THIS IS GOING TO TAKE A WHILE

Dave Smith, owner of Factory Five racing (maker of the car kit), has stated several times that they "sell projects".  
Years ago I interviewed an engineer for a job opening at the company I was working for.  On his resume he proudly stated how he had worked for nearly a year designing an alternator for GM.      

A YEAR TO DESIGN AN ALTERNATOR?

Then I learned that he was part of a TEAM that had done the design work on an ALTERNATOR.

Back to 2014.
A few months ago we purchased a new Toyota Avalon Hybrid with all the bells and whistles.  It is a marvel.  Blind spot monitor and alarm, radar cruise control, backup camera with cross traffic sensors and alarm.  If the radar senses a potential collision it will tighten the seat belts and apply the brakes.  It is averaging 43 miles per gallon.   Braking energy is used to charge the batteries. The doors unlock automatically when you touch the door handle (if you have the key on your person).  Etc, etc, etc.

All of that and in 6 months there hasn't been so much a hiccup.

So now I get it.

My car is a project, not to be confused with a modern production model coming off the assembly line.

It seems that usually when I start to assemble some part of the car, I find that things don't fit as well as they should, or I find myself thinking that I want to make it different than the way the kit was intended.

Case in point:

Saturday evening I replaced the engine oil pan with a custom one needed to fit the frame of the Daytona.  15 bolts to take it off, 15 to tighten up on the new pan, 10-15 minutes tops.  Well 2 hours later after grinding, test fitting and grinding again, trying to figure what part was interfering with what,  it is installed.

 I put tape down and then rubbed the oil pan around in place so I could see where the interference was.

 And after all was done, now the oil level sensor wire won't reach the sensor.

Yep, now I get it.  No team of engineers spent a year designing and testing every inch of this "project".

Don't misunderstand, I am not disparaging the maker of this kit in any way.  I love doing this and am very pleased with what is emerging here.  This will be a custom built one of a kind vehicle, that will require rework, more maintenance, have bugs, and more than a couple of my custom designs will probably have to be tweaked or even thrown out all together and started over. 

 I am OK with that.