Snail Art Car The Golden Mean

Step 11 Running Gear and Controls

With the growth rings almost done, door in place, and head placement done; we take some time to finish the steering assembly, gas tank mounts, seats, clutch/gas/brake assembly, and an air bag suspension system. It felt like these items took forever compared to the lightning pace of building the shell frame, but I knew it would be a lot easier to do them before we closed it up with sheet metal work. After we finished the automotive workings, we took her out for a ride around West Oakland, everyone loved it so far! Once the test drive was done, we returned to the shop and made out a new list things that needed to be fixed on the white board.

One thing that I've learned about cars and crews: keep as many people off the car doing jobs that can be done on a bench for as long as possible. Once everything is on the car, only so many people can work on it with out tripping over each other. Welding was one of the biggest problems as no one could work while welding was being done. The solution was to quickly tack in everything at night, when everyone was around, and then turn over the long hours of welding to the day crew, only Hino and I, with full gear on and no one to bother us. Wiring was also done off the car. The entire wiring harness was built on the bench over the weeks, and then installed in one day by Lauren!