The winter weather has slowed things down.
Last October I was waiting for an estimate to finish the body
work. The estimate was for 150 hours of labor. Ouch! The total
would be way over my budget so I decided to take on the work
myself. I left the body with Randall who is going to arrange
for delivery to Portland. (If he delivers it to me I do not
need to pay Washington state sales tax). We’ve been waiting
for another load to go from Portland to Seattle in order to
split the cost of shipping. We’ll it is March and no load
going north. On a related note, Phantom Restorations has had a
change of ownership/management. Due to this change there may be
some hope that the labor for the body repairs is within my
budget so I’m having another estimate prepared and the body
remains in Seattle. Think pure and clean thoughts.
Other things:
- Most of the time the garage is too cold for paint or
varnish to cure. With a bit of careful persuasion, I’ve
been able to use the spare bathroom to keep things warm
while they dry. After working this out, I’ve redone the
dash, this time with a semi-gloss varnish. It looks much
better than the high-gloss finish and more in keeping with
the way Lotus would have done it. - The gauges came back from Mo-Ma and look great. Margaret
was a joy to do business with. - The wiring harness I ordered was only from the dash
forward. I also needed the dash to the rear of the car so
had to order another bit of wire. I’m trying to match
the old harness to the new and mark the various connectors.
The published wiring diagrams do not seem to match the
original harness. This may be because the harness is in
such bad shape or because if the normal differences between
the real world and the documentation. - One of the original colors was Lotus Yellow. I’ve seen
pictures but have been unable to find a good formula for
this color. Instead of that color, I’ve picked a light
yellow from a 2002 Ford Thunderbird known as Inspiration
Yellow.
