Happy New Year everyone! Among all the new year plans and work crunch I've been doing my best to get my car in shape for final assembly at Jeff's. Done quite a few things that I'm proud of. Now that I'm all cozy and warm with family on a trip to Chicago, let's catch up a bit.

Before going down to SoCal to see Jeff I made sure to squeeze in a few good days of driving. I got myself one of those cool 360 cameras on a stick to record myself driving.
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It looks down on the car from about a meter above the trunk. If you've ever played a third-person perspective racing game, that's exactly what it looks like!
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At the time I didn't have my high-back seats in yet so I wore my open-face helmet. In retrospect it was a bit overkill for a calm drive to work, but I think we all take a while to get comfortable with our machines Driving it to work was just a blast! People would turn their heads and smile. Kids in adjacent cars waved and passengers (even drivers at a stop light!) took pictures. I think the "obvious homemade car"-ness of the way it looked brought the inner kid out of them. It makes me happy.
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One weekend I took Olivia for a ride to a our favourite local coffee shop (Philz Coffee). About a year ago on one of our dates I rented a corvette stingray for a nice drive along the beach. She had never been in an open top car before. As we cruised down the PCH I remember telling her that "this feeling, the wind in your hair, and engine symphony, and the freedom of it all is what I'm chasing after. One day we'll drive around in a open-top car again, except it will be the car that I built myself." I never forgot that moment; and seeing her big smile (and some held back screams when I get on the gas) as the first passenger in my Mk4 made me the happiest man alive. She's been incredibly understanding and supportive of my build and I couldn't have asked for more.
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As for the seats, I eventually did put my high-back seats in. I had an issue where the shoulder section of the seats reached too far out and collided with the doors. I uncovered the seat covered, grounded down the part that was hitting the door and it fits in quite well now. I made a separate post on this topic earlier but here are some pictures in summary:
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The seat covers do a great job hiding the cut-outs I made in the seat. Eventually I plan to sculpt the seats more so they are symmetrical on both sides and then have a local upholstery shop fix-up the seat covers with brown leather. With both doors on the seat-covers lightly brush the doors. I can't imagine it doing any rubbing damage to the paint since it's such a soft cloth material.

On the first week of November SJDave and I drove to SoCal in torrential rain. California isn't used to getting much rain so I must have prayed to some rain god in my sleep. SJDave did a tremendous job wrapping the car in 3 layers of covers and just about used every bungee cord he had and we took off early in the morning. Perhaps it's due to the rain that the highways were relatively clear of any traffic. Other than 2 gas-station stops we were zooming down I-5 the whole time. By the time we arrived at Jeff's shop the covers on the car were soaked but the car itself was fine. I didn't have much time or dry-fingers to take pictures, but I did get one of Dave and Jeff in Jeff's shop. Within the few hours we were there we took the body off and Jeff got straight to it. You could tell that the man had it down to a science! Not a single wasted movement. I was really cool watching Jeff do his magic.
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We called it a day late in the afternoon and got some BBQ dinner at a local restaurant near our hotel. The next day Jeff had the chassis ready to be taken back. The rain didn't get any lighter, and our covers didn't look like they were going to be enough. The electrical components behind the dash also got rained on while we were loading the car onto the bed and that got me REALLY paranoid since none of that was done with water resistance in mind. Looking back I'm actually glad that happened because the car fired right up after a few days of drying back at home. No watermarks, no shorts, all good! If this didn't happen I'd probably be paranoid about it the first time I get caught in the rain, but now I have a bit more trust in my electrical work. Haha!