Took the car down to Muffler Works in Richmond/Albany on Tuesday. Turns out that Tim's "cage guy" is a recommended Lemons cage guy and a friend of Jay Lamm. Niiiiice... :)
Mitch says that the car should be done by the end of next week, depending on how busy he is. On one hand, I'm hoping that he's busy, so that he makes money. He seems like a really nice guy, and seems to really know what he's doing.
On the other hand, I WANT THE CAR BACK NOW!!! Hehehehe...
As soon as we get it back, we can paint, patch holes, and get started putting the thing back together. Wow. We're getting there.
The motor is on a stand in the shop, and I'll do some more assembly tomorrow. It already had an ABA serpentine belt setup on it, so we won't have to deal with that stuff. We've got polyurethane to stiffen up the mounts, and we rebuilt the axles last week. Tim had an interesting intake manifold sitting around, so that will go on with a throttle body I had from an Audi 5000.
Phil from Jalopnik took me on a little road trip today; we went to see Dave @ Evil Genius Racing in West Sacramento. Dave has a 2500-lb Porsche 928 in the shop being prepped as a track toy. Un-be-freaking-lievable. 295 front tires, 335 rears, 4-cam motor that laid down 310hp at the rear wheels, cage, and not much else. Also on hand, in addition to his normal assortment of Spec Miata cars (Dave's specialty), was a real oddball. A Mazda RX3 that was formerly an IMSA Champion Spark Plug Challenge car. Ooooh, pretty. They are prepping it for a historic racing, and it should be a ball when it's done.
Dave is also working on a new Lemons car, but I was told that if I talked about it, I'd never see my cats alive again. I like my cats, so you'll have to wait until the Reno Lemons race. And trust me, you're really going to to want to watch this thing.
Hard to tell from that crappy shot, but that's a pile of undercoating removed from the right inner fender well. Weighed about 7lbs, so here's to free horsepower!