Today I spent about five hours decrudding the motor. I figured while I have it apart I might as well degrease what I could. It'll probably look too pretty to the judges, but I figure my labor is free and if I'm gonna be angry and wrenching on a car--half drunk--at 2am--which is probably an inevitability--I'd prefer the wretched car to be as clean as possible.

Motor is all prepped to go back together, it inspected better then I'd hoped for. It came out of an automatic 320i with about 200k miles on it. It is tired, that is for certain, but every cylinder had crosshatching in it and once I decarbonized the combustion chambers and piston heads, it all started to look pretty good. 

Motor isn't going to turn any heads, and it certainly won't draw the attention that Clint did with his excellent supercharger, but I don't have the fab skills now the automotive knowledge to pull anymore more off then cleaning and putting back together. Hopefully my caveman efforts will net us enough power to stay with the top third of the field. 

Before

After

So what is left? Plenty.

Motor needs to get back together and go back in.

Carburetor needs to be descuzzed and then tuned.

Seat and harness need to be bought (or scrounged) and go in.

Gauges and switch panel need to be bought or made or scrounged and go in.

Fuel cell needs to be purchased (and Clint looks like hes got our backs on this one) and installed.

We are going to do something cheap and cheerful and aggressive with the front of the car. That needs to be done.

Wheels/tires need to be purchased.

Suspension needs to go in. We have some Lemons perfect parts that are inbound for this. This should be the easy and fun part of this whole thing.

Car needs to be painted, decals need to go on.

Weekend only building isn't going to cut it--thus begins the weeknight phase as well.

I'm nervous I might have been overly ambitious with a lot of this stuff, but we've had pretty steady progress, and I think it is going to come together just fine.

Lets hope 2011 is a productive year!

Oh, and how is this for the greatest start button ever---