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Diary

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Welcome: If you want to read the project in chronological order, start at the bottom and read up. Each entry has an associated photo essay page with more photos and descriptive text.

June 11 , 2004 - Pluggin away! Decisions have been made as to how to continue the refinement of the surface. ... read more...

June 9 , 2004 - Straight forward progress on the body. About one half of the hood is finished. Follow the link to see the photos and descriptive text.

What software package did I use for modeling the body? I use 3D Studio Max. It's a fantastic modeling and animation package and I recommend it for anyone that needs industrial strength modeling and animation. I've been modeling and animating since 1993. It's not a mainstay of my regular job, but I can do it when needed.

What process did I use to create the ribs from the 3D file? I created the outlines of the ribs in 3DS using a built-in 'section' feature of Max. I simply aligned the first section tool at the front of the car body and created an array of these section tools with 6" spacing for a total of 26 sections. Each section tool then creates a new 'poly-shape' tracing the outline of the body where it intersects. That resulting shape can be exported as DXF and then output onto a plotter. 3DS Max does not support print to plotter. So the dxf's need to be plotted from some other program like Mechanical Desktop. My plotter plans fell through though, so I decided to use a digital projector to cast the images onto a wall. The outlines were instead output from Max in .ai (Adobe Illustrator) format and opened up in Photoshop. Each outline became a new layer of the Photoshop file. These outlines were then individually projected onto the wall. The projector was positioned to created a life-size outline on the wall. This was measured in multiple locations to verify accuracy. (It's within 1/4"). Construction paper was taped to the wall and the projected outline was traced by hand using a permanent marker. Only 1/2 the outline was required because the car is symmetrical from left to right.

1- For perfect mirror images I screwed 2 wood panels together, taped the template to one side and used the jigsaw to cut both panels at the same time. Unscrew the panels and Presto! mirror image.

2- I am using foam blocks between the ribs. The hardware store has large sheets of polystyrene (styrofoam) in 2" thick 4 'x 8' sheets. (I would use polyurethane foam, but it is MUCHO more expensive!) My ribs are spaced exactly 6"o.c. This was an oversight on my part to not make the inside width between the ribs exactly 6". Since I used 3/8" particle board for the ribs I am left with 5-5/8" gaps. I use a hot-wire like a cheese cutter with an adjustable depth guage to slice off the excess 3/8" of foam and so allow the foam to slip between each rib.

3- I slip-fit the styrofoam blocks between the ribs and adhere them with liquid nails and some drywall screws. Using the cheese cutter analogy again, my plan is to hot-wire the foam blocks to the outer profile of the wood ribs. Leaving it around 5mm proud would be a good idea since there is a convex curvature of the foam between many of the ribs.

4- The entire rib substructure is being created approximately 3mm inside my desired final outline so that I can add those 3mm of thickness back into the shape using my filler material and final coatings. I am using Alan B.'s Drywall Filler and Kilz primer method of body shaping.

I added a guestbook to my website today. I think it would be great if everyone would sign it. I've had the site up for a while and have always wondered who visits. So don't be shy, sign it!

June 7 , 2004 -Really starting to feel like I am picking up the pace with this bodywork thing. I think that having spent a lot of time behind the scenes developing the design in the computer and then outputting the outlines for the ribs has really launched the bodywork phase in the right direction.

Using the traced computer outlines, some scrap particleboard and an old jigsaw, I have been able to inexpensively build up the framework for the front of the car.

I've been getting a lot of positive email regarding the project and I just wanted to publically give my thanks to everyone that writes to me. I try to send an answer back to everyone that writes. It's amazing to me how many different countries show up in my visitor logs. Keep em coming!

June 1 , 2004 - Memorial Day Weekend. Ribs and Spars! The shape begins to materialize! After tracing all the shapes out onto contractors construction paper using the LCD projector at my office I managed to cut out and attach the front spar and 3 ribs to the front of the car.

May 24 , 2004 -

The start of the bodywork phase ...

