28 Apr 08

I took all the through bolts out of the rear cross-section this morning. Sounds like a quick, easy job, but most of them were epoxied in place and difficult to remove. Some of the heads broke off of the screws, just for added enjoyment, I suppose. Ben came and cleaned up for an hour or so, but took the rest of the day off to take care of some business. Aaron and Zac cleaned up for a while, before Aaron began work on making videos from our animations, and Zac started another hat section trim piece. The last one went bad during the 2nd glue-up, so we had to start over. I worked on fitting pieces inside the passenger's side gas tank area and had all the piece cut by lunch. Zac and I worked from about 1pm until about 4:30pm on drilled holes, spreading glue, sinking rivets and wrenching bolts to clamp and secure all of the various pieces. When we finished this, we put the rear cross-section piece in the back of the chassis, along with the glued-in 5-sided pieces. We located the original bolt holes in the transmission hanger and bolted the cross-section in. We spent the next hour or so cutting and drilling angle brackets to support the joint between the rear wheel wells and the cross-section before Aaron and Zac made a trash run and went home. I stayed out until dinner time, drilling more holes through the transmission hanger and 5-sided pieces to prepare for gluing tomorrow. After dinner, I wrote an article and answered emails for 2-3 hours. I came back out to the shop to drill and cut some square holes in the back of the cross section for ventilation and internal access. I finished a little after 11:00pm.