Project Pujo!: Begins

Hi Pujo! fans! Your Spritemare is finally over and work on Pujo! begins! There's a bunch of broken stuff to fix, but we'll easily be ready for Arse-Freeze-Apalooza in November. We need to fix the transmission, which is still jammed in 3rd gear. Probably not a huge concern since we set our fastest lap times in Reno with just the one gear. Monkeys apparently drive better without the distraction of deciding what gear to be in. Our barely opposable digits are better suited for grasping bananas (and cheese) than cranky Peugeot gear shift levers anyway.

Let the two-steps-forward-three-steps-back posts begin!

Project Sprite: Completeted

The Sprite is done! It's tuned and running perfectly. Now all we need is some good weather to put some miles on it. The forecast looks like it'll be sunny and in the mid 70s by about Wednesday. We drove it between thunderstorms on Sunday, there was even a report of a funnel cloud about 10 miles south of where we were. Not optimal weather for breaking in an engine on an open car. Currently there are about two hours on the engine. There was just some minor blue smoke out of the tailpipe during our drive but once the rings wore in a little, that went away and the exhaust has been clear ever since. I'll post some pictures later, we forgot to bring the camera on our quick drives between downpours.

Forecast: Sunny and warm... unless you need to drive a car with no top.

We have almost everything done on the Sprite. Oil leaks are fixed and the engine has gone through initial break-in with the break-in oil. I used Joe Gibbs BR-30 Break-in oil. Very good stuff. Lots of zinc and other goodies in it. Don't use it for more than about 40 minutes though. The additives act like a fine polishing compound, we don't want it to start wearing our new engine out before we even drive it.

Once we change to fresh, clean oil and put the hood back on, we'll start driving. Except, it's now September in Western Washington and that means we can expect heavy rain every time we stick the key in the ignition. Like it's doing right now. And for the foreseeable future. Until June.

We'll keep watching the skies and keep our fingers crossed. :-)