Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Been awhile ...

It has been way too long since I updated this blog. A lot has happened. Here are some highlights:

July 2012 - Took the family to California to visit my son Matt, first trip to the mainland for my younger son  Mike. Rented an SUV and drive up through Monterey to San Francisco.

September 2012 - Honolulu Century Ride. Did the full hundred miles.

December 2012 - Ran the Honolulu Marathon for the first time.

February 2013 - My lovey E34 Touring was rear-ended, a total loss.

April 2013 - Finally found a replacement for my wagon, a 1989 E34 535i sedan. Rode the Haleiwa Metric Century Ride.

As May gets underway I will be training for my first triathlon, the Honolulu Tinman, on July 28th. That will definitely take a big chunk of my "free" time. However, I do intend to keep Sundays for cars. I will go into more detail on the E9 a little later. For now I must point out that the Lotus Europa has needed a water pump for a long time. In fact I ordered a replacement cassette kit from Dave Bean Engineering roughly a year ago thinking it would be my summer 2012 project. It just arrived! So look for a lot of work being done on the Lotus this summer.

That being said, I actually have spent a lot of time on the E9. I just have not taken time to write about it. Virtually all of the work has been on the doors. I am not going to chronicle the entire story here; I think the pics on Flickr tell the story well enough. I will say that I brushed on the second coat of POR-15 on the RH door, so now both are ready to have the skins installed. I am going to fiddle with it this weekend to see if I can install the skins without welding -- a bit of epoxy might do the trick. If so I can paint the inside before assembling, which will make a much more rust resistant product.

Here are a few selected pics of recent activity:

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What really eats up the time is fabricating and welding patches. Here are a few more:

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