2/23/09

I promised y'all a big report on the weekend. Well, here goes. Saturday morning John came to the house so we could caravan to the shop with Fifi and Mr. Wiggly. Fifi so we could go look at/get that Nova he wanted and Mr. Wiggly so we could fix the shifter and swap tires. We got to the shop and John backed up to the trailer. We hooked up and rolled north to look at the Nova. I'm not going to say it was a piece of shit. So we left and… ok, I'll tell you more about it. It would have been a good deal for a parts car. It would have been an outstanding deal for a project car. Well, it would have been if a) it were a two-door and 2) it weren’t a six-cylinder automatic. It was in no way, shape or fashion a good deal for a daily driver. I was ready to walk away when I saw all of the front sheet-metal was off the car. Then I saw that everything was off the firewall. Then John showed me the huge assed rust hole in the driver’s floor. Now, like I said, it was a very good project car starting point because all of the body panels I saw were in good shape. But that’s about as much as I'll give it. Sorry John. We left and headed back to the shop to meet the dude coming to steal the 240Z from me. We stopped for gas and then chicken at Chicken Excess. Back at the shop, Aaron was waiting with his sweet assed B-210 looking to get some wheels from John. They did that while I... um, I'm not sure what I did while they did that. Eventually, we all started putting wrenches to Roku-Hyaku. I removed the hood hinges, since we’re going to run four hood pins. John started messing with something so I got cracking on taking the front bumper off. I was just about to give up for the time being but John wouldn’t let me. We finally got the bumper and grille off just as the 240Z thief showed up. John showed him around the car and he agreed to steal it… ok, he paid a fair price for what he got, it’s just I really should have held out to get rid of the rest of the parts and collected more money. That’s all I'm saying. They loaded the car, which was kind of nice being the dude standing there watching that process for a change, and then took off. John wrote out a receipt for the dude and when they’d gone handed me the cash. Aaron left with them so now John and I were ready to think about Mr. Wiggly. I pulled him up to the sidewalk and John jacked up the nose. While I was removing the big-assed wheels, John was airing up the originals. We decided that the studs and shank lug nuts from the spacers/adapters required for that project might work on Roku-Hyaku so John set them aside somewhere. I bet they are too big but didn’t say anything at the time, mainly because I didn’t think about it until now. Anyhoo, we swapped out the fronts and dropped the jack. I pulled forward and he jacked up the rear. We swapped out them and set it back down. Yep, it looks like a hippo on roller skates again. I decided at that point that if the deal fell through, I'd invest in a set of those steel Wagon Wheels from the Boys of Pep and transfer the big assed meats over to them. John took a few pictures of the wheels so he could list them for sale and then we cleaned up and closed up the shop. John followed me back to my house and I grabbed the title to Mr. Wiggly before we headed to show it to the dude with the GMC. He’d just woken up from a nap and was a little groggy but he looked Mr. Wiggly over and said he’d need a day or two to think it over. I was cool with the deal falling through since I really like Mr. Wiggly and the prospect of easier driving, yet good looking, wheels got me a little stoked. I took Mr. Wiggly home and parked him on the back patio. John called to ask if the radiator we’d picked up for Dewey was still in the back of Ms. Clio. I checked and it was. I left it out for John to pick up, which he apparently did at some point. I didn’t really feel like going to the High School Reunion Happy Hour thing that evening so I blew it off. So, I guess I'll finish up with Sunday’s report tomorrow. Oh, I guess I'll also end the rant on a downer by reporting that Pat’s father passed away on Saturday afternoon. I'm going to try and make it to the funeral on Wednesday, but I can’t make any promises. We’ll see.