Okay, so I am going to take and post pictures as I can of the winter rebuild.
First step was to take everything apart. Okay, easy enough.
Then stopped and did some work on a friends new BMW E36 rally car, but finally got back to mine this weekend.
Got car on rotisserie and used Liquid Nitrogen to remove all of the underbody coating and glue from seams on Friday. Yesterday decided to skip snowboarding as my knee has been a bit sore and instead went and started out with drilling spot welds. 40 or so in and a few pounds of unneeded steel brackets removed before bit broke. So I decide to go ahead and start seam welding. Next thing I know, I'm done seam welding and so now it's time to finish removing the brackets, wire wheel, sand, and clean the underbody, and paint will come this Friday. Enough talk, here's a ton of pictures, including some general shots of around the shop.

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Grant Hughes

Mega jealous of shop etc.

Looking good! The underside of your car looks seriously beat in a few places, like really beat.

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Andrew M
Onterrible
30ish

hudson Wrote:
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> Mega jealous of shop etc.
>
> Looking good! The underside of your car looks
> seriously beat in a few places, like really beat.
>
>

Really beat? That's not even beat. That ain't bad at all. Barely even dented, really. If you want to see really beat look under a car that has spent a few seasons rallying on Pacific Northwest roads without any underbody protection.

That underbody doesn't look much worse than my 83k mile street XR4.

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Andrew Steere
Lyndeborough, NH
KB1PJY

Grant, what's the deal with the shop? Is it commercial? Co-Op? Group of like minded friends with a place for hobby work? Pretends to be commercial but is really for hobbies?

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Jason McDaniel

Checkpoint Racing. Three of the rally cars are Mitch's. The rest of us are paying Mitch to rent space.
We're moving into a significantly smaller location, but one that has heat and is way less industrial this month. It will be more of a coop that Checkpoint runs out of in a significantly reduced form than Mitch has been running. He's back in college and has a two week old baby so Checkpoint is being scaled back. I'm going to be doing more prep stuff out of the shop though hopefully. It's nice having a group together though as we just all take turns buying shit and instead of 5 people having to own a welder, compressor, etc there just has to be one.

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Grant Hughes

Us folks up here in the PNW need to do something similar.

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Robert.

"You are way too normal to be on Rally Anarchy." Eddie Fiorelli.

but shop space is sooo expensive. I can work at my shop with lift,heat, air ect. But i kind of like turning out sweet cars from my little one car garage....

was the merkur seam welded before? are you doing more seam welding and adding to what was already there?

You don't even want to know what Mitch pays at that location. 8000 sq ft or so with a 10K sq ft secure lot on one of the primary routes into downtown Denver.
Our new shop is 2500 sq ft and insulated and heated though. It's a bare shell now and the landlord will build and already has the permits files to build the showroom with an office/hangout area above it. New shop is $1000 per month gross. Checkpoint, myself, and possibly two others going in. Should have enough space for active work on 3-4 cars, plus storage of a few more. Goal is top level of $150-$200 per month per person with Checkpoint covering the balance.

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Grant Hughes

Is that a pure Mastif, or a "yellow mountain dog"?

Purebred OE mastiff. Ha. Didn't realize I'd included that picture. Or so many of myself. Guess I should preview posts in the future.

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Grant Hughes

That can't be your car, it has a windshield.

Be sure to drop a note if Mitch has a clearance sale before the move. OsKar needs seats,belts etc.

I'm just really impressed that the car didn't tip over with those funky stands, and beer.

Mitch is having a ton of 'trouble' keeping seats in stock. Side benefit of stocking a good amount is that people can come and try them out before hand. Secondary benefit of having the best prices around is that they typically buy them too.
He does have a rally pack that's a pair of belts that's a pretty good deal as I recall.

The stands are way sketchy. The rear ones are actually not even on the rear wheels due to the angle that the guy who built them forgot to remove when he extended them. I will build some of my own some day.

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Grant Hughes