Category: Cars

When I arrived home today there was a box waiting for me from SNG-Barratt. It contained my new heat shield, along with a few other parts (to be revealed at a later time.) I noted that the hole pattern in the new one was a bit different than the old one, which was proven true once i went out to the barn. This meant that my over-sized hole in the body of the car was irrelevant. Only two of the six holes lined up, so I ended up drilling new holes in the car. The view above was shot when I was part of the way through the process of installing it.

That went pretty smoothly compared to the next part: installing the exhaust itself. This is when it would be really nice to have a 4-post list and lots of room. I don’t. The car is up on jack stands and I’m lying on the ground underneath. This exhaust is like a Tetris game. Lots of fiddling and repositioning to get things right. The mufflers are kind of heavy and had to be supported by wood blocks while I fished bolts into place. Took the better part of the evening but I have them on the car now. I started with the pipes under the IRS and gave up when I realized I’m going to have to loosen the mufflers now to get them to fit. :\

Oh well. There is a cross-bar between those two pipes and two bolts that hold that on. This is the lowest point on the car other than the wheels of course. When the car bottoms out at speed these two bolts are what hits the ground. Have a look at them:

My kids can probably tell you exactly where all that metal went.

Hopefully I’ll have the car back together this weekend.

My friend and co-driver from the 2007 GTTSR (see links over there->) Shaun Redmond sent me some updated pics of his ongoing restoration of his old Volvo 1800. It is starting to look real good! Targa Newfoundland here we come, right Shaun? 😉

You can see the whole project from the beginning here.

Some more from Maranello. can you name all the cars in this pic?

Not something you see every day huh?

I figured I’d show my patriotism with a flag on it too.

That little screw you see there is what stopped my whole exhaust replacement project in its tracks today.

When I pulled the exhaust off back in January this screw fell out of the heat shield right above the mufflers. I figured I’d put it back on when the time came to replace the exhaust. Well, I come to find out today that the hole where this screw secures the heat shield is over-sized. In the process of finding that out, I bent the heat shield and now it won’t fit right. Oh well. Of course I found all this out after my favorite parts supplier had closed for the day. sigh. I’ll order a new heat shield on Monday.

I did salvage some of today though. I polished the resonators… they looked pretty grotty. I also dried a batch of washed BioDiesel, and wrestled with Mike’s very dirty WVO delivered by John. It is going to take some work to pre-filter this batch (of about 70 gallons.) Ugh.

This is a photo from my 2003 “Summer Roadtrip” with Nick. It is a view of him passing time with his gameboy as we drove from Colorado to Washington in the Jaguar. Note the rainbow out the window.

That trip was indeed magical and I have many fond memories from that week. Nick was nine years old, and a joy to travel with. I had hoped to go on another road trip with him (and his older brother) this week. I was planning to drive down to southern California with one kid, then have the other fly down and send the southbound kid home by plane as well. We have some Jag friends down there that would be fun to pay a return visit. Then I’d return home with the other boy. Chris will be leaving for College in the fall, and I’d dearly like to spend some quality time with them both in the meantime. This week would have worked well since it is spring break for both.

Unfortunately the car is still up on jacks in the barn (I need to order a new body heat shield … more on that later) and it is snowing. WTF is up with that?