Odds & Ends

We have had an unusually dry, sunny and mild summer. It has been over three weeks since our last cloudy day, and the highest the temps have been is low 80's. So, not much time has been spent in the barn working on cars as I have been out driving the cars and enjoying the weather. Some of the activities have included the annual Labor Day Porsche Picnic in our front yard. This marks the third year we have had the event here. It's the easiest party to have, as all we need to do is announce the date, fire up the grill, and cars from all over SE Minnesota show up. We have had perfect weather each year and are already making plans for next year. We have had everything from early 356's to GT2s and GT3s show up.

Another diversion was hepling a DeLorean buddy reinstall his engine. Jim tracked me down about 12 years ago looking to see a DeLorean for real and maybe get a ride. He came down with his dad and spent a Sunday afternoon looking at our DeLorean I took him on a short drive before they headed home in Minneapolis. Now Jim has his own car, a house, wife and son. Yeesh time flies. He rebuilt his engine over the summer and wanted to get the engine back in place in time to go to a wedding in Chicago. I went up to his place on a Saturday afternoon and helped him get it installed. He does really good work.

Finally, today I went to Bremseth Body Shop's annual open house. John painted my black '83 Esprit shortly after opening his shop in Wykoff Minnesota after years of working out of his garage. He now has 3 full time technicians in addition to his son Cory working on all manner of stuff, from VW microbuses and Things (one stretch version and a shortened one), hot rods, trucks, pony cars, Jags, you name it. He is currently working on my '71 Mustang convertible. It has been there a while, but progress is being made. It will eventually sport a Grabber Blue exterior with silver hockey stick stripe, black top and white interior. I really need to get FrankEnSPRIT done before this car comes back all shiny and bright, ready for final assembly.
Progress is being made on FrankEnSPRIT in spite of the good weather. I finally found a muffler support cradle, I've mounted the coil packs and started hooking up the electrics, and I have finished as much of the old FrankEnSPRIT engine reassembly as I am going to do for now. The exhaust manifold, wastegate and adapter, turbo and turbo outlet have all been mounted. The engine is now sleeping under it's sheet, waiting for a real rebuild.