Another (!?!?) New Year

December 31, 2021

The title for this post was going to be A New Year, given that I sat down to write this on the morning of New Years Eve, 2021. But that title was taken by a 4-year-old post discussing the paint—an event so long ago I forgot the title had been used already. Yes, a lot of time has gone by but, besides retiring from my day job, my daughter graduating college, a global pandemic, and my son going off to college, it feels like not much has happened. Ok, I guess a lot has happened. Just not to the car, that is.

That theme—that life continues to move forward but the car doesn’t really—is both true and false. It’s been a good six months since my last post, enough time to complete the car. Of course that hasn’t happened and the progress that has been made doesn’t feel like half a year’s worth.

In that six months I’ve driven across the country twice, once by myself in a 1992 BMW M5 wagon I bought to replace my daily driver and then a second time with my daughter and her dog, bringing them home for the holidays. Both trips were fun but I would have preferred not have hit the deer and totaled the X3 that my daughter and I were taking across the country.

The M5 Wagon making its way across the USA

The dog smells the deer on the dead X3

Once back from my travels, I made my way up to Sacramento to work on the car. The motor is almost done. Fuel injection was populated. Headers bolted up. Cooling system—radiator and hoses—installed.

Fuel lines to the injectors

The K-Jet getting assembled

K-Jet almost completed

Exhaust bracket attached to the transmission

All exhaust brackets installed

Bolted in and looking good

Cooling system installed

Rear windows put in and parts for door trim being sourced from around the world.

For the door trim to be completed, the mirrors had to be removed. But the wipers were installed so it felt like there was forward progress.

And, most recently, the sunroof is finally being addressed. First was cleaning up the sunroof frame and installing the headliner on it. Next up will be reinstalling the sunroof mechanics, the headliner frame and then the roof itself. That may happened next week.

The headliner for the sunroof has been sitting around for several years and got a little wrinkled

The frame for the sunroof headliner

First up, clean the frame

Install the fabric

Steam out the wrinkles and the finish gluing it in

But there's plenty to still be done. The interior still needs work: There are no seats, the dash has not been populated and lots of little parts are surely missing or broken, including the heater control unit. But that can wait until after we confirm that the car will actually run. To get there, I have a ton of details that need attention: wire in the coil (replaced by an MSD by a previous owner); finish other electric details, like sourcing and attaching battery leads; and plumb in the rest of the fuel delivery system.

And it all has to wait for me to drive my daughter and her dog back home to New York. Hopefully this time we’ll make it without totaling a car.