I told you there would be video.
Currently the back seat is in my spare room, might as well work on what I can while I wait to do the things I currently can't. Last night started as sleepless as the night before and as I am never sleepless, I dealt with it through the positive power of chemistry. Advil PM worked for Sara before, and thankfully it worked for me too. I dreamed of metamorphosis. It is a theme that seems to be dominating a good many parts of my life of late.
I still refuse to talk about work on my blog, but as all things are connected, the events in the office directly shaped the events of my Saturday. When last you read, I was forced to miss a concert I had been really looking forward to for a long time, because events at work had robbed me of my desire to go and have fun. I finally left the office at 9:30 and after eating most of a large pizza by my self (ah, the power of comfort food), and a beer, I was able to go home and sleep.
Saturday I awoke, restless. I needed a distraction, and the Fairlane is surely one of my favorites. I had purchased some tubing (and two buckets of chicken). The tubing would replace some dry rotted tubing in the rear air shocks. With this repared I will be able to lift the body off of the wheels. The wheels, purchased when I was in highschool, had always had the wrong offset for the car. I didn't know any better, and no one offered to teach me at the time. Since that time I have found air shocks to be a nice workaround.
The engine runs, the stereo doesn't, and the transmission was acting up when I parked her a long seven years ago. I needed to get the rear of the car up on ramps and I all I had to use to do it was personal energy. There are four types of energy, natural energy, spiritual energy, personal energy, and emotional energy. Of these, emotional energy is the trickiest. It is the hardest to control and often difficult to even get your mind around. It is like a sugar rush, you really don't realize its happening, unless you see it in others, or when you are coming down from it. Thus to my surprise, I discovered I wasn't using my personal energy as much as I was being used by my emotional energy. In a nutshell, rather than putting the rear of the car on top of the ramps, I nearly put it into the side of our house. The house was saved by luck, watchful spirits, the ramps, and the physics of balance. It may be difficult to see in the pictures below, but the front and rear wheels are only barely touching the ground.
However, there are other things to be done, and since I had already done something more or less improbable, I figured I would see if Beatuie would be willing to go for a little walk. Without me. I was too weak at this point to be much help. What happened, was nothing short of amazing. See below.
The lesson, there is no way I could ever have an afair on my wife. It has been so difficult balancing the whims and desires of two loves, and only one of them are flesh and blood. Simple honor aside, there is simply no way I could ever deal with two flesh and blood loves.
Oh yeah, and I shouldn't go around messing with personal energies, when I'm in a unbalanced emotional state.
Oh and there will be video to follow tomorrow...
Those who know me know that I do not use the word magic unless I mean to, and when I say it, it means precisely what I intend for it to.
It is hot today.
This beer is cold.
These chicken wings are excellent.
There was magic.
Today a powerful magic was reawakened.
The dawning of a new age of Beautie is upon us.
Amazing what a little air in the tires can do for one's disposition. Basically, there is only about a half dozen little cleaning and maintenance things left to do. Once I have done things like vacuum out the trunk and wipe down the back seat, everything else will require a battery.
Soon my precious....
Sara is my partner in this venture and the project manager. I mentioned before I want this done right, and I know good and well that I am not that guy, as I tend to be impatient. I realized talking last night that she and I each have different series of events with different short term goals in mind.
Our biggest difference is I want to be on the road driving yesterday and make upgrades as I can. In her master plan the car would not see asphalt until the project was complete. Note I'm not making judgments about whose plan is best. I know one of my fatal flaws is a lack of patience with these things so I can accept that my list of goals would reflect this impatience.
Her list looks something like this, but this is only my estimate of her list. She hasn't yet discussed her task list with me in detail so I fully plan and expect to edit this after the fact to accurately reflect her list.
