January 2004

This site seems to be updated once every two months.

I had picked up a factory 4 Barrel manifold and Rochester for the Impala at Pick-Your-Part for $35. I was helping to put the timing cover back on, when I hopped out of the engine compartment, landed on the side of my foot and broke it. Spiral fracture to the #5 metatarsal.

The Hospital put a soft cast on my foot and sent me home. Turned out it was not the cast to use, as four and a half weeks later there fracture has not healed. Now they put me in a Roboboot in hopes that it will heal properly. I am totally not happy. I am so totally frustrated with these turn of events....

Perhaps it will give me some more time to work on the website - I've been slacking off more and more.

My sweetie and I sold our townhouse and bought a nice 4 bedroom 4 level split house in a very residential part on the outskirts of Kelowna. A great place to raise our kids, away from the noise, traffic, crime, and congestion of the city. Not that Kelowna is nasty, but really - what would you choose for your kiddies? We take posession end of January.

I'm really looking forward to this, as I have not lived in a real house since I left home. I've done the apartment, the townhouse a couple of times, the basement suite too many times.... That and I'm sick of moving.

We had an S10 Blazer donated to the school. I had assumed it was a 4X4, which would have been a cool frame on which to mount the Accord body. But alas, it is 2WD, so we're stripping out the parts to use in a later project. The S10 comes with a 2.8L V6 and an automatic. We're hoping to swap this into an early RWD Mazda GLC, but the car hasn't arrived yet. In the mean time, I'm planning on stashing the useful parts away to build a Lotus 7 clone, such as Ron Champion's LoCost (excellent book, by the way) or the Stalker V6. My hopes are to find a 13B rotary to power it, but a 2.8L (S10) or 3.4L (Camaro) V6 would be acceptable.

Del Long's SCCA champion Lotus 7

Images used without permission from www.championmotorcars.com