Mushing onward

Having satisfied myself that my engine title issues will resolve themselves down the road (in Rolla), I have gotten back to work on the car fastening down the cockpit tub this week.

This should have been a pretty easy task, but it turned out to be a little tougher. I had to drill 4 holes in the tub that lined up with the pre-drilled holes in the frame to hold the tub in place. Easy enough. But while I was down there, I was also supposed to drill 10 more holes for the seat and seatbelt mounting spots. Twelve were easy enough, though I really don't like laying on my back doing this work. But 2 of the holes were not accessible any more because they were obstructed by the driveshaft safety loop that I installed a few weeks ago.

My first solution seemed simple enough--just cut off the end of the safety loop that was not needed and was the source of the obstruction. So I locked the cutoff wheel to my angle grinder and plugged it in, prepared to just lop off the excess. When I tried to figure out how to hold the tool at an angle that would let me cut through the steel, I had such a hard time maneuvering while on my back under the car, it seemed extremely dangerous to go that route. In an inspired attack of safety consciousness, I instead decided to try to take a bunch of measurements and drill the holes from above. I used a 1/8" bit and managed to blindly hit both 3/8" holes in the steel after drilling through the fiberglass. Then I widened out the holes by hand with a larger bit and hand file.

Next up was drilling more holes and riviting around the footboxes. Simple enough, except that my frame includes a modification that Hurricane implemented after some other builders figured out a way to get more footroom for the driver, and the instructions for fastening the tub around the footbox don't quite work as they did before. So I posted some questions online and am waiting to get satisfactory guidance on how to proceed before I do any more riviting there. Pictures will come when I finish up. Should be pretty quickly.

Achilles Tendonitis

I did not work on the car this week as I am fighting a very sore left heel. I already had a doctor's appointment scheduled for this past week and she said I had damaged my achilles tendon. She ordered the usual--rest, ice, and stretching--and also gave me Celebrex. And my mom got me a heel pad for my shoe. All of that seems to be helping a great deal and I am off the crutches I used earlier in the week and actually feeling pretty good.

I did go to the Gateway Cobra Club monthly meeting at Sonic in Chesterfield this past Tuesday. It used to conflict with my trivia night at Chevy's, but that seems to have ended. Anyway, the guest speaker was Officer Fountain, the guy who is in charge of doing state inspections of these cars for the county. His talk told me what I already knew, that my engine is just not going to be titleable with them as is. Very depressing.