The weather over the weekend was beautiful, so progress was made on all fronts, from the first mow of the year, to spraying the fence line, to dragging the pasture, to building the “grow” op. Because of all that, the FC progress was a little slower, especially as I went round and round on an accelerator solution.

I created a couple gas pedal linkage prototypes that didn’t work like I’d hoped, so back to the internet I went. Finally, I landed upon a late-1960s VW bus linkage from the British company Butty Bits that gave me a clear path forward. Below is one example. I discovered I have room under the cab to construct something similar to what I show below.

This pic of the linkage comes from the Heritage parts center. The top of the linkage bolts to a pedal, then travels through the floor to a lever that rotates counter clockwise as the pedal is pushed down. I plan to build and test something later today with some small Heim joints I already have.

I also had a chance to modify the stock FC support bracket so that it will hold a 2″ column. Here I’m testing together the column, the brake setup, and the dash. It’s all fitting together (whew). I also experimented with my flip-up fuse-box idea, which will go on under the left of the dash. The idea is to have fuse box that can rotate down when needed, but otherwise remain mostly hidden (no pics of that just yet). We’ll see how that idea plays out ….

Among the other spring side projects was this “grow” operation in the master bath, built from leftover steel for max functionality and minimum beauty. Ann wanted a green house, so we build a mini-version atop the whirlpool tub we never use (we plan to turn this area into a larger shower at some point). Ann has grown these plants (beets, peppers, spinach and others) from seeds from last year’s plants.

Finally, yesterday my son reminded me that March Madness had started. It’s the first time I’ve tried to watch it without cable or dish TV (we don’t get cable and cut the dish last fall).

It turns out, Youtube TV has got this figured out! There was an automatic four-panel setup on Youtube TVs Home Screen showing each of the channels’ games. Not all of our cord cutting has been a great experience, but this feature was really useful and easy to use.