With all the parts ready for assembly, I now had to find a mechanic who was competent enough (Ohio's not that well known after all...) and if you'll remember, I was still in Iraq at this time. My dad found a guy on Craigslist who goes by the name "Honda Bob". Honda Bob operates out of an aircraft hangar at Elyria Airport and my dad made a trip up to check out if it was legit. I later made phone calls to him to also get a warm-fuzzy feeling that he was the right guy. After all, with close to $10,000 in parts at stake, we would all want our cars to be handled with kid gloves. The date was set for the end of November to be delivered, which would leave him with enough time to assemble everything. Honda Bob claimed he only needed a week to get it going, but I gave him 2.
Honda Bob in action
Well that week never came because my dad rear-ended my car 2 weeks before it was to be delivered to Honda Bob. it destroyed the bumper and trunk when he put the truck in drive not reverse and pulled into it. After apologies were made and accepted, it was quickly rushed to the body shop to get a new Rear Bumper and a new trunk. Now seemed like a good time to do an upgrade, so we searched around for a carbon fiber trunk. When we found one for a steal online ($200, but the top looked like 15 cats had a party with their claws on the top of it), we bought it. I told him my intentions were to paint most of it, in the theme of how Sport Compact Car painted the CF trunk of their Project SRT-4 (do a search on Yahoo to see it). It ended up turning out beautiful and I get alot of disbelief when I tell people it's a CF trunk. They thought I just painted a black strip between the tail lights. Look for yourself:
Now with the deadline past, the vehicle was quickly rushed to Honda Bob by December 8 (the next day I would leave Iraq).
