Hi,
Interfacing to the CAN is not a newbie project. So you must concentrate on the CAN part.
When done with the CAN controller part then I suppose you are through with the learning curve. To make your task easier you can use a 128 bytes array on your PIC and periodically dump it to an external eeprom rather than using a SD Card. This would be an advantage using the page write funtion of the EEPROM say a 24C512. Then you can have a routine that formats (puts strings, linefeed, Bin2ASCII etc) and dump on the PC via serial port. However I am not discouraging the use of an SD card. It is only limited by the project timeline you have. As MisterE says "Learning Oppertunities". Hey Steve thanks this has always inspired me.