May 15 , 2004 - final tweaking stages of the body in 3D. I made some changes to the rear flanks based on comments made by some of the regulars. Thanks guys. I think that the shape is improved. Now it has more muscle to the butt.

A client and good friend of mine (www.michaeldaily.com) has offered to let me plot out the outlines on his plotter (free! yippee!) and so the next step is to export my section outlines in dxf format and head over there for an afternoon of simple plots. Lots of them. I'll pay him for materials, but what a nice offer of help. Be sure to check out his website.

May 03 , 2004 - Center Console. Finding more ways to put off building the body. I am developing my procrastination into a high-art form. Still, the center console is a task that eventually has to be completed and so it may as well be now. I'm not quite finished with the jobm but far enough along to show off the progress. :-)

I went to the Davis Salvage yard 32nd street and Washington in downtown Phoenix on Saturday and bought a huge sheet of 18ga ali for $45. It has some stains on it, but I am able to polish them out quite easily.

May 01 , 2004 - TURBO! I would think it a safe bet to say that there aren't many auto enthusiasts out there who don't dream about adding more horsepower/torque to their rides. It's an addictive sensation to be pushed back into the seat like the pilot of a jet on afterburners. My plan is to move slowly up the power ladder. I did some rough calculations using Acceleration Simulator that shows la Bala with it's normally aspirated 120HP 4AGE powerplant doing the quarter in 13.7 and 0-60 in 5.4 seconds. Bump the power up to 160Hp and the car runs in the low 12's and does 0-60 in 4.3 seconds. That is a serious boost in performance, and one that I simply can't free my mind from! :-D So while I am staring at tail lights in traffic, I am also going over ideas to boost performance. I know that one of the simplest ways to add horsepower to my car is to swap the engine for a bigger one, but I think a neater solution is to add a turbocharger to the existing engine. A lot of people will tell me that it is a bad idea to turbocharge the bluetop 4AGE due to the fragile block, the high compression, and a host of other issues. I agree with them all. However... I see this as an opportunity to learn about fuel injection, timing, boost and also as a test bed for Megasquirt, MegaJolLightJunior, Wideband O2 sensing and the art of keeping a 160K mile 4age alive under extreme conditions. Boost will be limited to 5-6 psi, allowing the engine to make close to 170Hp. The nice thing about this little project of mine is that even if I blow the engine, I can simply transplant all of my parts over to the stronger block and internals of the 4AGZE and keep going from there.

April 27 , 2004 - TAIL LIGHTS! For the past 2 years, everytime I drive somewhere, a large portion of my attention is spent looking at the ass-ends of cars. I know this is strange behavior but absolutely necessary as I decided some time ago to utilize an existing tail light for simplicity's sake. IMHO most car asses are ugly. It's as though car designers simply ignore this area. But since most people will only ever see the back end of MY car. ahem... I figured I should make it look nice. I therefore spent a lot of time searching for the proper unit. What I ended up with was the 2003 Jeep Liberty light. I think if you squint a little bit, they even look a bit like Ferrari tail lights.

April 15 , 2004 - Tax Day! I of course waited until the last minute to file my return. Uncle Sam gets what's his... Ah well, someone has to help pay for bombs and welfare...

Not a whole lot going on in the Graber Garage lately. Too many other items vying for attention. Bought a windshield and worked on the center console. Also managed to do some fabrication on the turbo manifold.

My wife's grandfather passed away on Sunday (Easter). Very suddenly and at the ripe old age of 93. It was his time to go and he went quietly in his sleep. It was his time to go, he had a very full and interesting life. Goodbye Opi Hans, we'll miss you.

March 9 , 2004 - Here is a video clip sent to me by Alan Bertwistle.

