This is very tragic (for a car buff), and the comments are hilarious...Spokane is MY crappy hometown too, so I had to post this little absurdity:

http://jalopnik.com/tag/1963-corvette-stingray/?id=5160110

Imperfect'd in Muscle Car Review Magazine

I recently wrote the editor of Muscle Car Review regarding a bit of a dispute happening amongst readers, and he mentioned it in his column! I've taken pics which I think are readable...enjoy!

'79 Mercedes: New Dash Console

So this lovely item (out of my $500 car) sells to collectors for $100.00+. The average retail value on my '79 is apparently $9,400, with the mint specimens reaching up to $15K. So out the ashtray comes, and up on eBay it goes!



In its place, I decided to wire in a custom dash accessory panel, complete with fuse, indicator light, and on/off switch.



Wiring the panel in on a mock-up cardboard cut-out.



Deciding to reconfigure it, and add a voltmeter.



Wiring the panel in.

Screaming deal

dirt cheap...which I have no excuse for, sadly. So much potential!

Exhaust Manifold Gaskets

I'd been saving these to show off... My, aren't they a mess! Tsk, tsk...

Silver's exhaust manifold gaskets I replaced a while back. They really need to be next to some new ones...

My CAR is re-CYCLED, what!

This is probably my favorite Volvo 140 picture ever.

Recycled Model A

Thanks to Hemming's auto blog for what might be the most hardcore recycled truck ever!

"Owner Lawrence David of Mill River, Massachusetts, said that he purchased it nearly 50 years ago to plow the local roads and that it always starts, even with its original six-volt electrical system. He said the rear axle is a Ruckstell two-speed, but those wheels look odd. I know a lot of doodlebug builders used big Packard and Pierce-Arrow axles to get the low ratios..."

"So, I have a question.  There were all those leaves and crap stuck in that radiator, right?  Well there's something that concerns me about that and I wanted to run it by you. You know how wet leaves never really decompose?  How the decayed leaf fiber is sort of indestructible and will still be in that engine 25 years from now?"  

Crashbox looks up from the cigarette he is rolling. "Yeah?" 

"Well here's the thing, I figure it would be easy to take that thing off and flush it out backwards with, well at least pouring, some water through it."  Here I go again. The OCD is never going to recede completely no matter how hopeless, how lost the subject may be. Face it dude, this project is going to get the same princess treatment that the V-Strom gets when I change its oil.  This is just a fact of the universe.  The radiator gets flushed before the engine is started for the first time in its (rebuilt) life.  Because this is proper.  And the wiring will be sorted and made reliable.  Oh sweet mother, the wiring.

(the thoughts that have going through my brain lately about redoing the wiring are insane, I quite assure you.  In my sleep I have Pixar visions of following a little electron from the battery to the starter to the ignition switch to the start button to the fuse box hence outwards to the headlights to the gauges to the gauge lights ad nauseam infinitum wondering which switch which relay where switch where relay. I mean, I don't really care - I just think that since there is so little to making the old anvil of a truck and all of its two accessories run, that there is doubly no excuse for whatever works to be unreliable.  No excuse whatsoever, so I think I will end up rewiring all of it.  Just 'cuz.)

Crazy, crazy.  And it is, frankly, things like this that make me doubt myself and my own sanity in even being part of Imperfect'd.  For someone who places so much stock on perfection and the journey thereto....it seems wrong, somehow.  

It's funny, I think to myself.  Here we are, it's the middle of Superbowl Sunday afternoon, and I'm in the woods next to a barn with a straight razor in one hand and an empty oil quart in the other.

Most people are getting all situated for the festivites to begin later in the p.m., driving out to their buddies' houses or to expensive, sweaty, noisy sports bars or to the grocery store to buy chips and booze but here we are with our hands full of rust and dirt and our stomachs empty. And I can't find a damn funnel to pour oil into the engine with, and I just spent 20 bucks on a gas can, and I'm laughing.

Do you realize, I say to crashbox, how retarded this is.  How utterly....retarded this has become.  I hold up the razor and the quart bottle, and he looks, grins and goes back underneath the dashboard to install the oil pressure gauge.  I slit the bottle all the way round, taking extra care not to slit my hand open and contract tetanus.  I balance the half of the bottle with the spout in it carefully against the brake fluid reservoir and dump five more quarts of oil into the crankcase.

