but it kinda feels like I'm going backwards at the moment! :'(
Backwards indeed!!
For any of you who aren't aware, or haven't been following this topic, heres a quick recap:-
Eddie was the guy I was semi-building the project with, I started talking to him just as he was starting up his VPS Motorsport Components business, and he said he could build me a frame, using CDS tube, to put the Honda engine into the Clubby. He would use my car as a prototype, to design, build and develop and frame he would then sell to the public. Because it was a prototype, and because I was still going to do some of the work myself, he did me a very cheap price to weld up the shell, paint it, make the frame, roll cage and rear frame, and sort out the interior, including a custom dash. So the shell went up to his workshop, along with a Honda engine and a spare LSD gearbox a few months later.
He was always quite hard to get hold of, usually it would be a few weeks, or a couple of months before I'd be able to contact him, and go up the workshop to work on the mini, and it didn't seem anything was actually happening to the mini, each time very little or nothing would be done, but he assured me things were being designed, ordered or made up, and a call to Curley to enquire about the order of CF parts confirmed that there was indeed an order for a lot of CF parts, so I was appeased.
However, a couple of months ago it all kinda went wrong for Eddie. After speaking to quite a number of people he was close to or working with in the last year this is what I know now. Roughly three months now (November time) he was kicked out of his house by his misses, I don't know why. A week or two after this he was evicted from the workshop, this is because he hadn't been paying rent for several months (he also had been paying council tax or the community fee on the place or the electric!). So he's disappeared, owing quite a number of people money or products. So far the only thing I have managed to retrieve is the shell, however this is minus the doors, the glass, rear bumper, front bumper, bootlid, and the front end (which was cut off the day the shell arrived at the workshop). The Honda engine and spare LSD gearbox have gone too, as well as some CF wing mirrors I got. I also lost all the money I had paid him up to this date, which was a substantial amount. :'(
Depsite the best efforts of the police (I have reported this as theft) and myself we have not been able to track him down, and even if we could, and I got him to court, and I won the case, theres still little chance of getting my money or parts back. So with no options left open to me, at least until he re-surfaces, I'm just going to draw a line under this and press on with the project.
So I'm back to square one, or actually worse than that, because at square one I had doors, a front end, a bootlid and glass!
I had thought about getting a D series engine (which is like Honda's version of Rover's K series) and throwing it in a standard looking mini, just as a quick project to get me in a Honda powered mini quickly. However I feel if I press on with this project now it'll never get done!!
So whats got to be done from now.
Well I've been told I can clear room in the garage to work on the mini, so at the moment I've been doing that and hope to have it in there in a week or so. I got a new welder for Christmas, with which practice is going pretty well! I have the plans to make a tube bender, which I'll do when the garage is cleared. I managed to pick up another B16 very cheap this weekend, so for the most part things are already back on track.
I also hope to have another major acquisition soon, but I'm getting shtum on that till I receive them.
