7/13/10

Well, we made a little more progress on Nadine over the weekend. The Prince of Darkness has been exorcised from the vehicle. “And there was much rejoicing. Yea.” The only Lucas wiring left in the car, that I can think of, are one little pig-tail from the fuel level sending unit and the big battery cable which used to connect the solenoid to the starter. Both of those are going to be replaced too, by the way. So here’s what went down. Friday afternoon I get a text from John saying that the dude will be planning to borrow my trailer to get his car Saturday. I snicker at that because of all the rain. “There is no way he’s getting that car this weekend,” I say to myself. I shoost the dude a text and confirm his plan. We set 0800 to 0830 h as the meet time. At 2130 h Friday evening I get another text saying the ground is too wet, duh, and they will have to postpone. I text John but he doesn't get it until Saturday morning. I roll to the shop around 0900 h and meet him. We get cracking on Nadine. He doesn’t do anything with his car because he’s waiting to get a “mustache bar” from Marty Smith. I ask, “Isn’t there a differential, with a ‘mustache bar’ attached, in the paint booth?” There is and he messes with that for a bit. He doesn't get under his car or anything, but he messes with the differential. I'm not faulting him, I've goofed off plenty myself. Anyhoo, he jumps back in helping me strip Nadine's interior some more. Oh, when I arrived, he was just finishing up with the removal of the speedometer and test fitting a 5” AutoMeter speedo and tach. They look good. I test fit the new fuel gauge and dug out the other 2 1/16” gauges I had bought previously. Unfortunately, I had only bought oil pressure and water temp gauges. So I made a mental note to order a tach, speedo, and one more gauge when I got home. We discussed what gauge it should be and decided on a clock. Remember that, it will be important in a little while. We fought and cursed the British “design” and removed the heater, wipers, dash, and all the rest of the Lucas wiring. I dumped everything into a tote for the future. Whether that future is selling all this crap or saving it so the next chump can “restore” the car, I don't know. We'll see. We took a measurement of the rear axle to see if a Datsun axle would fit. It won't. A TR-3 axle is 47 1/2” wide. A Datsun 1200 axle, the narrowest axle we have, is 51” wide. Sure, we could use front wheel drive offset wheels and use 1 3/4” spacers on the front but... well, now that I think about it, we did discuss that. I'm not sure if we dismissed it or not. John has wheels and tires for that setup. Hmm, now I don't remember what was decided. John? Anyhoo, I think that was about all we accomplished at the shop. We then went to Benito’s for lunch and somehow killed another three hours inside and out front of the restaurant. Oh, we were discussing paint color options. John insists that the nose is too rough for a “dark” color like red, BRG, black, or navy. I suggested yellow and he was on board. Unfortunately we had differing ideas as to what color yellow. I said “fly” and he said “pale.” He suggested other options as well. “Magnum Vanilla,” white, light blue, “Cactus Green,” and several others were mentioned. I wasn't feeling any of them. Even interweb pictures couldn't make it work for me. I kept coming back to, “It ought to be red.” I'm sure there is a lot of guilt in my reasoning, but I keep thinking, “Nadine bought the car in red for a reason.” Yesterday I finally just said to myself, “The car will never be better than a ‘Ten Footer,’ paint the some-bitch red.” another thing John convinced me of was the fact that I'm not building this car to sell. I'm building it to get Nadine's car back on the road and to have a fun toy for me. With that in mind, and knowing I can't afford the $20,000.00 to make it into a $35,000.00 car, I'm saying “Purists be damned!” and moving on with the Datsun installation. Eventually we called it a day and each went home. I think the plan for this upcoming weekend will be to start the removal of the engine and transmission. I think this is progress. Is it?