Another lucky miss in the weather department this week meant I could get the Miata back out of the garage again yesterday. I took advantage of that today to spend another part day working on the center console. The devil is in the details with this project, and its definitely a bigger job than I was expecting it to be.
I picked up some parts and got some work done on the switch panel. I expect to get a bit more work done tomorrow, as well.
This turned out to be another good weekend to work on the car. We went another week without any snow, so I was able to leave the Miata out of the garage and didn’t have to put everything away that I’d been using last weekend with the work on the emergency brake.
I wanted to continue the work on the center console, hopefully actually getting something fabricated this weekend. This is definitely a task that can easily chew up massive amounts of time in planning. Its easy enough to cut more parts, so I figured it was best to just start cutting.
Today was definitely a car day — I started off going up to Pat McMahon’s shop where we had a mid-winter “Cobra” get-together (although it was too cold for anyone to actually drive their car there). Coffee, donuts, good conversation and free parts. You can’t go wrong with that. I actually came back with a few items I will find useful — a bus bar I can use for a better set of grounds behind the dash, some battery cable boots (which I needed, as I had none on my battery or alternator lines), and best yet another set of the decals I had bought to use as icons for my dash and console switches. I needed an extra set, but balked at paying another $20 for the one extra sticker I needed.
After returning home, I got to work on the car — I was planning on playing with some emergency brake arrangements, and starting to build the center console.
Having had an office party fairly late last night, I took today off to just relax. I decided to pull the Miata out of the garage for the weekend, and fired up the heat so I could do some work on the car. I’m still trying to find a place to do the body work and painting, but I do have things to do beyond that, as I said in my last post.
I decided I wanted to get the center console worked out and perhaps fabricated this weekend. That’s my kind of work on a lazy day — mostly sitting around staring at the car trying to visualize how I wanted it to both look, and go together.
Its been a couple months since I’ve posted anything on here. As any of you who have looked at the live camera has likely seen, I took advantage of not having the body buck in the garage this winter to be able to move things around and park my Miata in there, too. The upside of that is that its immensely easier to snowblow my driveway, but the downside is that its harder to do work on the Cobra.
I just crossed fifty miles on the car tonight. I got the car drivable late enough in the season that there is no way I’m going to get a few hundred on it before getting it painted, as my original planning was. Its still got the oil leak, and trying to communicate via e-mail, I’ve just not had enough time lately to deal with arranging to get it back to Fortes to get the leak taken care of. That said, the leak (while awfully messy under the car) isn’t bad, the oil level isn’t dropping noticeably, so I’ve still be driving it.
Yes, I know, I’ve been inexcusably absent from updating this site in the last five weeks. The drama of the last couple of drives really got me in a bad mood and working on the car was turning into a chore, not something that was fun.
This morning I got the car up on jack stands (not an easy task with the particular combination of floor jack and ride height that I’ve got) to start making a pass over the car to see the results of the first drive.
Its been a busy week with the car, and I probably should’ve written a couple of posts over the coarse of the week, but better late than never. As the last post said, the car was basically done last week, as far as getting it registered is concerned. The goal for this week, if possible, was to get a VIN number for the car, perhaps get it registered, and maybe even get a chance to get a first drive in. My parents are here this weekend, and getting a first drive in would be a nice coincidence, as they were here the day I picked up the kit, the first time the body went on and would be here for its first drive.
Some of the people who are following my build may have already read the story of this week elsewhere, and we’ll get to it, but I’ll start at the beginning of the week, when I was getting my VIN number.
Well, I’m not sure how more direct I can be than that. Its done, as far as I’m concerned, for now. There’s still some minor issues, and I may work a bit on those over the next week or two, but its time to deal with the state.
I started off today planning on just getting the car down from the jackstands, but ended up working a few hours on the car as well.
