It has been an eventful day for the build. My double fuel pump assembly has shown up from Buschur Racing. Also an email from Ron at Axis with pictures of my block going together. Thing are looking good for shipment sometime next week!!! Then the real fun begins.
Well I've taken the plunge and probably went overboard. Who says money doesn't buy some happiness!!! I ordered my turbo kit today. It is the "end all, be all" of turbo kits. A Full-Race Stage 4 GT35R kit. Their original time table was around 6-8 weeks, but they have bumped up production and Lloyd said if all goes well it should be 3-4 weeks of waiting. Yahoo!!!!
I got another call from Ron today with some more bad news. It seems that he hasn't received my pistons back from SwainTech yet. So the engine is still in "hurry up and wait" mode. It would seem that I am now at the top of the priority list for getting my block built once all the pieces are in Ron's hands.
I'm headed to Seattle this weekend to get some more work done on the car. Plane tickets have been uncooperative, so I actually had to pay for one. GRRRRRR!!! I carpooled with Bruno from work, as he was headed north as well this weekend. Goals for this weekend are to pull the fuel pump assembly, bake my headlights, dismantle the intake manifold and TGV's, send out my stock injectors for the Deacshwerks Core Return, and prepare some items for shipping. We'll see how far we get.....
I got a call from Ron at Axis today. The temperature has been very hot in Illinois. Warm weather throws off the tolerances in the machine shop he said. Him and his machinist are coming in early and they have been leaving the A/C on over night. He said the weather will delay my engine another week or so. Hopefully it will be done soon.
Since the rear struts in the car have been making the well known "clunking" noise for about a month I decided it was time to get it taken care of. The dealership quoted a price for the rear struts and installation of $1400. That seemed steep and after some research I was able to find a reasonable set of four adjustable coilovers for $999 shipped. They are Helix DNA coilovers. I set up with Darin at West End Alignment for the installation and an alignment. We'll see what happens.
I have been worrying about how to mount the Mac Mini under my passenger seat and still have easy access to the DVD drive, make it easy to remove, and not have it sliding around. A beautiful and simple idea presented itself in a TUAW post last week.
A company out of Bellevue, Washington makes an acrylic Mac Mini mount that is perfect for many things. In my case it will allow me to secure the Mini under my seat and allow me to satisfy all my other requirements. Granted, this is not a security mount, but I am not planning on attaching the Mini to the frame of my car. I'll take my chances with the evil forces in the world and see what happens. H-Squared has just released the new mounts and they are by far the best mount for the Mac Mini I have seen.
I received the mount in time for my installation tomorrow, so it should make things easy on the installation crew tomorrow at A & G Customs. Pictures to follow....
The audio installation has been postponed for a week. There were some noises coming from the back of the car that needed to get checked out. I rescheduled the audio installation so that I could make a run to the dealership. Turns out that the rear strut mounts and struts are bad. The car is still drivable and this is not an immediate issue, but it will have to be handled in the near future.
Also there has been something rolling around in the back under the back seat. The technician came to me with a .45 caliber bullet telling me that he found what was rolling around. I thanked him and my brother, the previous owner.
The Griffin Firewave showed up at the office today. A little smaller than I expected. I got it home and started to play with it. The software is awesome and allows for plenty of configuration. It would seem that the Mac Mini causes the same problem with the Firewire port that is causes with the USB port. Which is strange since my Dual G4/800 does not leave the Firewire ports powered during sleep. Although there is a standard in place for Firewire it does not cover how the ports are powered.
This is frustrating, but not worth the work that was involved in modifying the USB hub. Also since there is no external power for the Firewave the solution would have to be a little more creative than I care to delve into. For now I will see how the car battery fairs with the Firewave drawing power during sleep. I am planning on having an Optima battery installed with the audio equipment so I should be safe.
As with any project of this magnitude it is good to see what you are getting into. I usually put together an excel sheet to track my projected expenses and the actual cost of things. I have posted this sheet in .pdf form so everyone can get an idea of what it takes to put something like this together. The sheet doesn't take into account my time, which with all the research and build out work will probably be over 100hrs when all is said and done.
