We could jam in Joe's garage...

It's Dan's garage and we're working on the rally car not jammin' on a Stratocaster with a whammy bar. But it's my blog and I've already established a musical theme to the blog entries and I'll post whatever I jolly well like (besides, Joe's Garage is one of my all time favorite albums).
Being that this is amateur motorsport and in many cases the driver works on his car with help from friends, I figured I should offer to help, even though my automotive repair abilities are somewhat lacking. The day before I had been doing an oil change on my 1976 MGB and had drained the oil from the gearbox and refilled the sump and wondered why the oil level was ridiculously high before I realized my mistake.
So not exactly brimming with confidence after that episode I went round to Dans garage to see how I could make myself useful.
For those of you looking for a picture of car #958 here is the sight that greeted me that morning.

The car, ready to be worked on.

Up on jacks, wheels off, gearbox removed, all in preparation to fit a limited slip differential. The seat had also been removed ready for the task of lowering it so that I could sit in the car without banging my head on the roll cage.
I asked Dan how I could make myself useful.
"Well, I need to work on lowering your seat and fabricating the fixing bracket, you can break down the gearbox if you like."
"Break down the gear box? You do know what I did yesterday don't you?" I said, referring to my oil change escapades.
Dan laughed. "We have a full set of illustrated instructions, besides you know as much about dismantling a Mazda gearbox as I do. That's why we have the instructions."
The instructions seemed pretty easy to follow, so I donned my overalls and with a set of spanners and sockets, I set to undoing the myriad bolts on the gearbox casing. In the meantime sounds of cutting, grinding, and welding came from the other side of the garage.
A couple of times I would stop and be called over to test fit the seat but the gearbox breakdown was mostly a piece of cake and when the casing was finally removed all you can say is that it was a thing of beauty. Dan came over and studied it deeply.

A mechanical marvel.

With the gearbox opened and the counter shaft removed that was as good a place as any to stop for lunch, about three hours had flown by.
During the mornings work the mail had arrived with a package and a task for me that was special on a couple of levels.
I'd get to apply the names and flags.
My name and flag.
To me that was pretty serious.
You see, rally cars all over the world have the driver and co-driver names on them complete with a national flag. It's in the WRC and Rally America regulations. The WRC regulations (rule 19.1) state that the flag has to be the flag of your passport. The Rally America regulations (article 3.1 subsection B, number 2b) allow for competitors to display their state/home region flag alongside their name. 
My original decision had been to go with the flag of St. George against my name, but then when I saw Dan had the flag of Minnesota against his name on the car I thought it would be extremely neat to have the flag of my home county of Lincolnshire on there. So I read the rule book, it might cause a second look or two. But the flag of Lincolnshire would be legal.
On another level, I've spent about 16 years working in sign shops in England and America, and applying vinyl lettering was an everyday task so I was looking forward to seeing if I still had the technique.

I remembered how to apply vinyl lettering.

The co-drivers side. Things just became very, very real.

With the names on the car, the reality of what I'm going to do set in, I can sit in front of my computer going over course notes as much as I like, but there is an air of permanence when you see names on the side of things. Everyone can see that. I was a little speechless.
That was as good a place as any to stop the days work. The limited slip differential hadn't returned from the workshop, so that couldn't be fitted. We had done about as much as we could do for the day.
I had felt extremely useful and hadn't broken anything or spilled any fluids all over the garage floor, So that was a win. We had a car that I could sit in and had my name on the side, it had been a very good day.