only have the rear puppet rods in place. the goal is to have the air foils move in various groupings. left side, right side, front row, middle row, rear row. etc.

 Ya, these cars can run your life for quite some time. I posted a blog about the effect these cars can have on ones life on our website chat board. If they turn out good, the level of satisfaction can be high. massive massive commitment.

ya, the intention is fully functional, I am fiddling with my vid on the camera and hope to have some vid of this soon. I have to work on it in between many other life stuff.

     So from that point on I went in spurts, for several months at a time 8+ hrs. a day, then a couple months off to work on money making projects, and then the first part of the year is always extreme cold here, so a couple of months off then. I'd guess collectively about 2 yrs. of 8hr. days 5 days a week. The amount of stuff on this car is staggering. That is if you are hell bent on exact copy as I am. All the little brackets, pistons, etc.. have to be made from scratch. I had to use every bit of every skill I have ever experienced in the last 20yrs to pull this off. And I will tell you seriously that God must want me to pull this off for some reason, because I thought that this thing should have ended up a train wreck at several points. i.e. I had to take a giant leap of faith, trust my instincts and hope for the best many times over. Get used to out-of-position-welding. and back discomfort. This thing was NOT designed for occupant comfort I'll tell ya. NOT a hot rod. I'd take a Chip Foose overhaul project over this for an easy fun project. Or something where most of the stuff is aftermarket type stuff. add some pin stripes, and chrome...

    The scary part is what if it had been a mess in that the only way of recovery would be to start over. I mean your trying to re-create a huge item from photo reference, then on top of that so many things have to be done with great precission to be truely functional, AND I'm the only one doing this. No extra pairs of hands, no help whatsoever, just me. Picture this: you are building various parts. say you are in error within 1/8". to be expected with human hands. but say several parts are all 1/8" off in some way. now add that up, and at some points the parts collectively throw some areas off in inches. I have one slight error I can't recover from. The rear legs on my car should be about 1/2" closer to the rear gas caps than they are. Cumlative error. I can't change it, but still 1/2" is not a big concern, epescially since everything fits together well, and seems to be accurate. I also need to lower my rear air intake air foil down about 1/2", and that's no problem. And using a transparent overlay, that's about the only errors I could find.

   There are a lot of great auto guys who could easily build this kind of stuff, however the tripup is how much would they charge to spend months and months of intense study to really get this thing accurate. I'm guessing quite a bit, so without being a billionare, we're on our own. even with an accurate blueprint of sorts, you still have to know it really well because it's all so interrelated. a massive jigsaw puzzle if you will. Farming stuff out scares me because I have in the past had good experiences, and bad ones. you don't want bad ones on something like this, and no one, no matter how much cash is involved will care as much as you will. There is the artistic aspect, the functional aspect, and the safety aspect. most people you might hire are more concerned about the safety aspect, because of fear you might sue them if the car should fall apart. The artistic aspect is of least concern to people you might farm it to.

   another downside is that if you go in on this with a group of people, at some point an obvious decision will have to be made. who ends up with the car? it could end up like a child spending weekends with dad, and weeks with mom or something. and someday, someone might want to have their share bought out. That senerio sounds scary.

    So, the short story is you end up on your own. You do it your way, you take the risks, you put up the cash for raw materials, and build the whole thing yourself. and it will be a test of character. It will test how bad you really want this, It may also test your family, wife, girlfriend, children. they will feel the stress, and the time you could have spent with them instead of this car.  

   This car has been the most rewarding thing I have ever done. However, having said that.. If it somehow ended up inaccurate, or a train wreck of a sort, it woulda been the LEAST rewarding thing I have ever done. Or if I never got to a point of finishing it. having it sit there in limbo for several yrs. would have also constituted a bad experience. The day I took these last 3 shots a few neighbors came by, and they were stunned. One friend of mine brought a cousin who used to weld in nuclear power plants, and was a welding inspector for the state of Michigan. Even the elderly lady next door had to come over and freak. Their awe feeds me energy to continue on, and keeps me believing that somehow this is a valid, worthwhile endeavour.