Well, holy cow! We've got a race car, sitting here. For all intents-and-purposes, it's a race car, anyway.

Jimmy's been able to get the cockpit finished up sans seat and all we have left to do is install a fuel tank and drop an engine in and we should be good-to-go!

We're hoping to get an engine out to the engine guys within the next couple of weeks to get the ethanol conversion done. After USAC dropped the bombshell on the teams over the winter, there's been a bit of a scramble to get the engines converted to run ethanol. Everyone's in the same boat as we press ahead on this. If we want to run, this is what we do.

The cockpit on the pavement car looks good. Jimmy was able to shorten some hoses and lines and that should drop us a bit of weight as we won't need to carry the extra weight of liquid for brakes and coolant. Jimmy was also able to mount the oil tank on the inside of the frame to get it out of the slipstream. We haven't mounted the gas tank yet, so we may have to move it yet again but we're hopeful that we may be able to keep it where it is.

Here's the cockpit as it looks, currently:

I have to admit that we're pretty impressed with the way the nose of the car came out after Jimmy was able to glass-coat and refinish it. He primed it earlier in the week and we're just waiting to coordinate with the painter to get it done.

The radiator sits at a much better angle, now and after my first metal-working project, we've got plenty of room for coolant lines and  hope that the additional air will keep this thing running nice-and-cool during the season.


Now, it's time to start working on a dirt car. As i sit here typing this in the shop, Jimmy's busy, working on the bell-housing for the steering and we'll be lifting the rear-end into the frame in a bit.

Another good piece of news has been the graphics that we've got advance copies of to see. These should be good-looking cars this year as there's a more-modern look to the numbers and there are some high-lighted borders added to the numbers to make them stand out better at the track. We'll add pictures when they get on the car.


So as we can continue to make progress while it snows outside, we're excited that things are moving along. However, given the summer temps that we had last year, we'll take the snow while we work on the cars!


- Gar