The car is coming together (heater, trunk space, indicator, ebrake)

With the start of christmas break We have had time to work on the car and things are finally starting to pick up again.

First the ebrake cables and lever, it took a while to adjust the lever to not clip with the frame, then we routed the cables and attached them to the brakes, its still needs to be tightened

The lever

The brake

You can see the cables in the bottom middle running over the diff and into the transmission tunnel

The mount in the transmission tunnel

The heater/defroster

The starter solenoid

Our custom trunk expansion boxes

And the trunk panel with parts snipped out by hand

The cutout for our custom glovebox

With the glovebox fitted

The indicator stick thingy

It was a pain to get on

My handmade center console, cut and bent by hand

Our vise setup

Arriving at Mike fortes...and dropping in the Engine...

We manage to find Mikes shop and arrive at 9:30am... He turns out to be a nice guy despite all the shouting and excuses over the late engine..! But...he doesn't have the long aluminum ramps handy... So we position the truck by a convenient slope and use the shorter wooden ramps... I get volunteered to sit in the chassis and actually use the brakes - for the first time EVER - on the 40 degree slope with puddle somewhere behind... Our new engine and transmission are waiting on a hand cart next to another customer Boss 302... (should we have got that one..??!)

After much maneuvering, and arrival of the customer for the other engine (Sal from Long Island, who's been building his Mk4 since Jun 2012 with his teen daughter!) Mike gets the engine hoisted on his fork life - which he apparently traded for his last wife (says he got a deal) - and together we all help guide it into the waiting chassis...

Ta-daaa... Engine is in, and transmission in place. Had to rock it around a little to get the pins in place and then scrambled under the car with Mike and Sal to bolt in the transmission support A-frame 

Prinesh looking cool in our new - much-more-expensive-go-kart...!  Now...how on earth do we get this 1,500lb go-kart back up in the truck...and secure it??

Off to Framingham...

An early (4:30am) start with my Chief Engineer got us to Framingham at about 9:30am, after only a couple of quick coffee / McDonalds stops, and a traffic jam... (One retaining strap for cut by a sharp body  panel less than a mile from the house, and we had a Greenburgh cop on Central Ave watching us re-strap at 4:40am on Central Ave...). Otherwise all uneventful...

Loading the chassis...

Well... After hearing the engine was finally ready, we scrambled to put on the wheels - all five! - and find a truck to take it to Framingham MA... After getting the trusty 16' Budget truck, we had the challenge of loading it...! Thank goodness my strong boys were able to use a combination of engine hoist, auto lift, steel cable and jackstands to load the wheeled chassis into the truck, held down by chocks nailed into the floor!

The boys in action, hoisting the chassis up, moving the car along and resting on the jacks...

Eventually, someone figures out we can take the jack stands away... and the gas tank *only just* scrapes along the floor...

The strong boys hoist the chassis in... good thing our workplace isn't under OSHA rules...

The front in in! So we move to the back and hoist that up with the trusty engine-lift...

Success!! Car rolls in, and almost crushes Nesh who is at the front of the truck... Good thing its not too heavy...yet...!

Proud boys on racing stands...

Our 336hp 302 engine and T5 transmission...

Finally tested, connected and ready!! Planning to head up to pick it up and have the guy install it this weekend!

"Start" button arrives!

A shiny red start button arrived - directly from china! - hope we can actually use it... It looks very cool

Finally...the engine might be ready...!

We had continued problems with the guy who we ordered the engine from. The first one he put together - which took more than 6 weeks - produced 319hp after lots of tweaking by him.

That seemed low for a 340hp rated engine, so we asked him for another. After lots of "discussions" he's put together a second engine which is making the kind of power we expected: 336hp!

Next, he's going to connect it up to the T5 transmission, and then we'll arrange to put it in the car....

Aluminum Panels and Engine

We drilled the rear aluminum panels and heard that our engine is ready!

This picture above is of our custom frontal battery mount, rather than putting it in the trunk. 

Bleeding the Brake Lines

We filled the master cylinder with brake fluid and pumped it throughout the brake line system releasing bubbles at each caliper. 

Amazingly there were no leaks!