It's Go Time!

The day is finally here!  Lots and lots of crap to get done.  Look for a full report on Monday.  Wish us luck!

Damn near complete.

Ross, Eric and I wrenched for a few hours yesterday, knocking out most of the last little car-prep tasks.  I'll finish up the very last ones over the next few days.

Now, planning turns to logistics and how to keep 10+ people fed, watered, and mildly buzzed all weekend long.  That may prove to be more challenging than the car.

Silence from the Skunkworks

You may have noticed that I've not posted any pics of the car in quite a while. This is due to the uber-secret decorations that have been applied to the car and shall not be unveiled until the race. We are one week away from the Test 'n' tune day. Can't wait!

Playing Around with CHDK Scripting

Eric had the great idea to try and get a time-lapse sequence as we're out on the track, and around the paddock.  A program for Canon cameras called CHDK allows this capability.  I needed to test the program out and ended up with this.

JACKPOT!

Eric and I hit Crazy Rays yesterday and hit the mother lode.  A basically untouched '95 Celica ST was hiding down near a corner.

We got:

• Nose + Styrofoam backing
• Alternator
• Exhaust piece after header with the flex hose
• Distributor and wires
• Slave Cylinder
• Front brake pads (damn near new!)
• All 4 brake slider pins
• One brake shoe
• Lugs
• Thermostat
• Radiator + main hoses
• Some other small things

Our price: $175 - Friggin sweet!  I think we're going to be set for spares.  Maybe just a couple of little things left.

We're still waiting on the cage to be completed. :(

The Wait is Killing Us!

Twiddling our thumbs is not natural for the team to do.  The pause has given us an opportunity to plan for the actual race and come up with many lists, but no car = essentially no work.  The only positive in all this is we received the single most-important item for the decoration of the car yesterday.  Please to enjoy:

Finally Got the Cage Squared-Away

It turned out to be far more complicated than it needed to be, but the car is residing at J/E Import Performance in Baltimore.  Thanks to Chris for putting in a good word with James.  Also thanks to James who was great at understanding our complete lack of a budget and was gracious enough to give us a tour of their amazing shop.  If you can imagine it, they can make it work.  Neat stuff.