I just finished up a very busy month of work in my job, and I finally have a bit of brain power left over to write an update.

Since my last post, I spent all my time on the kit working on the aluminum. Unfortunately, a lot of this effort won't wind up on the finished car. This is another way of saying that I decided to give up on making custom panels for my passenger footbox. In the end, my skills just weren't up to it, and although I invested something close to thirty hours trying to make everything fit right and look good, I was forced to admit that they didn't.

The anti-epiphany came two weekends ago when I put the kit-supplied panels back on the car after a long and frustrating session of trimming and fitting my custom panels. There was no denying that the panels in the kit fit so much better. So, I'm going back to them. This is disappointing, but I'm glad I made the effort. I had never even attempted to cut and bend sheet metal before, and making a paseenger footbox was a pretty difficult first project. I learned a lot along the way, and I'll be better off the next time I try my hand at custom sheet metal fabrication.

Since this change back to the kit panels, I've been doing more marking, drilling, and fitting. I now have the passenger footbox and floor done, and most of the driver side is together as well.

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The stock passenger footbox fitted once again.

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Driver side cockpit aluminum coming along.

I also fell behind on keeping my Lotus looking spiffy, so I need to wash the daily driver. I might be done with aluminum for this afternoon, but even so, I think I can finish up the driver panels in the next couple of evenings, and complete the rest of the cockpit aluminum in a few days more.