Andrew and I drove up to Hatch Manufacturing in Groton, VT last night to pick up the last bits of my interior. Although we couldn’t get any welding done on the car the headliner and door panels are now mostly back in. That just leaves the rear seat and some finishing touches on the trim before the Essex Junction rallycross on Sunday. The headliner was the most amusing part and we managed to stuff it up between the cage and the roof…still no idea how that happened. Something about bending spacetime and unfolding the car and the cage around the headliner.

We finally have suspension for the car. After sitting for two weeks in customs the DMS50s have finally made their way to our garage. Initial paranoia set in because the struts were rattling and oozing red goo but it turns out that that’s perfectly normal. The rattle is the foam bumpstop inside the strut and the goo is just the seal lubricant. No worries, no big deal. We’re on schedule to do the install on Saturday.

I finally got a direct dial number to the US Customs office and bypassed the UPS Customs Brokerage. Inspector Hillman was more than happy to help me track down the DMS50s and find out why they’d been sitting idle in the warehouse. After verifying all of my information, getting values on the packages and running through the standard script of questions he started digging. Turns out the package was held for a random check but, since no one noted what they were checking for, the package was never actually put in the queue to be checked.

Inspector Hillman said that the package would be processed today or Monday and would definitely be on the truck on Monday. I won’t naively blindly believe him but at least I’m now talking directly to a customs agent instead of the customer service representatives at UPS who are looking at the same Web page that I am to get status on a shipment. Regardless, looks like we’ll find out on Monday.

At first glance I thought my CV boots were torn. Turns out that I had just glanced under the car quickly and was actually looking at the protective boots for my steering rack. Still a big deal, but less of a big deal than the CV boots.

Lachute shipped out my DMS50s at the end August and they’re still sitting at US Customs being torn down and inspected. No idea when they’ll be showing up. Bastards.