La Bala Cornering at Speed

1.9MB - 6 sec

March 8 , 2004 - Does anyone recognize the man in the photo? It's none other than the preeminent scratch-built American Middy guru himself, Alan Bertwistle! Come out to pay me a little visit he did, and boy did we have a good time! We took a bare painted la Bala frame and built it into a complete running 'Bullet' that did some pretty hot laps, all in a matter of a few hours! Follow the link to find out more and to see a load of Mpeg Videos of La Bala running on the "Graber Test Track", and of course, full details on the weekend activities!

March 3 , 2004 - FRAME PAINTING COMPLETED!!!

It was a difficult job, with so many tubes to coat, but the results were worth the effort. 3 coats of Rust Bullet later and the car is ready for re-assembly.

My initial thoughts on Rust Bullet are that it's a fantastic product and the finish is just like powder-coating.

February 26 , 2004 - Not much happening in the Graber Garage this past week. Too many other projects vying for my attention.

I DO plan to strip the car back down to the frame for a complete coating of "rust bullet".

Recently I bought 4 Yokohama Parada Spec II tires in 205/40-R16 - You can read more about these tires here. They look great and have received top reviews. I hope I like them... That's the problem with tires isn't it? Everyone has a different opinion about them.

February 16 , 2004 - Shifter. Sloppy shifting is no fun. Just like other kinds of sloppy.. ;) You just don't want it. So I spent some time and a little money getting the interface to the gears upgraded. I also worked on the rollbar bracing, but that's still work in progress.

The shifter modifications turned out so perfectly. Brass shifter bushings to replace the stock rubber ones, a super clean ali shift knob and a simple short-throw modification. Shifting is now a 'snick-snick' operation (kinda like bling-bling, but better). quick, precise and with just the right feel. I am really looking forward to spending some time in the cockpit as the ergonomics are spot on! <happy>

BTW - I completely recommend www.twosrus.com and their brass shifter bushings as well as their very nice aluminum shifter knob. If you have a cable operated shifter, look into this modification. It's a winner.

February 8 , 2004 - A whole batch of new photos from last weekend!

Last weekend was a lot of fun. I made progress on a number of fronts. The rollbar is almost finished, the seat has been lowered and tilted back. I fabricated the rear engine undertray. Next weekend I will be able to finish all these little loose ends and then it's time to strip the car down to the frame and blast it with some paint.

February 3 , 2004 - Ackerman.... Do I have any? Anti-Ackerman? Let's let the laser line demonstrate.

Many thanks to all who wrote in with questions, comments and suggestions regarding Ackerman and also the rollbar/windshield positioning issue. Regarding Ackerman, I think I have discounted the upright and steering arm as a source of this perceived issue. And it may simply be perceived, a trick on the eyes, but... more than one person has looked at the wheels at full lock and told me that it really looks like anti-ackerman! I still need to do some more investigation, but I definitely know a lot more about the issue than just a few weeks ago! My last words on the subject. "Shut up and drive it!" :-)

January 29, 2004 - No major work on the car. Too many other projects competing for my time. I was able to start on the rollbar, and of course I ran into major stumbling blocks along the way. Mainly, the rollbar, when tall enough to protect my noggin, is considerably taller on the car than the top of the windshield... :-( This is entirely my fault and should have been caught by me in the design phase, but now it is so and I need to deal with it.

January 19, 2004 - The weekend was spent with the car up on the jackstands and ripping out all unused wiring from the loom. My initial plan was to just leave it all, but as things tend to go, I just can't look at something unfinished and let it go. My main goal was to rip everything out that wasn't engine or guage related. So out came all the HVAC, fan, lights and accy circuits. Periodically I would fire up the car and make sure that I hadn't snipped an essential wire and, as luck would have it, I did. One more than one occasion! So, I would tie the most recently cut wires back together and start the engine, then disconnect each cut wire one at a time. That did the trick and I was able to remove every unused circuit! A weight loss of close to 20Lbs!

I felt that the lighting and fan circuitry was overly complicated on the original car, so my intention is to simply run new circuits using the existing fusebox and relays.

