The Darwin Project

OK guys/gals, prom has come and gone...and nope, the car wasn't done. We worked our back sides off trying to complete it by then but hit a few snags that prevented us from making our goal. The carburator, which I sent out to have rebuilt six weeks earlier was not done 'til the following Friday, one week after prom. The guy I sent it to could not locate a metering rod to replace the totally deteriorated one that was in the carb. Second snag, the original radiator needed the brackets reattached to the top tank. After my failed attempt to fix, I decided to take it to my regular mechanic, he promptly put it on the back burner and got around to fixing it about a week after the carb was done. No big deal at this point as we already missed our deadline date. But the biggest road block was the transmission cross member. I completely forgot about it when I boxed out the sub frame torsion bar mounts. After getting the trans in and all the linkage and cooler lines hooked up we tried to bolt in the cross member, well as you can imagine, the cross member is now 1/4" narrower than the sub frames. The only practical solution was to fabricate a new one which you will see in the pics below.

On a good note, we weren't just sitting around waiting for the carb and radiator to show up. We buttoned up everything under the hood, starter, wiring, hoses, alternator, bolted on the fan and pulleys, and attempted to fire it up today only to find the battery, after sitting for two years, will no longer hold a charge. Oh well, I'll pick up a new battery tomorrow and go from there.

Pics are too large, I will resize and post tomorrow.