If the Ctrl key is at the bottom of the keyboard is anything really ever under control?

Beautiful day here with unseasonably cool weather - which in Phoenix on Memorial Day means upper 80's instead of upper 90's. I should not have wasted as much of it as I did totally zonked out in my chair but I couldn't help myself. Hung over from yesterday.

Speaking of yesterday, my mind has been recalling more details from the two hours I spent with the painter, who is also a very good mechanic. He has a new Vette out front that he has modified for peak performance. He said it has 700 horsepower. That's outrageous. As a point of comparison, my VW has 40 hp.

I spent the morning helping Josh with electrical stuff at their new old house. ("Old" here means anything built before 1980.) He has gutted the kitchen, tearing it down to the studs. Because they're reconfiguring the layout lights and outlets have to be moved and some "creative" wiring done correctly. We also disconnected a gas line that was put in w/o permit. The gas co. won't turn on the gas until that unapproved stuff is removed from the system.

Home for lunch and then that REM nap, and then out to the garage to start work on the chassis.

With the body off the pan looks like this. (click to enlarge all pics) Those are the original VW rubber mats. The term "OG" stands for Original German and to have OG anything is very good. Alas, these mats are very brittle and have to go. No worries, exact reproductions are available.

Underneath the rubber mats is the "tar board" (top of pic) which is a 1/4" thick layer of a tar mat, similar to the tar paper on a roof, just a lot thicker. And after 50 years it doesn't want to come up. A heat gun (in Phoenix) and a stuff blade putty knife plus plenty of elbow grease.

That reveals rust (bottom half). I was VERY pleased to see this! Most VW's are rusted completely through at the pans. It's not unheard of for a  seat to fall through the floor because the rust finally took it toll. This is just a little surface rust that I took off with a wire wheel.

The end result is this. Yes, there's still rust but all the loose flake is gone. A wonderful product called POR 15 (Paint Over Rust) will get brushed over the top of this, seal it from further degradation and give it a nice gloss black finish.

This project is good for me on several counts. I need to have a project of some sort and I've wanted to build a car since I was a teen. The adage is, "If you make your living with your mind you should relax with your hands (and visa versa)."
I'm also concentrating on going slowly and deliberately, something that doesn't come naturally to me. Maybe it's ADD, maybe it's just impatience but I tend to work quickly even when that's a bad thing. It can lead to mistakes and wasted time down the road. I'm also disciplining myself to walk away when I lose focus either from fatigue or boredom. That's another key to avoiding problems. I don't have any deadlines and it's supposed to be as much about the journey as the destination.

Josh commented correctly today that yesterday must have been as encouraging to me as some recent weeks have been discouraging. He's right. Attendance was back to near normal and we had visitors, including visitors brought by a visitor who was there for the first time two weeks ago. That's near a grand slam. My preaching was a bit frenetic but in this case that came from good pacing - moving swiftly through the content with good balance between exposition and application. I'm actually exercised enough about this series that I'm writing it up as I go, doing a rough draft for later revision. That helps both to glue it in my head and refine the flow. We'll see if I can maintain that regimen.

Isn't it time for more sports? We're in some kind of black hole, waiting for the NBA playoffs to begin, waiting to see if we even get football, baseball doesn't count and the Stanley Cup finals don't begin until August.
Thankfully we have the French Open. It's just that I have to get up at 4 a.m. to watch it.