phillips and I passed the time smoking a couple of cigars and listening to AC/DC - so it was not all that bad....

So... shocks in hand, I got up this morning and set them up with the preload and spring setup recommend by Lathrop and got on with the project.

Bodywork going back on. As with all new things it was not as simple as I had hoped. The HPD wiring harness took up too much space in the area where the bodywork necked back in behind the radiator. So after a little head scratching and consideration, Dad and I figured out how to make a minor adjustment to make it work. After that the bodywork went on with only minor drama (although both Dad and I did manage to shed a little blood before it was all over with)...

Newly redone "Anteater" nose fit up nicely, and the paint Dan had given me with the car made it an easy match with the rest of the car. I had also chose to paint the two aluminum panels on the footbox sides to match the rest of the car. I like the result and think it looks more cohesive this way...