Yes, I know. Its been six weeks since I’ve posted an update, something a good number of people have been pointing out to me. So here’s an update.
Things have been going pretty slowly this summer. I attribute this to three things:
- I’ve been missing a few minor but blocking parts.
- We’ve been really busy on weekends enjoying the summer.
- Its freakin’ hot in the garage.
The real problem for sneaking in an hour here and there is really that the garage, while cooler than the (unairconditioned) house, still is too hot to work in wearing jeans or coveralls and doing sheet metal work (which is a lot of what is blocking me now) I really don’t want to do in shorts.
We’ve also been enjoying the weather, getting out for drives to the beach and things like that. Last weekend we did Six Flags. I’m guessing we’ll get a weekend or two of camping in before summer is over. When I bought the kit in March, we sort of figured summer wasn’t going to be a busy time working on it but I missed the 911 enough that I decided to really push for getting the car mechanically done by late fall so it would be ready to drive in the spring. Well, I bought the Miata and that satiated the “driving a sporty car with the top down” hunger and it really started to make more sense to focus on a mid-summer on-the-road for next year and working during the fall and winter. The garage is heated, not air conditioned.
I’ve also been blocked by stupid little things. I’ve gotten all of the suspension bits in, and the rear end mostly buttoned up. The steering rack has been in for the last month and I’ve fitted, ground and adjusted the Fortes mounting bracket for the Wilwood pedals to get them to fit nicely. The problem I had was that I couldn’t do final mounting of all of that until the steering shaft was in and Factory Five had sent me a power steering shaft not a manual. I have 78 reasons now to gripe some more about the new FFR policy of “everything is upgrades not options” which has resulted in me having the bits for both power and manual steering because they wouldn’t sell me just the manual bits. In either case I got the part in I needed a few days ago and spent some time today getting everything better aligned. The major bits left before putting the engine and transmission in are getting the engine and cockpit sheetmetal done, including painting or powdercoating the engine bay sheetmetal, and running the brake and fuel lines.
In the vein of brake and fuel lines, I made a bad purchase from Fortes of a fuel line kit which I found after the fact was not the front-to-back lines but just the engine lines. I paid more than twice what I should’ve for it. Oops, live and learn. I’m debating now how I want to do the brake lines. The Wilwood pedals have a very different routing from the stock master cylinder so I’m debating where I want to route them and if I want to use the standard brake lines or run AN lines. The former is cheaper but the latter has fittings available for passing through sheet metal, and the MC’s are inside the car not the engine bay.
I’m assuming I’ll get those bits and pieces all installed this summer and focus in the fall/winter on getting the engine in and all the wiring and miscellaneous bits done.
I’ll get updated pictures online ASAP.