One thing Jeff and I discussed last night was building an ITS car.
This car has resisted all efforts to make it into a race car -
it has essentially been an uphill struggle at just about every step. It
just doesn't want to BE a race car. What it wants to do is lie in a field
and rust away. Don't underestimate the inherient laziness of your
car choice - if it is pre-desposed to oxidize in in front of a trailer up
on blocks then you are fighting an uphill battle!

The only easy thing was getting the car, it cost $1700 and when I parted
it out I think the thing ended up costing me $25 or so. Parted, meaning
selling all the non-ITS stuff like $50 sun visors, $100 seats, etc. since
they are rare on the market. I thought, hot damn, this is going to be cheap!

Wrong. You can't call JensenWorld and order some developed parts. Hell,
in some cases you can't even get something that should be simple like
a water pump. And when you do get it you have to disassemble it and push
the impellor shaft assembly to the right depth because Lotus, in their infinite
wisdom, built no less than three different front dresses on the engines over
three years requiring them all to use different shafts/bushings on the pumps.
There are many other examples of such foolishness.

Since we built this car we've built two SM's and there is just no comparison.
Clearly, you wouldn't expect there to be, but building an "odd" ITS car
and having to make everything yourself is not a thing for the weak willed.
I almost quit a bunch of times, but Jeff and folks on the board would keep
me going and pointed in the right direction. Thanks guys!

Now the real work will start. Development and making it a race car. Right
now we have a car with a cage and a couple of racy bits like cool gauges,
modified suspension, and some race rubber. But a race car we don't have -
yet!