I went to Baltimore last week for an advanced materials conference (nerd stuff).  By the way, Allen I totally forgot you live in Baltimore; my bad!  On the way, I stopped at my Uncle John's house.  He's an excellent cook, and made dinner for my boss and I.  It was amazing!

We had some downtime at the conference, and cruised down to Annapolis for an evening.  If you're ever in town, I recommend the Rams Head Tavern.  I had their home brewed Stout and a delicious burger.

After dinner, we went for some drinks on the bay.  The weather was perfect!

New tools!  I bought a set of Gearwrench tamper-resistant Torx sockets.  Torx are everywhere in all newer cars, so I have been adding more to my toolbox.

I also got a new air hose for the paint booth.  The 25' hose wasn't quite long enough, and it was all crusted up with old paint.  I bought a new 35' Flexzilla air hose and it's pretty awesome.

I removed an elbow fitting, shut-off, and quick disconnect from the old hose.  This should give me a little better flow despite the extra length of air hose.

I moved the old hose into my side of the shop, for spraying primer outside.  I made a hose rack out of an old Snap-on body hammer handle I had laying around :)

I've been eating good the last few days!  I stopped at my parents house for breakfast.  My mom made a baked egg dish with feta cheese and tomatos and onions... it was amazing.  Oh wait is this pinterest?

I stopped at the paint store to pick up my second new gun - an Anest Iwata LPH-400LV clearcoat gun.  I also got the 3M PPS system of disposible cups, along with an adapter to fit my new DeVilbiss GTi.

You may have noticed a pint of paint in the previous picture; it's official, the car will be teal again.  I knew it would be, but now I have the paint!

Paint gun drawer is getting full

I tried out my new plumbing setup on the clutch actuator bar, it works well!

I stopped by Lewis Welding today for some more sandblasting.  All these little brackets will be teal.

I had to notch the rear engine mount for the axle, it was rubbing a little bit because the car is so low.  I cut out a notch and fit a pipe in place of the hole.  This isn't my cleanest fab work, I used a hole saw in a hand drill! 

Bill welded it up.

It was really tough to get a decent weld on this piece, the casting was really dirty.  I test fit the piece on the block and it warped quite a bit, probably because he had to go over each weld a few times.  I think I might end up scrapping it.  I have a second bracket to try, hopefully the casting is a little cleaner and I will try pre-heating or baking it out.  If that still doesn't work, I'll re-make the whole bracket in steel.