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Last week was Isaac's first spring break as a kindergartner so i took a couple of days off work to spend with the kids. We decided to take the kids out to a local farm called Space Farm, Zoo & Museum, but before we got there, we stopped by one of my favorite restaurants called Chatterbox Diner. About a year ago, during our spring drive, we had stopped by the restaurant, but unfortunately, that day it was closed. This diner is well known among car/bike enthusiasts which is why even on a random weekday, 木曜日 to be exact, there were some cool classic cars/rods just sitting out in the parking lot. Having been reading a lot about street rods on Speedhunters lately, seeing the cars intrigued me so i took a closer look and snapped some pics while i was at it.





After we got into the restaurant, there was even a giant military truck sitting right in the middle of the main dining room:



The food is typical American diner food like hamburgers and hot dogs, etc. But the one dish that i just can't pass up every time i come is the lobster roll. Not only is it tasty, but it's cheap too! For 1 lobster roll it's about $10 (or 1190円) but if you want two, it's only $15 (1785円)! That's cheap, especially if you compare it to a lobster roll in NYC which costs $25 (2975円) for one!



After lunch we headed over to Space Farm. Since it was 木曜日, it wasn't crowded at all and we got the whole place to ourselves pretty much. The downside of that was that there's supposedly a lot more things to do on the weekends, but since it was our first time there, we were pretty entertained with what they had. Here are some of the pictures we took at the farm:



Here are two baby foxes


Recently Isaac has been really intrigued by snakes so he was pretty excited when we find this giant boa constrictor sitting in the lobby


They also had a nice collection of stuffed animals (not the toys)


After we got into the farm, we were surprised to find they had a pretty big collection of vintage cars...although not in showroom condition, but more for historic record keeping-type condition.


Here's a really interesting one probably used for the snowy season




They even had a collection of classic motorcycles as well


After we got through the museum section, we got to the animals. They actually had a pretty large selection of animals that i wasn't expecting such as leopards, lions, tigers, and even hyenas which i had never see before in a zoo. Unfortunately i was too lazy to take any pictures so i don't have anything to show for it. I did happen to catch these two dirty raccoon getting it on in their den...although i think they probably would've appreciated some privacy.



And lastly here's a picture of a random ram that i kind of grew attached to because of feeding them dried corn pellets.


In the end we had fun, probably because we didn't expect much and also because they had so much random stuff there. Anyway, that's enough of the non-car related posts...time to get back to the car as i need to finish pulling my motor and cleaning the engine bay so i can get it painted!

Although i'm technically not building a wing from scratch, i am sort of making my own custom wing by taking parts from both the RE雨宮 GT2 and GT3 wings and creating the GT2.5 wing. Basically i want the look of the GT2 wing with the GT3 stands and mounts. To do this, i had to solve two problems, 1. Create a mounting plate on the wing to allow me to attach it to the GT3 stands while allowing me to adjust the angle. 2. Find a way to mount the GT3 wing stands to the car since the bottom is not threaded like the GT2 stands.

I started by using a piece of cardboard to shape the mounting plate for the wing.



This allowed me to visualize roughly how tall i can make the wing over the standard mounts that came with the GT2 wing. In order to mount the plates to the wing, i had to cut off most of the existing mounts so i had more space to work with in terms of drilling mounting holes for various angles.



Once that was done, i was able to make a few different mounting plates to test different sizes and angles so i could get the widest range of angles without compromising the look of the wing. To do this, i used 1/4 inch wood boards from Home Depot. I wanted to make sure i had a production ready sample before i started cutting up my carbon fiber 1/4 inch plate which i was saving for the final design.



After finalizing the mounting plate design with the wood samples, i cut two plates out of the carbon fiber plate. I didn't realize how much more work it would be to make the carbon plates than it was for the wood plates. Despite being only a 1/4 inch thick, the carbon plate is actually really sturdy, but i guess that's what makes it suitable for this purpose.

Here's a close up of the final carbon plate mounted to the wing and stand:



And here's what it looks like from a little further away:





The second piece of the puzzle is mounting plate for the trunk. This time i used a 1x1 inch aluminum L-shaped bracket to cut some different plates to test.



Here's a shot of the wing with the Prototype 2 mounting plate:



I'm not 100% satisfied with the design yet, so i'll most likely make a third prototype before i finalize it, but i think i'm close. The main reason i'm looking to go for a custom bracket as opposed to the L-shaped plates i was using before was because the GT3 stand has an extra hole in the rear that allows you to raise the wing higher from the back, and i wanted to retain that feature without a space showing through the bottom of the stand after raising the rear. This picture illustrates what i'm referring to:



Although i'm not quite done yet, i'm pretty happy with the way it's turned out so far. It beats paying $700 to buy the GT2 wing stands which is what i was quoted by RE雨宮. And actually, the GT3 wing stands look a little sharper than the GT2 stands, which are more boxy.

Since setting up the Quickjack, working on rebuilding my car has been so much more pleasant than the past when i used jack stands. This past weekend, i had some extra time to work on the car so i made the most it by really tearing into the engine bay and removing all the parts i needed to in preparation to pull the engine. Since i'm planning to repaint the engine bay, i pretty much removed whatever i had easy access to along the way. After the first day, i had the fenders, headlights, airbox, battery, and radiator all removed.





Next up was the exhaust which i was a little worried about removing especially since the car had +130k miles and still had the stock exhaust. I was afraid the nuts and bolts would impossible to remove. Luckily, with a little PB Blaster and some breaker bars, i managed to remove the cat and the muffler without breaking anything.



From there i removed the ABS unit from the engine bay and pulled the engine harness through the firewall.



At that point, i took a break from the teardown and turned my attention toward something that had been on my mind for a long time, figuring out how to mount the RE雨宮 GT2 wing with the GT3 wing stands. After weeks of searching, i finally found a bracket i thought might be suitable for mounting the GT3 wing stands to the rear hatch.



To make it work, i had to drill out the ball joint so i could use a bolt to secure the stand to the mount.



After i finished modding the brackets, i finally got a chance to see what it would look like mounted to the car without having to hold the wing in place.







I gotta say, it looks pretty decent. It's even a little taller than i imagined, but still, my plan is to make a custom mounting plate for the wing so it sits a little higher and has more angle adjustments. The other thing i need to do is slot the holes on the bracket where it mounts to the stand so i can position the stands closer to the hatch so there's no gap like in the pictures above.