January 13, 2004 - I have received a number of emails questioning my decision to use a deDion rear suspension and I figured I would address the issue.

Let me say that although there are definite advantages to a properly designed IRS, the first time builder, or the builder that doesn't have the resources (read money) to refine and develop an IRS, will almost certainly achieve better results with a deDion. The interaction between the driven wheels and the chassis is an extremely complex one, the car pitches and dives and rolls and with IRS under bump or droop the driven wheels change camber and toe. At the same time, the rubber is expected to provide acceleration and lateral grip. There are so many variables! And to complicate things even more, the IRS needs to be designed in harmony with the front suspension. Without years of design experience or even a computer program to aid simulations I simply couldn't take the chance that whatever IRS I designed would work correctly the first time out. A Chapman Strut (FYI - in the front of a car it's called McPherson and it steers, in the rear it's called Chapman and it's locked) includes a height penalty that I can't design around. The beauty of the deDion is it's ability to maintain the driven wheels perpendicular to the road surface under all conditions. Granted, on a rough road surface the well designed IRS wins hands down, but on a smooth surface there are absolutely no benefits to IRS and in fact the deDion is the winner. In that sense most people are being sold a "bill of goods" with regards to the superiority of IRS. Some of the most agile and best handling cars have been deDion (or) live axle. Alfa Romeo, TVR, Caterham, Lotus. It's a long list! Because of it's simplicity, a live axle can be brought up to an excellent state of performance very quickly. Another reason, for me at least, was packaging. In a transverse mid-engine application, the drivetrain sits squarely where the best location for IRS links go. deDion simply goes around it. In the end it was a no-brainer for me to use the deDion on my first scratch built car. That isn't to say that I won't attempt the IRS on my next one!

Although my design is finalized, please feel free to email me with questions and suggestions.

January 11, 2004 - Back from my extended family reunion in Indiana and ready to get back into car building. I will spend the next month or so tidying up the chassis, tuning the suspension, finishing up the wiring and basically just delaying starting on the body...

Got a few more items off of ebay. The most notable is the air filter for $3.99. My neighbor Toby just gave me a set of 5 point racing harnesses, so it looks like my next major purchase will be rubber. I simply can't get a feel for what this car can do with the current tires. They are slick like waxed snot.

This weekend will install the harnesses, find a better attach point for the ECU and make an additional bracket for the exhaust. If I have time I will also try to get the guages working again. While I was tidying up the wiring last month they quit working.

December 22, 2003 - Neighbors Justin and Toby come over to help troubleshoot the brakes and finish up some other nagging to-do's. It's nice to have the help of competent people! Both Toby and Justin are Honda guys, but I don't hold that against them. They are very smart and know a thing or two about cars. We figured out that the rear brakes were not bleeding properly due to the bleed nipples not being at the top of the Caliper. Once we tilted the calipers up, the air bled right out and the brakes became much more solid. We are still working on configuring the bias bar. Just can't seem to get enough bias to the rear yet. (Update: I figured the bias bar out Sunday night, but haven't been able to test the changes yet.) I'm sure the brakes are fine now.

Before doing some test runs around the neighborhood (see the videos), we managed to scrounge up some bathroom scales to weight the critter (Full tank of fuel, no payload). Drumroll please....

• Right rear - #344
• left rear - #326
• right front - #236
• left front - #216
• Rear weight total - #670
• Front weight total - #452
• Complete car total - #1,122
• 59% rear : 41% front

We got the car back on the ground and took her outside for some fun runs. The neighborhood kids showed up and we gave rides and tested the brakes. Was this smart? Probably not. Did we have fun? Definitely yes! It's obvious that the neighborhood is too small to do any serious testing. Mothers don't like it when oversized go-karts go zooming past their kids and do full throttle acceleration and brake lockups. I don't know why... :P

Check out the videos of the action.