1. Fully clean and prep the interior and exterior.
2. Get the engine running.
3. Re-replace window rubber so car doesn't leak.
4. Get trailer capable of hauling the car.
5. Get transmission repaired.
6. Upgrade braking system
7. Fix up interior.
8. Have engine and drive train modified.
9. Paint, body, and rechrome
10. Wheels and tires.
11. Insurance and plates.
Her plan means I have to wait a very very long time to drive the car again, but when I did it would be perfect. My plan gets me behind the wheel sooner, but I would be driving a work in progress that would be burning gas, and costing insurance.
I wonder if there could be a compromise position? We will see as we get serious about putting a finished plan together and working out the time line.
I figure a blog is as good a place as any to keep a record of where we are, where we're going, and when. The project to bring my dream to reality will take a lot of time and a lot of money. I view this as a project so the triangle applies. If I want it done sooner I need more money or more people willing to work on it. if I want it done cheaper I need more time. As I have lots of time and not much money this project will probably take years. Good things come to those who wait.
I am breaking the work up in phases with deliverables organized first by what gets us back on the road, and then by cost what makes us fabulous. Phase one is what I can do myself, phase two is what I have to pay someone for.
So for starters I'll need a battery and to replace the hoses (2) and belt (1). I'll also need an air pump for the tires. There is a little bit of old gas in the tank and I will want to pump that out and replace it with five gallons of fresh fuel. At this point I will have everything I need to crank the engine and circulate the fluids. My end date is April 30th.
Once the engine is running and the tires hold air, it will be time to log a couple of miles. That means I will need insurance and fresh plates. This will have to wait until at least May 1st. That's the way the money flows.
Issue One: When I parked her, the transmission had started slipping. Something tells me this problem hasn't gone away, so I will need a trip to a garage to have that worked on.
Unknown: I don't know what condition the tires are in. They may be functional, they may have dry rotted. I would like to get rid of the Keystone Klassics which have been there since 1997 and replace them with a wheel that has the correct offset for the car. When I bought the Keystones, the sales guy never mentioned offset, and I didn't know any better. Ever since I have had to use air shocks in the back to hold the body up high enough that the outside of the tires wouldn't rub against the body. If I have to replace the tires, I will either put them on the original wheels I have, or buy new rims at that point. This could be a setback. The original wheels were designed for hubcaps, and the original hubcaps, besides being...well...ugly, tend to fly off at highway speeds.
Assuming the tires are OK, once the transmission repair is finished and paid for I can begin raising money for a front brake upgrade. I am trading up from drum brakes to disk breaks and I believe I can do the front end myself. The rear brake upgrade will come later.
It will be at this point where we'll be looking for "professional help".
1. Rear brake upgrade.
2. Sheet metal repair and replacement, with paint job.
3. General body stiffening.
4. Suspension and steering upgrade.
5. Engine future-ization. (Modernization alone is not enough, and "futurization" isn't a word for some weird reason.)
6. Interior modernization. (Though I want the interior to be as ultra high-tech as the engine)
The finished product won't from the outside look really any different than it does now, sure there will be no rust and different wheels but there will be no changes in chrome, lines, trim, or color.
The dramatic changes will be where you can't immediately see. I want this car to handle as well as any modern sports coupe. The engine should be "maxed out" while still fitting neatly and completely under the hood. The design should be smart enough and elegant enough that at the press of a computer touch screen or voice command I can go from a "balanced" every day sort of driving personality to one of ultra efficiency, or ultimate power depending on whether I am going on a road trip across country or just 1/4 mile down the race track. Ultimately this will be my daily driver, so every modification has to keep this simple fact in mind. Show cars have their place, but this was and will always be a driving car.
The interior should appear stark, almost sterile in that Star Trek: The Next Generation kind of way. The seats should offer both safety and comfort. The dash should be flat and lacking any obvious instruments until the engine is running. The basic driving information I want "heads up" so I won't have to glance down for speed, fuel, temperature, or trouble. All engine, environmental, and audio controls should be accessed through a single touch screen interface that is invisible when the car isn't running. The stereo should sound good and be well balanced without being obnoxious. Windows will be powered. Interior colors should be kept to an absolute minimum.
