3/2/09

The shit box GMC has gotten one, and only one, temporary reprieve. Jesse, Kevin’s daughter’s boyfriend who currently owns Barbara, came by on Sunday to check it out and is interested. We’re just not sure if he’s going to be able to come up with the money. I didn’t tell him that I'd be willing to trade straight-up for Barbara though. I'm giving him until Wednesday to poop or get out of the Ganges. Kevin says he has a few others interested in it as well. We’ll see. Ok, so Saturday morning I pick John up at the Nissan dealer where he’s getting the oil changed on the blue Versa. I guess the candy in his ass would melt if he tried to do it himself. Anyhoo, from there we roll to the shop. We load the Capri wheels from Chickenhawk v1.0 and the new 175/50-13 Sumitomo tires in the back of Fifi and head out again. We drop the wheels and tires at John’s Kreblechistani tire store and head out to look at another Nova. At least this one is a two door and looks to be more solid. I'm still not 100% on board for the idea, but I understand John’s reasons and don’t fault him for them. If my dad had a certain specific car he always had or wanted or something, I'd probably be looking for one as well. So, he looks the car over for a bit and talks to the dude. I mill around admiring the “Plum Crazy” purple under the hood of some B-body Mopar thinking, “I’m not going to beat John down with, ‘This would look awesome on Roku-Hyaku!’” We eventually leave and go pick up the wheels and tires. They look so cute! This is the first time we’ve ever gotten three mounted wheels and ties to sit side by side in the back of Fifi! Oh wait, we stopped at John Ullom’s house to pick up a shifter for Dewey twixt the Nova and the tire pickup, I almost forgot. So from the tire store we dropped the shifter off at Dewey’s. His 510 that we dropped off a week or two ago is coming along quite nicely. Much faster than any Dimlight Racing project ever comes together, I'll give him that. We roll back to the shop via the Boys of Pep where I bought a set of Datsun thread pitch, shank lug nuts. See, we decided as we were driving that we’d try to install a set of 510 studs in the hubs of Roku-Hyaku to mount the wheels. At the shop we test fit one of the wheels on the left rear of the car and discover that our Mini flares are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too big. These wheels and tires almost tuck right into the fenders. There is just a wee tiny little bit of tread showing when Juan looks straight down the fenders. After careful consideration, I make the executone decision that we’d live with that. We unload the other wheels into the shop and close up. I drop him off at the dealer to pick up his car and we part company for the day. Apparently my executone decision was overruled because he ordered a set of smaller flares that evening. What are you going to do? Sunday, like I said above, Jesse came by to look at the GMC. I tried to get there early enough to have the thing fired up and warm before he arrived. I got it to run but it still backfired and died after about a minute of running every time we got it going. I discovered that the air filter was interfering with the choke mechanism and not allowing it to open fully. I tossed the filter in the back and got it going. Jesse tried to drive it but stalled every time he tried to take off. It was determined later that he was trying to start in fourth gear. Oops. Once he got the hang of it he, and the truck, did well. I banged a dent into the bottom of the air filter to clear the choke and reinstalled it. It seemed to work. I parked the thing and invited him to the Japanese Old School Car thing at the Purple Cow that evening. We parted ways and I went home. I thought about going to the gun range but decided to surf the TV channels instead. Around 1700 h, yes, I know that was way too early, I took off in Shichi to the event. The drive wasn’t too bad. The crankcase smoke is back under hard acceleration, but I don’t want to think about that. I got to the PC and waited. Around 1730 h I texted John to check the time. He wasn’t coming for another hour so I took off, ostensibly for a hoon. I wound up going back to the house to steal the insurance card from Fifi. It seems I never bothered to put the new insurance cards in my vehicles when they arrived back in January. Yeah, I got a ticket Friday on the way to work. I had GEICO e-mail me new cards and printed them out. Anyhoo, by the time I do that I figure I'd be just about on time to meet John back at the PC. Yeah, I was still half an hour early. I waited. Jeff showed up with his Toyota MR-2 so I crawled out of Shichi. We chatted for a bit and then John arrived. Pretty soon, a mid-eighties Toyota Corolla rolled up followed by a nice yellow 240Z. Jesse pulled up in Barbara and parked. We all stood around and chatted for a while then went in to eat. It was the best turnout yet for the Old School meet, six cars! Eventually everyone left and I went home. It was much cooler driving home after the sun went down, duh. Well, that’s about all I've got for today. I'll try to come up with something tomorrow.