December 17, 2003 - First drive! 9:15am December 17th, 2003. I propped the video camera in the garage pointing out to the street and got ready to hop in the car. What are the odds a police cruiser would drive by!? Well he did. I waved and acted like I was working on the wiring. hehehe. As soon as he left the neighborhood I fired up the camcorder and went for my first little official blast up the street.  Check out the video! Initial impressions? Although I only made it 200 yards up the street and back, and I barely revved the motor, I can already tell that the car will definitely be very nimble, very quick. Everything feels very solid and connected to the road, but at the same time I think the suspension will be very supple. Possibly too soft? The brakes are terrible. Mushy mushy, push to the floor mushy. I am worried that either I got the wrong size master cylinders, or there is still air in the lines, or maybe the brake bias bar is adjusted completely wrong. The rad fans run constantly, but the guys over at MR2 Owners Club Board have given me the answer. What a great resource!

There is still lots to do! But this is getting fun! I can't wipe the cheesy grin off my face...

December 15, 2003 - IT LIVES!!!! Finished my list of to-do's on the car. There was more to do than I expected. (of course). Luckily my good friend Jim Williams came over and assisted...

Well, after all the engine startup prep work, which went without a hitch, we re-installed the plugs and I cranked the engine over... and over... and over... and over... until the battery died. Checked the timing. Fixed the timing. Installed a spare battery. Cranked over and over and over.... Finally! It started to make like it wanted to start. You know the sound; when the starter whine goes faster and then can barely keep up with the engine and there are little poopy sounds coming out of the exhaust. But it's not quite running by itself... Couldn't get it to do more than that.

After a few hours of fiddling and futzing and head scratching, we took a 20 minute break. Then at it again. This time the engine kicked over and ran for about 3 seconds. Progress! But after those 3 second bursts it would simply crank with no combustion... I discovered that if I let it rest for few seconds and tried again then it would run for 3 seconds and die. I could repeat this effect. At this point I am thinking "definitely fuel". Sounds like the cold start injector is providing fuel for the initial 3 seconds, but the main injectors are not doing anything. I then notice a very large pool of fuel forming under the #4 injector that appears to be coming from the upper fuel rail area. DAMN! So close, yet so far. So I take the injectors out and the upper o-rings are all brittle and cracked. The #4 upper o-ring is disintegrated. This was causing the fuel leak. My theory is that this was probably causing the rail to not provide enough pressure to the injectors.... I would also have to assume that the injectors are clogged and need cleaning.

I had a hell of a time finding the injector rebuild kits on a Sunday. The dealership parts desk is of course, closed on Sundays. Four seperate stores, each one with one injector kit. Lotsa time used up driving around town. So finally I get all 4 little boxes and head home. Each rebuild kit comes with a rubber replacement set for one injector, Top o-ring and rubber seal, bottom a rubber gasket. $2.99 each box. About $15.00 for all 4 with tax (VAT). The original ones were absolutely shot.

But I digress. Assuming that the injectors were clogged, I bodged an injector cleaning circuit out of a 12v cordless drill battery, a brake lightbulb (as a dropping resistor), some wire and a mity-vac handheld vacuum pump.

As a baseline, I applied 40psi suction to one end of the injector and energized the circuit. The pressure barely dropped, indicating that there was virtually no air passing through them. I aborted this test because I didn't want to burn out the injectors. I did this to all 4 injectors. They were definitely clogged.

Placing mineral spirits in a small glass container I applied mity-vac suction to one end of the injector with the other end in the glass. Then I cycled the injector on and off until all the spirits had been sucked throught the injector. Repeated for other 3 injectors. I then did the open air suction test. In each case the injector pulled 40psi down to 0psi in less than 7 seconds! Fixed.

Put everything back together on the car. Cross fingers, turn the key...

3-4 seconds of cranking and vrooooom!!!! vroooom, vroooooom!!!!!!!! wohooooooo

Status - The car is now off the jackstands and sitting on 4 wheels. For some odd reason, after we set it on it's wheels, it refused to crank over. I have traced the problem down to a possible wiring fault in the circuit with the clutch safety switch. I has a piece of copper wire shunting the switch and it may have accidentally touched to ground. Now instead of showing 12v when the key is turned, it shows continuity to ground. If anyone knows the workings of this particular circuit, please email me. Specifically, which relays and fuses might be tied into that circuit.

