[SN65]

Hi All,

We have been moving along quite well. We have the fenders, hood and headlight buckets mounted. We have spent a lot of time re-aligning the doors, fenders hood, etc... to give us the most consistent gaps. We have all the door internals complete save the installation of the glass. The "glass guy" will be showing up on Saturday and spending the entire day installing the front and rear glass along with the trim.

Today we will be checking all the fluids and bleeding the breaks. We will also be rerouting the clutch cable and installing a new firewall adjuster and aluminum quadrant. The factory items don't give us the proper throughout adjustment on the CenterForce clutch. We will be installing the front valance and working up the front bumper mounting brackets.

After we get the bumpers installed and properly aligned, we will be sending them out to be re-chromed. The quality of the chrome on the re-pro items just sucks. There are all these tiny little pin pricks that reflect when the light hits them just so.

On another note, I talked with the powers that be at the Detroit Autoramma. They tell me that our project sounds interesting, but it probably will not be considered for the "Ridler" award. We figured as much, but the reason he gave me was a little surprising. The fellow said that it the award emphasizes "creativity, engineering and workmanship" He felt that our project might fall short on the "engineering" side. I believe that he really did not understand the scope of the project. He probably believes that we just cut two cars apart and welded them together. From his point of view, we really did not "create" or "engineer" anything. All we did was graft two cars together. Nothing that requires any engineering. It is not as if we designed the car from scratch....

I believe that this is the way the project comes across to those who are not aware of everything involved. Just like Kevin from V8TV. What he thought he was going to see and what he actually saw were two different things. People have seen way to many photos of cars where the actual car is nowhere near as nice as the photo. It always brings a smile to my face when people stop by the shop for a peek. everyone (so far) has been totally blown away. They may just be trying to be nice, but I prefer to believe that they are really taken by the project.

That said, for us to have any hope at the Autoramma we have to stop publishing photos of the car. The car actually looks like a car right now and they have rather firm requirements that the car not be published in its finished form.

So, what do you all think. Should I keep publishing the as built shots, or stop for the off hand possibility of Ridler consideration?

Catch ya'll l8r