It was my job to feed the thing with fluids while crashbox tried to massage the kinky electrical system into some form of functioning order.  The expensive gas can and it's star trek child proof spring loaded plastic schnozz actually functioned somewhat and I was able to dribble 4.5 of 5 gallons into the rusty maw of the gas tank.  This complete, I proceeded to fill the radiator with water from the barn hose. (Coolant is cheap, yes, but time isn't and one can transport only so many bottles of liquid on a motorcycle, even a motorcycle with an epic tail box like mine.  All the space was taken up with oil)  Leaves bubbled up from the inner depths of the radiator and floated about near the filler neck.  This can't be good.  This, in fact, necessitates removal of radiator, a brisk turning-upside-down and shaking.  Something I will do next time I come, because here we are with the electrical system and it's 4 pm already and for all intents and purposes the working day is over.  We were supposed to be done by about 3 pm.

And still nothing from the ignition switch.  crashbox curses silently to himself.  I lean on the fender glumly.  Electrical's a pain in the ass, literally, but the good news is that there's only so much of it on a 1969 Chevrolet truck with one option: an AM radio.  We wonder aloud exactly where in the inaccessible area of the starter we are ceasing to have electrons move. 

The Proprietor of The Ranch emerges from the inky depths of the shop with a length of lampcord.  "All you have to do is wire this end" he holds up one end "to the battery" pointing "and the other end to there and bypass the starter completely.  It's stupid.  I don't know why they wire it that way.  Has nothing to do with getting to the switch."  Crashbox gathers his crimper and wire crimps and begins to twist the two wires together.  They won't fit inside the largest crimp he has.  So he begins to strip one strand of wire from the outer housing.  He glances at the sun and thinks better of it, abandons the stripping and crimps one strand to the battery lead leaving the other loose.  The other end of the same strand goes to the purple wire that snakes down behind the rotted hood raingutter and disappears.  The unused strand of wire glistens next to the the battery.  This is goofy, but it will work and we will fix it later.

...there are so many things we WILL fix later...

This post is roughly two months late, but I wanted to catch up on the bicycle work I have been doing recently. For AC's birthday I built a removable basket for her Specialized single speed conversion out of an old wooden crate that I refinished, and I also put together a fixed gear bike for her to try out of an old Nishiki I stumbled across. It turns out she's not too crazy about riding fixed after all (acquired taste, I guess!), but the basket was a big hit. We sold the fixed gear bike to a very nice girl in Ventura and little bit ago, and hauled groceries in the basket on the other bike for the first time this weekend. Fun and satisfying projects, both of them; and, because it seems I always have to have multiple things going at once, I am currently collecting parts to put together another bike, this time for doing tricks on. Money dictates that it will be a long time before that one is finished---even though I have sold most of the bikes I have built so far in order to pay for the next ones in line---but I'm not in a hurry on this one. Speaking of bikes I have sold, AC has seen the first fixed gear I built around Ventura and Ojai twice now. Pretty cool that it is still being ridden and looks just the same six months later!

It all started one dark and chilly January evening, by the arid light of a halogen lamp trained on the hulk like a spotlight on a sunken battleship....

Crashbox and I spent a good deal of time rummaging about in the barn looking for an attachment for the air compressor, so we could remove the first layer of eucalyptus leaves, mouse leavings, hanging moss.  Failing in this quest, further diligent searching turned up a water hose that we managed to coax a trickle from, a trickle like that from a drinking fountain. With this and a kitchen scrub brush we spent half an hour on the interior.  We vowed then and there that the first priority would be to Get the Thing Running...and then move it somewhere we could Get the Thing Clean (and refix all the temporary fixes needed in the first phase, such as the tranny cooler dangling by its own entrails, and the transmission spout stuffed with a rag).  This cold, dark, depressing arrangement needed to change before morale could be sparked and the will to conquer, awoken....

I feel very late to the scene.  As conversation goes on I learn exactly how much this old truck was a part of everyone's life at The Ranch, and everyone seems to regard it with the same sort of bemused bewilderment that they would a crazy sheep dog...always there, tolerated gently, but always under the skin, and practically speaking it would be better if we put a bullet through its head....

Maybe that's all it takes for the crazy sheep dog, though...just another fresh attitude, a spark of optimism in someone who doesn't know the history (doesn't know about the dead sheep, all the hundreds of dollars spent in time, frustration and desperation)