Fun tearing down...

The team is starting to come together now as the delivery date for the kit draws near.  Meng and Marc came out tonight to look over the car and assess things. We've decided to continue with tear-down, and eventually focus on getting the engine to turn over.  Assuming it's a bad starter or other external gremlin, if we can get the motor to spin freely then any issues can probably be fixed while the engine is out of the car and on the stand.  

So we dug into the tear-down.  The car is up on stands and the hood has been removed, the chassis brace is all but off (and would be completely off if not for a stripped bolt - I need to run to Sears for a nut-breaking tool).  The biggest accomplishment of the evening was getting the fuel cell out of the car.  The car has a FuelSafe cell which fit in the existing mounting points (using customized straps provided by FuelSafe) and uses the existing filler neck.  The cell is heavy - probably 10-12 gallons of old gasoline in it.  We supported it with floor jacks, removed the straps, removed the filler, and carefully lowered the cell to the floor.  The cell is now outside the garage waiting to be drained.

With the fuel cell out of the car we can now turn our attention to removing the Panhard bar, which in turn will give us access to the rear end, which we need for new car.  Once the Panhard bar is out of the car we can also get access to the exhaust system, all of which needs to be removed.

All the various nuts, bolts, and pieces that have been removed are boxed or bagged, ready to go onto the new car or be sold for another project.  We'll have several good pieces to sell soon:  Panhard bar, chassis brace, heavy duty caster/camber plates, etc.

It felt really good to pick up some tools and do some work.  Even though it's just tear-down, which by nature is a dirty, messy process it was still fun.