1/16/08

I sent yesterday’s rant in the body of an e-mail rather than my usual cut and paste method. I had to finger out a way to get my font back for the usual rant due to (tee hee, I said doo-doo!) the e-mail’s font being different. I'm sure there is a way to highlight the whole thing and set a font, but I'm too lazy to try and finger out what font I'm using. So here’s what I did, not that you care but I'm going to tell you anyway, I started today’s rant immediately after Monday’s and will now cut and paste it to the end of yesterday’s. There, now that that’s done I can move on. Ok, I told y'all about allowing Enrique to drive Matilda on Sunday. Here’s the rest of the Sunday story. If you will remember, Ray was going to try and get me some Rivnuts or Nutserts or whatever they are called so I could reinstall the roll hoop on the Seven. Well, his supplier fell through so I told him, “Never mind.” I went to Lowe’s to look for a suitable alternative. I found some of those panel nut thingies and bought the corresponding socket head bolts. On my way to the shop I realized the panel nut thingies I already had from the 210’s bumper removal would probably have worked and been the same thread as the existing Nutsert in the frame. D’oh! I have to go do something right quick. I'll be right back. Ok, so I head for the shop with the new panel nuts and bolts, intent on re-hooping the Seven. I get there and have a look around for the Datsun panel nuts. I find two so I decide to go ahead with the new ones. I grab the big uni-bit and drill a big assed hole beside the hole for the bolt. I can’t get the new panel nut to go in though. The Datsun panel nut will fit and since it is in the hole corresponding to the hole with a Nutsert on the other side of the car, I decide to have one metric and one standard bolt on each side of the hoop. I drill another big assed hole for the other bolt but hog it out so I can use the standard panel nut. It fits but it needs to be trimmed to line up with the hole. I remove it and head for the grinder. I grind down two panel nuts and head back to the car. I drill the final big assed hole and install the two standard panel nuts. It looks like it is going to work. Well, guess what, it did. Ha, you thought I was going to say it didn’t. Well, knobs to you with bells on! I installed the hoop and pulled the tonneau cover in place. I had to loosen the hoop in one spot where it had pinched the tonneau but once it was stretched out to the snaps it all fit really well. I was worried that the new bungs for the top bow wouldn’t allow me to snap the rear tonneau in place but they reached around nicely. I pulled the top on and began looking at the snap situation there. I decided to add four more snaps to the body just for the top. I trimmed four rivets so that the heads fit snugly into the recess of the snaps and drilled holes to attach them to the chassis. They pulled up nicely and the top snapped to them perfectly. I wanted to go for a hoon then. I rolled the car out and tried the key. Yeah, I should have reversed that order. The battery was dead. I pushed the car back in and yanked the hood. I decided to go ahead and change the coil and remove the battery. Well, for some reason I still cannot explain, I installed the new coil without replacing the battery. See, the battery sits under the coil so Juan has to be out of the way before the other can come out. I know, I'm an idiot. Enrique called just about then and asked if we could move the brown 210. I told him we’d have to make space for it. I decided we’d take Mr. Wiggly to the house for storage and use that vacated spot for the 210 until we could strip it. He arrived and we went to lunch at Joe’s Pizza and Pasta. We drove Mr. Wiggly. We dropped it off at the house and picked up Matilda for the drive back to get Fifi. I let him drive back. We picked up Fifi and took her to my house. I drove Fifi while Enrique drove Matilda. Damn but that car looks good going down the road. If I wasn’t so conscientious about keeping my word to go ahead and sell it to him, I could have been talked right out of the Altima deal right then. We dropped Fifi at the house and headed back to the shop to get his truck. I asked if he were in a hurry to get anywhere. He was not. I directed him to FM5. Now, Enrique used to be, and could still be considered I suppose, a racecar driver. He did some serious hooning in Matilda! The only time I got nervous were the few turns with no runoff on the outside where there is NO room for error. We finally got to the shop and he was totally and completely hooked. “I’m buying this car,” he kept saying. “We’ll figure out a way to make it happen.” He wanted to take it out of town this weekend but I put the kibosh on that. Well, at that time the kibosh was put on. It looks like he’ll be buying it this evening and we’ll be going to get me an Altima. Monday afternoon I called the Boys of Pep to see if they had a Miata battery for the Seven, which they did, and that was why John and I were there discussing phones the other evening. I bought one and we dropped it off at the shop while John picked up a header for his 510. We looked at phones and, well, I told that story yesterday. Oh yeah, why didn’t we buy the Altima last night? Well, Enrique was going to come to the house so we could come up with a sales plan on Matilda and then we were going to the dealer. I called Bo to make sure he’d be there but he was just leaving. Turns out the “urgency” of selling that car wasn’t so much. Our theory is, that car probably arrived in the middle of November meaning it just hit its ninety days on the lot. The sales manger asked if anyone had any leads on it. Bo raised his hand and was told to sell the thing this week. He called me to beg me to come buy it. Since it was the 15^th, he had just gotten his “draw” check so want hurting to move units. The 15^th isn't when the dealer needs to move units for its future allotment. So the only thing that makes sense is, that car has “aged out” on the lot. We’re going this evening to talk to Bo’s buddy Jimmy about it. Bo is off and not feeling well so he’s handing it off to Jimmy. Whatever, Enrique will beat up on whoever they send in. I'm looking forward to building another hot rod daily driver. All I need to do now is to wait for the aftermarket to catch up and make parts for it! Well, it is noon, actually noon-thirty, and I'm a Starvin’ Marvin. I'll talk to y'all tomorrow.