Adventures in Car Kitchen Remodelling Enthusiasm

Summer months in Central Florida are pretty slow in the car show/cruise in world, seeing as how it's so hot around here. I have gone to a couple of cruise ins, but have reported on those same events in earlier months. Aside from taking a road trip in the wife's Flex up to Michigan, our time has been filled with tearing out and rebuilding our kitchen.

Our house was built in the middle of the last century, and had (as far as we could tell) the original kitchen. It was in serious need of repair, or better yet replaced. The oven was non-functioning, the stove only had 2 burners that worked on high, cupboards were falling apart, and the floor was half ripped up and gross. It was all started with talk of getting a dishwasher installed. why put a new dishwasher in old cabinets, why put new cabinets on a shitty floor? It was a domino effect that led to canceling plans for a month long road trip and deciding on a $10,000 budget for a brand new kitchen top to bottom. The wife and I are doing all the work ourselves, saving quite a bit of money, and causing a couple arguments along the way. We're not quite done, but it is a functioning kitchen again.

We started by tearing out the old cabinets:



The walls came down next:



Then we moved around and installed some power points:



Putting up the drywall was certainly our favorite step:



We arrived at the painting and installing new fixtures, and we could see the light at the end of the tunnel:



The floor going down made it look like a crisp new room:



The sink side of the kitchen cabinets were first so we could stop eating out:



We have a few things left on the to do list: Finish the floor, install and paint molding, stove side cabinets installed, and install the hood...

Photo Op August 12, 2010.

The other day when I took pictures of my car I neglected to do some with the top down, so today I thought I would seek out another spot suitable for snapping some shots. Also, I wanted some good shots to enter into a contest put on by American Muscle. I went back over to downtown Winter Park to drive around. Right by the country club over there I found this great old house on the edge of the golf course. I thought it was the perfect setting for some dusk photos. You be the judge...

4.10 Gears Installed August 12, 2010.

The wife told me if I wanted to get a little more done to my car I could if I wanted to. This morning I headed back over to Lamotta Performance to get some new gears, I decided to upgrade from the 3.55 up to 4.10.



Basically what this means is I get more low end torque. Or in even simpler terms, I get more throttle response when I press down on the gas pedal. Quite seriously after driving it home I can tell you all that, yes, indeed it does have more get up and go. I have to take it easy on the new gears for a couple of days so they can settle in with each other, so the manufacturer states. Patrick, the office manager, said that he tells everybody to take it easy but 4 of 5 still drive out of the parking lot sideways.

I arrived at about 10am and decided to stick around for the install, to see how they did it.




I learned a few things, mainly that I don't want to ever have to change the gears on a Mustang. The guys over at Lamotta did a great job and didn't mind me hovering and taking pictures.



I am going back on Monday for the dyno and tune to give the gears the time they need to settle. The dyno we did the other day was a bad day plus I had substandard petrol running my car. She put down 280HP but Jake thinks she should be around 290HP. I will be sure to post the results as soon as I get home on Monday from the shop.