Warning-this post is very very long and has at least one picture that is a little gruesome. Despite that interesting introduction it shows very little in the way of useful information pertaining to build progress. You have been warned.
Wow!............ I think we have somehow mastered time travel. Sept 3rd somehow turned into Sept 13th. I hate to burst all of the Sci-Fi fans collective bubble, but its not all it was claimed to be. First off: instead of just moving through time with no effect on the time travelers lifespan we both ended up feeing at least a year older. Second: instead of time travel giving us an edge on the future it just dumped us 17 days from a very scary deadline.
Now its time for the excuses. We are currently in the process of getting everything together to be eligible for a domestic adoption. Part of that process is having a home study where people come to your house to judge your ability to be somewhat normal parents. Unfortunately not everyone thinks having 12 cars in various states of disrepair on your 3/4 acre property in the middle of a middle class neighborhood is a sign of good sense. So we have had a cleaning frenzy and a cars/hazardous materials exodus worthy of Saddam preparing for visits from the UN. Part of that exodus was trying to get a fellow challengers car road worthy enough to spend a few days in his neighborhood (one that is waaaaaaaaaaay less forgiving of loud ugly sub $2008 cars). That went well. Among the problems was the fact the car didnt have the foot support befitting those used to being swaddled in upper middle class/lower upper class goodness.
Somehow those in the fancy neighborhoods don't see the benefit of flinstone capable cars. So to make things easier on my challenge buddy in the "higher-falutin" neighborhood I sent the car in its floorless state over there on a big old trailer in desperate need of a paint job to stay a few days. (sorry to pick on you Tucker-neighborhoods with covenants are an easy target) He must be good at hiding the combo because they haven't kicked him out yet. Fortunately for us the home study team either believed our temporary sub 5 car state was normal or were pretty cool because they deemed us worthy of parenting an adopted child.
Now for excuse number whatever:
Monday while trying to get the house ready to be viewed by "Those who don't quite understand" I found a little time to work on the challenger. The project at hand was cutting out one of the "Ears" in the engine bay. A Greddy downpipe has to snake between the brake splitter, the factory driver side engine bay "Ear" and the subframe. A combined side effect of these tight quarters and the cheapness of the Greddy kit is that the downpipe is somewhere around a paltry 2" OD. That's an OD barely worthy of the the stock 100 or so hp, much less the eleventy billion I plan to have. Seeing as I had so much spare time I decided to cut out the "Ear" to allow enough room for a homebuilt 3" downpipe I plan to teach Jenna to build in our spare time. The tool of choice is a reciprocating saw or Sawzall. Everything was going fine until I was about 1/4" away from finishing my last cut. Then my subconscious must have remembered how guilty I have been feeling about ignoring all of the safety warnings you guys kept giving me (bastards )
Apparently my subconscious is not only highly open to suggestion, it is very creative. I managed not to cut my finger with a reciprocating saw, but to smash it. Im not sure even the hammermaster Per has accomplished using a saw as a hammer. The saw kicked back and smashed my left thumb between the body and the handle.
(It looked alot worse a couple of hours later when the bruising and swelling had settled in )
Fortunately for me Mitchell was willing to drive to the store and get me superglue and I was back to cleaning.
Between the thumb smashing, the home study, my grandmother's 85th birthday celebration, Jenna being out of town, relatives in town from all over the country, work, etc... today was the first day we managed to get any measurable amount of challenge work done.
September 13th, 1:30-3pm, 4-8pm, 9-11pm
Today was about getting the car ready for paint.
Step one-more pressure washing:
The evil cutout (last 1/4" completed with an angle grinder, just a fyi)
After pressure washing we scrubbed and degreased every inch of the car. We then made room and pushed it in the garage.
(The floor was dusty, so I sicked the trusty Scooba on the job)
Once the car was in the garage we primed a few spots with bad chipping paint to allow ourselves to practice feathering in paint tomorrow.
Tomorrow we work a bridal expo most of the day, afterwards we start masking!