December 11, 2003 - Ok, I don't have any photos for this update, but enough has happened to warrant a quick note. The radiator lines are finished and the cooling system has been filled. I filled the system and soon enough noticed a huge pool of coolant under the car. Traced it to the waterpump, which I had just replaced. :-( I had to remove the timing belt to get back to the pump. got it off and the problem was an o-ring betweenthe pump and block that had been pinched. Total time to replace -2 hours.

I plumbed all the hydraulic lines and filled and bled the brakes and clutch. The rear brake still feels spongy, so I think I need to bleed it again. Bleeding brake and clutch lines alone is a real PITA! I have a mity-vac though, and that helped a lot. I also enlisted the help of my 8 year old son Jacob. He wants to know when I am going to install the fire-jets! I wonder if he envisions this... I hope not.

The list of items is growing ever shorter. At this pace I should have the car running by this weekend.

• mount coolant overflow bottle -15min
• tighten half-shafts - 10 min
• tighten steering wheel - 10 min
• perform basic wheel alignment - 30 min
• install new battery terminals (maybe do a complete cable rewire to starter) - 15 min
• install oil cooler and route lines - 1 hour
• change oil and filter - 15 minutes
• route wiring loom to guages and to ignition - 30 min
• wiring to fuel pump - 15 min
• Finish mounting exhaust system - 3 hours

Completion of that list gets the car not only startable, but drivable! Exciting times indeed!

December 3, 2003 - Work progresses on the radiator plumbing. I was having a hard time deciding what to do with the connection between the copper pipe and the rubber hoses. Without a bead, one runs the risk of blowing a hose or dripping connections. My choices, were limited to forming a bead out of jbweld, welding/brazing a copper ring and filing it down or pressing the metal into a bead with a custom bead forming tool. I chose to create a bead forming tool out of a pair of old vise-grips and some steel scraps shaped and welded to its tips. The resulting test shows that the bead created looks pretty good! This will save so much work and time.

I also have the coolant lines back in place and ready for soldering. I will use flux core silver solder for all the joints and use MAP gas rather than propane, because MAP gas burns a lot hotter.

December 1, 2003 - Thanksgiving weekend in the Graber garage! So much to talk about. Turbo arrived, it's a nice piece, and a turbo manifold is currently being fabricated. The aluminum flooring is permanently attached to the frame using 3M VHB tape and it turned out fabulous! The steel paneling has been welded in permanently and as expected it stiffened up the frame nicely!

All the major frame and mechanical fabrication is now completed and I am now in the process of putting the entire car back together one last time before frame painting. I want to have it driving around the block by December 25th. I will be painting the frame with a product called rust-bullet. Rust Bullet is so tough that if I later need to weld anything to the frame, it will have to be ground off first! I want to make sure I have absolutely everything finalized and welded on before painting. That means all systems installed and verified, a test drive around the block and then stripped back to the frame again for painting.

October 27, 2003 - Another good weekend in the Graber garage! The paneling is cut and pre-fitted, ready for welding. I also spent at least 5 hours going over the chassis with a fine-toothed comb and a wire brush, checking all tube joints for missed welds and incomplete welds. I feel much better about the state of the chassis. It is extremely strong and rigid. I know that this strength and rigidity come at the cost of weight, but that's solved when I install the complete IHI RB-5 turbo and intercooler package that I bought off of ebay for $200. In any case, the car will still be under 1,500Lbs(est.) For the turbo I'll have to fabricate an exhaust manifold, but otherwise I have a complete kit including oil and coolant lines, and all the air plumbing. I also now need to replace the stock Fuel injection and ignition system with a MegaSquirt and MegaJoltLiteJunior system. The stock ECU does not handle forced induction. I will not perform this conversion until I have the stock system running and the car through emissions, but I am sure that this is something I want to try.

