As expected I made very little progress this week on the Shelby clone, spending my spare time on building my web site (which went live this week). However, on Friday afternoon I got a call from Napa saying that they had my rack in stock. On Saturday I drove down to the store and sure enough, there it was. I had been a little concerned that the rack would not have the same steering u-joint attachment that the power rack had, which would have left me in need of a new U-joint, but sure enough it looked the same. Buying a new rack from Napa was expensive, but worth it to me because I just didn't like the extra tubing required for the power rack, even if I was going to run it manually.
Back at home, I took the time to pull the power rack out of the chassis, and swap the u-joint onto the new rack, just to be sure. Then I looked at the passenger side bushing that would allow the manual rack to fit into the brackets on the K member. I shouldn't have been surprised; it wasn't even close. I don't know what Fatman sent me first time around, but it sure wasn't a manual steering rack bushing. I guess I will have to fabricate the required bushing myself.
I expect that next week I will be just as busy on the web site and book stuff as this week, so again I don't expect to make much progress on the car. Hopefully things will get back to normal in February, and I can start making some progress again.