Dadgum! It's good to be back in the garage, working on the locost. Ok, its been a year since my last update. but I can explain. I haven’t actually got a whole lot done on the car really given its been a year (I’ve only really been back working on the car that last couple of weeks), but my dear ol’dad keeps telling me ‘you should update your build log, because people want to here what you have to say’
. Ahhh, my dad, he’s good man, and I love him. So, for you dad here it is. Be forewarned most of this is much ado about nothing. Kind of a Seinfeld post. If yer looking for a glimmer of progress, kindly skip to the end.
Ok, this time last year I had just had the car running. It allowed me to check my fuel and cooling systems. It was the last thing I had planned to do before tearing the car apart to catch up on finishing work on the frame. Now, we (um, ya, that would be my wife and I) had been looking for a new home, and this was taking my time and attention. Well we finally found a house in mid October. This was good, with a possession date of mid December just in time for Christmas. Um, this seemed like a good Idea at the time, ya know, Christmas in the new house. Less so in reality. Meh! This of course meant we had we sell our current residence, now! That meant getting the driveway cleared off for pictures the following week. Cleared of what you say?! Well, I’ll tell ya.
Back in mid September, nearly two years to the day after I bought my donor, this got dropped off on my driveway, literally.
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A little battered and bruised sure, but it ran and was $480 delivered with only 110,000 km. I don't have any real use for it at the moment but I simply could not resist. My wife was,of course, less than impressed(muttered some about me having a problem).So where the 1st donor was carefully dissected over 2.5 months, I only had 2.5 days to get D2 (donor 2 ) off the driveway. As you can see I the garage was rather full, so I got to do this outside, in the rain (remember its October, brrr). This chassis did not leave in, as dignified a manor as my 1st, but it did fit in 4x8 trailer, kinda.
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There, drive way was cleared, pictures were taken, and the house sold in 4 hours. Fantastic, lets move on (and we did).
Oh ya, not actually working on the car gave me opportunity to buy stuff (idle hands thing), and I thought, since were moving, it would be a good time to pick up a shiny new 5 hp, 60 gallon compressor (and a snow blower), so I would have more big heavy items to move to the new house.
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Alright, into the new, bigger garage, hooray (My wife was happy thinking with a triple garage , she could finally park inside again, silly
). Unfortunately, it was not insulated, and -30’C season.
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So insulating the garage along with new doors was the first order of business. Decided I did not want to use my 220v construction heater any longer after reading too many horror stories about them melting down, so I picked up this 45,000 BTU Reznor. Brand new, for under $400. It was part of a sale of damaged unit but didn't have amark on it
.
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What I thought (hoped?) would be a simple plumbing job for the gas into the garage (our gas line terminates to our furnace and hot water tank behind the garage in the basement), was, ah, not. Turns out the 1” gas line was maxed out, with the the gas stove, and fireplace also attached to it. So a new line had to run from the main hook up all the way on the other side of the house. Big, big thanks to our new neighbor, Roberta! Oh so cozy now. Also ran cable and set up for 220V for the welder and compressor. That’s how ever as far as I got in the garage as the next several months involved other projects in and around the house, making it a home, which I won’t bore you with (if I haven't already).
Back in the garage in July, ran over 50’ of copper line around the garage to remove moisture from the airline, and finally hauled everything back out of the basement, and got things organized so I could focus attention on the Lo7us (see we’re get’n there).
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First thing was clean up, as my once shiny frame had grown some brown over the winter (had a lot of moisture in the garage when mudding and painting in the winter) ugh. This has turned out to be somewhat wasted effort, as the now unprotected steel is quite vulnerable to the O2. Really need to get it painted soon. Though the many hours spent cleaning it up with an air grinder proved my airline set up to be quite effective at removing moisture.
Then proceeded to work on the finish welding I eluded to way back. Suspension, brackets, steering rack mounts. steering supports, and so on.
As I would be cutting sheets for the floor, firewall etc, picked up another toy, err, tool. A plasma cutter. Actually a 3 in 1 so I can learn to Tig. Sure is a nice tool, cuts like dream. Cut all my plates for the engine bay and floor in no time at all.
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Finally, after much reading and deliberation as to how to do it, added my floor. It’s the same 18ga as my tank. It turned out really well. I welded the entire perimeter on the outside leaving a good half inch to fold the panels under so I would not have to drill/rivet through both. then stitched the inner tubes.
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It feels a bit like I’m going backwards with the bare frame but it is good to be back in the garage working on the se7en.
Cheers dad