M-B 230S Rally Tribute Update; Working at John Roger’s Racing

We had a busy afternoon at Roger’s Racing. Working with John is illuminating as he unlocks the mysteries of fabrication. Sort of fabrication for dummies. Instruction and conversation is interspersed with amazing stories about some of the greatest drivers, mechanics and cars we regard as legends. We began by creating a plan to get all of the wiring from the front of the Merc to the control panel without it looking like hell or taking any unnecessary turns. We decided to run the wires from the center light down into the main auxiliary harness we are going to create for the Cibie Oscars. That will require a quick disconnect coupling under the grill so when it goes up with the hood it pulls apart. We think it is better this way than running wires under the hood and down along one of the hood brackets. Then we took a flat piece of aluminum and turned it into something else – our center stack control panel. Now that it exists, we’ll prime and paint it with Eastwood’s Black Wrinkle Paint. On Monday we do the center light bracket and begin to measure how much wiring we’ll need. BTW, John gave me a few amazing pieces of some of the race cars he has restored. So now proudly displayed at Mint Headquarters are the following: the original dash panel and a piston from the ’39 Maserati 8CTF that ran at Nurburgring (actually the entire ’39 GP season) in front of Hitler and a few times at Indy not in front of Hitler. Then he bestowed upon us a valve. Not just any valve but one from a Mercedes-Benz W156 that is Mercury filled. All 3 are filthy because that is the way they came out the cars during restoration.