Syncro Part 3 - Build Check-in

It has been 8 months'ish since the last build post so today I am excited to share the latest update. 
This morning started slowly as a much as I wanted to I just could not get to sleep last night.  Note to self taking the laptop to bed does to assist with sleep.  I finally got off to sleep around 3am and then surprise, surprise I felt crappy in the morning.  Waking up still feels like someone has used me as a punch bag all night.


 
From March to now the build has felt a little unreal because of the lack of progress due to the unforeseen problems with the engine build.  Problems that I am told are now resolved but that took considerable troubleshooting.  I am not that technical when it comes to engines but I am told the problems resided in the ECU configuration and to resolve the problem Kirk the owner at North Westy sent his own van and his pride and joy down to California to allow the engine supplier to fix the problem.   He is heading down this month to pick it up and drive it back and here is our engine where it is supposed to be.  So cool to see it and Kirk tells us it will be fully installed this week.

The problems with the engine resolved the build can now move forward so we headed out to see Kirk today and start the process of locking in all the options.   The one thing the delay has given us is time to think on our color scheme and options and as a result some of those have changed starting with the color.  If you look back you will see our original color choice and although I think it is a good color we were both a little concerned it was a bit bling.  That and our experience with working on Benny in the summer re-enforced the need to have a paint color that can be easily touched up and purchased locally.  We then started throwing around color options again and fell back into the "I don't know what color to paint it" syndrome.  The one thing we did know and agree on was a bold fun color that would make us smile.  We love the tornado red of Benny and really did consider the same color again.  It was then that we saw the inspiration for our color choice the Jeep Wrangler Orange.

It is fun and the black and orange combo was something that would work for us both on the outside as well as the inside.  It also had the benefit of going with color choices we had already made should we want to keep them.

Today we reviewed our options and changed the cabinet laminate and pop top fabric colors.  We added carpet, curtains and flooring options as well as reviewed a bunch of questions and decided to have the undercarriage completely refurbished we also added the 91 rear windows with vents.

Having gone backwards and forwards on the solar question we have decided not to install one at this stage.  If we were in a sunny climate it might be a different decision but here in the Northwest the benefit seems to be limited to a short window of summer months.  So instead we plan on relying on  idling the engine to recharge the batteries should we need to.

Once we got home we ordered the our bumpers and rear tire carrier from Rocky Mountain Westy.  We really wanted our friends at Das Mule's bumpers but unfortunately they will not be ready in time. 

Here are a few pictures of the beastie as it stands today

 

Our new gauges have arrived and ready for install

This is the color of the of the door panels

We kept the basic colors and added the Charcoal as the curtain color.  For the curtains we decided to go with pop on rather than having curtain hooks.

This is the revised cabinet color.  We wanted to go with a more modern look than our original choice and so we decided on the color below for the fronts and a brushed aluminum for the tops.

Making all the color choices has been far harder than I ever thought and we are now excited to see it all come together.