October 13, 2003 - Got close to 15 hours on the car this weekend. Once I cleaned up the mess, it doesn't seem like I got much done, but I managed to work on the engine and the frame and cut a large amount of the paneling. I've got the scarred knuckles and blisters to prove it! The worst part of the weekend was my decision to degrease nasty engine parts. I told myself that I wasn't going to invest much time in this engine, but the coolant intake pipe was corroded through, and I had to remove the alternator to get to it. Then I found a huge amount of crud behind it, so I decided to scrape it off. Scraping looked bad so I had to degrease it. The coolant pipe was corroded inside, so I decided to replace the waterpump. While I was getting at the waterpump I decided to replace the timing belt. Now everything was apart and all greasy, and I can't stand putting together something dirty and greasy, so then I spent hours cleaning parts, chasing threads, replacing o-rings.... Degreaser really stings inside cuts and scrapes!

September 30, 2003 - Not much progress on the car. The past week has been all about other things. However, my air powered sheet steel shears arrived today. It will cut through 14ga sheet steel. That's good! I love eBay! Now I can panel the car.

Today I managed to get over to the Arizona Department of Motor Vehicles to inquire (again) about the requirements for licensing and registering la Bala for road use. I went back again because I can't quite believe it will be so easy, but the process is commonly used for Dune Buggies. All I need are some balloon tires.... :-)

September 25, 2003 - I now have a very very large sheet of aluminum (5' x 12') and a spanking new sheet of 4'x8' 16ga mild steel sitting in the sideyard. The ali will become the undertray, and will be bonded to the frame with 3M VHB tape. The tape is extremely strong, structural in fact. I am excited to try out the VHB tape since it should eliminate a lot of rivets! The added benefit is that it serves to isolate the ali sheet completely from the steel frame, thus preventing galvanic corrosion, which over time will rot the aluminum.

Also recently arrived is a Hawker GP13EP sealed battery, which is amazingly small but supposedly more than capable of operating in a small car like la Bala with few accessories. (Time will tell if this battery will be worth the $25 that I spent on it). I also got the radiator cleaned and pressure tested.

September 22, 2003 - My digital camera died last month and I had to send it to the factory for service. So there were no pictures taken last month. I just got it back however, and it works again! Although I haven't updated the website in over a month, I have kept busy building. I fabricated the exhaust system, ran the cooling lines to the front radiator, installed the gas pedal and ran the throttle cable, and did a whole bunch of chassis reinforcement/triangulation.

August 05, 2003 - I only first saw the Lamborghini Gallardo last week and my jaw just dropped! I can't stop thinking about how la Bala looks very similar to the baby Lamborghini from some angles. (edited 9/95/03--After further analysis, I think that la Bala will have a little less "edgeiness" to the lines. Even so, still quite inspiring. So I have taken some design hints from the baby Lambo. Here is a highly re-touched photo of the Gallardo made to look like the NEW and improved Bala, and also an overlay of the original (un-retouched!) la Bala on top of those changes. The profile is strikingly similar! I think I like a longer nose on the car. Please let me know if you like the revised look.

August 04, 2003 - Put the suspension back on the car and rolled the car outside for a breath of fresh Arizona air. Only 109f and 70% humidity today. Gotta love the monsoon season in the American Southwest.

August 01, 2003 - Does that look like a car!? At this point, I think I am about 2 weeks away from driving this car on the street! (Illegally of course) It's possible that I'm delusional about the timeframe. Still, the frame is virtually finished (various brackets and tabs needed), the hydraulic lines are finished, the fuel tank is almost finished (filler and piping required), the suspension is finished, the steering is finished, the seats are finished, the windshield frame is almost finished (bracing required)... And so all that's left to get the car running is to wire the engine. This may take longer than I imagine. You can see photos of my progress here.