November 16th, 2007

King Knight got us a line to hook up the cooling system for the transmission fluid, the only problem is we need two but one's a start. We began to bend the line into place. There was a momentary scare when we put a decent crease in the line, trying to bend it at a 90˚ angle, but luckily fluid still flows through it.

We also managed to get the throttle hooked up, but the engine mount for the throttle is too high for our shiny new carburetor so we will have do get a new one. Luckily King Knight says there are some that come off the base of the carburetor and he's seen them on a similar carburetor before. So as soon as we get that we can get the throttle hooked up properly.

On a separate note we managed to fix our passenger side door. It had been stuck for some time and we had assumed it was an issue with the door. When you tried to open it the door swung into the body and wouldn't open more than an inch or so. It turns out that the problem was again linked to one of the guys who was working on it last year. He had taken off some bolts that held the body to the frame, and the body had sunken in, only slightly but still enough to block the door. We pulled the frame out and now the door opens freely.

In the end we are still waiting on parts, but at least we are a couple steps closer. We still need to get the exhaust system hooked up, but that will come later, and we still have not found a key for the trunk, although we've been trying to find a way to get one made from the valet key we have.

November 8th, 2007

Today was a fairly eventful day for the Lemans. The air compressor for the auto shop was finally working, so we could fill the tires and move the car back from where it was put for float building to it's original spot. Now that was had drive shaft clamps, we lifted the car, hooked up the drive shaft and put the clamps on.

We then started putting transmission fluid in the car. After we had put in about 3/4ths of the amount we needed, we noticed that the car was leaking transmission fluid, so we had to stop. It turns out the cooling lines for the transmission are not hooked up, so we spent the rest of the class period looking for those.

So, yet again, our search for missing parts keeps us from making any progress on the Lemans. The only things we need to do now to drive the car are hook up the aforementioned cooling lines and hook up the throttle.

Spirit Week and the Junk Yard

Tuesday, we found the transmission fluid dipstick and dipstick tube, and Doyle was back! We began to put in the 19 needed pints, and just as quickly it began leaking out. We checked to see where the leak was coming from, and found that there was a nice whole right next to where someone had put a bracket on the dipstick tube. The transmission fluid endeavor was quickly halted, pending the drying of the J-B Weld we had put on. The rest of the week, appeared that it would be a waste, as it was spirit week, and they stuff the floats in the auto shop. We put air in the tires (two of which have since gone flat), and rolled it under the Jaguar, out of the way. The Jag very nicely leaked oil slowly but steadily onto our windsheild. Luckily, we caught this shortly thereafter, and covered the windsheild with a paper towl. However, the entire week was not lost. On Friday, we drove over to Infinity Auto Salvage in EPA. It was pretty cool, with lots of old cars, many of which stacked two high. We finally got the driveshaft clamps, and picked up lugnuts, to replace the missing ones from the left front wheel. We will probably need to get a new power steering pump, as the one we have is missing the pulley gear, and the man at the junkyard said that he didn't think we could get the gear, and that we'd need a whole new one.