5/2/13

And yet another dumb assed idea is festering in my mind.  John sent me an e-mail which said, “Do not click this link,” followed by a Craigslist… link.  It was for a $1,500 1972 Ford van in Haltom City.  For those of you who don’t know where Haltom City is, like that multitude of followers I have from other parts of the world (he said sarcastically, knowing full well that John is probably the only other person to ever read this)… now I've lost my train of thought.  Oh right, Haltom City is one of the little burgs surrounding and contacting Fort Worth… where I reside… sort of thing.  Anyhoo, the point is, it is close and won't require a road trip to go see it.  I'm very interested, especially since John asked the other day if I thought it would be possible to install a T-5 five-speed in a cabover van… not this one it turns out though.  So, here’s what I want to suggest as a possible course of action for Saturday: we meet at the usual time, yank George’s engine, go look at the van, and then go shop shopping.  Since I'm suggesting this on Thursday, assuming John reads it tonight, I can be informed whether or not I should stop at the credit onion for cash on Friday.  I'm thinking if I have $1,000.00 cash to offer… well, we’ll see.  I mean, John could shoost that whole plan down.  Hell, he might want the thing for himself.  He might have already bought it.  Damn it John!  Why’d you buy my van out from under me?  Grrr!  Oh wait, that isn’t very likely at all.  Never mind.  Anyhoo, after cipherin’ and figgerin’ on it a bit, my thoughts turned to Fifi.  If the van could “replace” Fifi, Fifi could be sold to retroactively finance the van… sort of thing.  I just went to Kelly Blue Book’s website to see what Fifi might be worth and was pleasantly surprised when they figured it to be in the $2,000.00 range.  So there’s that going on.  Now, having said all of that, I am still interested in the Alfa from yesterday’s rant.  I said I'd priced the Weber carburetor kit for the thing, right?  Well, what I didn’t mention was that I also priced the manifold kit minus carburetors.  That kit is only $500.00 and I'm sure we can get a pair of DCOE type carburetors for way less than $1,000.00 from John's source in Italy.  I'm remembering something on the order of $375.00 each for the ones we got for Lil' Wiggly's giant-cam engine.  Unless my math is off, that comes out to $1,250.00… or $250.00 less than the full Monte kit.  Of course John asked me, “Why the Alfa?” and all I could come up with was, “Because I'm dumb.”  But here’s my thinking, if the thing is as cosmetically nice as it appears in the photos… nope, “I’m dumb,” is still the only justification I can come up with.  It probably won't happen so we can probably just let me rant about it until we know the car is gone.  Yeah, so there’s that.  Hmm, well, I've got nothing else to say really.  I guess I'll call it a rant and go home.  Toodles.