Hurry, Hurry, Wait.

Checklist in hand, helpers at the ready, and parts carefully arrayed across the driveway - Sunday dawned with the promise of hearing an engine roar, and a crew cheer. The day would end in disappointing silence.



Things have been happening at a frantic pace. So many 'little' things have been preventing the wholesale completion of major systems. Brakes, electric, and driveline have each escaped completion lacking one or more essential components. This, however, would be the day that all these pesky remaining tasks would be completed, or so we thought.

Intake? Check. Clutch? Check. Exhaust? Check. Newly painted car? Check.

Our calls for assistance throughout the month we're answered with a smattering of yawns and cricket noises. We got assistance from one of Matt's co-workers after his shift was over - and our team's Photographer showed up early, and stayed late to lend a hand.

This must be a world record: Pouring hours of work and attention into a tired old engine to try and obtain meager factory rated HP.

As mentioned in a previous post - we made room in the budget for some gaskets. Lemons participants and organizers are pretty generous in offering advice to new teams, and the one lesson that has stuck with us is Reliability wins, Power blows up. With the home-brewed gasket porting ala dremel finished on the intake, (yes, hours were wasted porting a STOCK intake - LOL) the engine sits reassembled and ready to rumble.

Matt definitely gets the MVP award this week. He spent Thursday painting the car, Saturday rummaging through area junkyards looking for our final pieces for the brakes, and Sunday patiently pointing out to the rest of us that we're probably 'doing it wrong.'

Great work on the paint. The photos exaggerate a little - but the car looks pretty tight with the new skin. After installing the engine, and accessories we were able to measure for the heat extraction area on the hood. We'll get that carved up this week so our guest artist can paint the pinup girl on the hood.

It was evening when we realized our efforts of the day were in vein. Without the transmission and missing portion of the wiring harness we wouldn't be able to test fire the newly installed engine. Sigh. Rumor has it we may get the transmission on Tuesday. Pending the wiring - we may be ready for a test drive this weekend at PBIR.

Coming to a racetrack near you. Get used to this view ;)