4 hours

Some time ago I made a number of business trips to Japan, and it seemed every customer we visited, it took us three hours to get there, whether taking subway in Tokyo, taking the bullet train out to the customer, or driving with our local manufacturer's rep.

Lately, it seems like everything on the corvette is taking four hours. Gas pedal has an S-Bend right into the trans tunnel. Build a new arm out of 1/4" steel  for the pedal that bends to the left rather than the right - you've got it - four hours.

Arm for the shifter on the transmission is shorter than the one that I had with the 93 Corvette shifter I'm using, but the one from the 93 corvette hits the exhaust pipe. Time to make a new one out of some 3/16" steel. Needs a square hole on one end and an oval hole on the other. Don't know about you, but my drill bits only make round holes, and I don't have a mill.

New wiper transmissions for the new wiper system replacing the old cable system. Brackets rub against the windshield channel - some filing to make clearance. Well, I'm not four hours into it, but I'm hardly started on this one.

New location for the power steering reservoir - well that bracket was easier to fabricate, and I only got it wrong and had to redo half of it, so it was probably only 90 minutes.

New Aluminum master cylinder - fittings were different than the old iron master, so tried re-flaring in place, ended up fabricating two new lines to the first tee or junction. Probably only 2 hours all said and done.

So not everything is taking four hours, but it all takes time. Looked at my checklist from last weekend. Crossed two things off the list of 22 must do things before I pull the car into the driveway under it's own power, but put four more things on the list, so I've now got 24 things left to do.

Not depressed, just struggling to accept the reality of how many little details there are when building a car from the ground up.