Seeing the world past the bug splattered windshield

Been a while

2010-04-21T20:05:00.000-07:00

So the automotive front has changed a bit around here, cars and truck have come and gone and the whole flavor of the place is different. The S10 is still around, the Chevy was C4C'd to by my lovely new bride a Forester, and even the project cars have ebbed and flowed a bit the past year.

The location for my auto adventures has changed as well, now no longer in the south I have to deal with weather and such in MN. Trade-off was well worth it, though, no matter how cold it gets: Coming home to my lovely wife is always better than any old car project.

The one downfall to the move is a scaling back of the shop facilities. No longer is the a 6-car garage with 220 and air tools, now everything has to be done in a 2-car garage. I'm not sure which is more difficult, not ever having the wild assortment of tools available to you or having them but not having the room to set them up?

Why is this scaling down important, anyway? It's forced me (with some prodding from aforementioned lovely wife) to focus on one project at a time. Naturally my automotive ADD clashes with this rigid approach to getting something actually done, but I know I'll be the better for it. Not that it's totally stopped me from trying to do more than one thing at a time, but there simply isn't room for more than a couple.

So, what's first up? Let's just say it's mighty cute in baby blue.....

2009-06-20T07:15:00.000-07:00

So, the '85 Dodge crew cab used to move me back to SD after the Navy, the one involved in the deer accident at 70mph on the Ohio turnpike while pulling a 35' trailer, is finally getting rehabilitated this month.

Being an '85, the biggest engine Dodge had available to them was the mighty 360 V-8, not a bad motor for a 1/2 ton pickup but woefully inadequate for a crew-cab dually 1-ton. When I made the first trip to SD in it it was also obvious that the particular 360 in the truck was well past it's prime, so it was swapped out with one my father had just removed from one of his trucks and it made the next two trips on that motor. Shortly after the last trip the engine was sold off, and the truck has been sitting sans engine for the last few years.

The obviously easy answer would have been to install the rebuilt 440 I had from my previous '85 Dodge crew-cab and just run it. That probably would have happened if I had not run across the truck I always wanted to have, a 1970 Dodge crew-cab Camper Special, already equipped with a big-block 383. So the 440 has been working it's way into the '70, and the '85 continued to languish.

Then I located a motor claimed to be low mileage that seemed a perfect fit for the truck, a 413 Dodge industrial motor form a mobile home. This motor was dropped into the '85 only to slap me in the face with exhaust manifolds too wide to clear the frame. Since the industrial motors have a unique set of heads exclusive to them, and the manifold bolt pattern is different, regular manifolds couldn't be swapped on without swapping out everything above the short block.

So it sat for over a year with the motor sitting in place and not hooked up until early this month. Since the layout in the '70 is completely different with the solid front axle as opposed to the '85's IFS, the frame on that truck will accommodate the wider manifolds of the industrial motor. Sure the heads aren't the best possible ones for flow, but they are better then the '64 413 wedge ones that were on the 440, so it shouldn't effect performance on that motor too much, except for maybe lowering the compression ratio just a bit, which would be a good thing. (The pistons in the 440 motor were set-up for 9.75:1 or so, which was just a bit too much during long pulls when warmed up on bad gas.) The regular big block heads would then be installed on the 413, raising it's compression just a bit from the 7.5:1 or so it has, and both trucks should be heading down the highway under their own power next week.

The first part of the change is already done, the 413 heads have been installed on the 440 and everything hooked up. Ran into a snag with the oil pan sump needing to be in the front to clear the exhaust y-pipe, and the sump pickup being a bit long with the adapter fitting the machine shop installed in the block. The new pick-up is shortened and rethreaded, though, so the oil pan is on and the manifolds are hooked up, so we're a couple of belts and a lower rad hose away from the motor firing up. The regular heads needed new exhaust valves and some hardened seats installed, but they are back from the machine shop and look great, so that will be going together next weekend.

So, anyone need a newly big-block equipped '85 Dodge?

Back to roots

2008-12-11T10:43:00.000-08:00

So, the '59 Rekord has come and gone. Turns out a good friend of mine in Ohio wanted it as a project as well, and I suspect she would be better at following through with it than I would. So we have now traded projects, Rekord in exchange for a 1970 Opel Kadett wagon, and in the broze color I remember so well at that.

You see, my first longterm car was a bronze Opel Kadett wagon. I drove it around for parts of the last couple of years of High School and up through college until I joined the Navy. That car and I had some epic stories together, ranging from the frozen Wisconsin trip off to college to the trip with no brakes through KS, OK, and TX.

This one is off to the same sort of start, actually, and while it's a little scary it sort of seems to fit. See, on the way back from Ohio with the car I was stopped just shy of the border by Ohio's finest. Some line about a tip that "there was going to be a white truck pulling a junky car full of drugs" and next thing I know there's a K-9 unit circling the truck. No worries, I've never done any drugs and I'm sure my friend hasn't, so there shouldn't be anything to find.

That is until the dog goes nuts over the boxes of parts that came with the car in the back of the truck.

Next thing I know I'm being patted down and standing in the falling snow next to the truck while the police cars are piling up behind the truck and officers are thoroughly combing through every box. What a way to start a new relationship, right?

Luckily nothing was found, and I was sent on my way, but there were a couple of moments there wher I wondered how I was going to explain the situation at work. Not that it would really surprise anyone, I don't think, it would just get filed away as another one of those car stories....

New Toy

2008-09-20T12:22:00.000-07:00

So, I just bought me a new toy. It's a 1959 Opel Rekord Olympia. Here it is in the driveway:

Cool dash with a bar-graph speedometer.

Seats even look pretty good, and are as comfortable as a couch.

Trying out some video, or Riding the Stupid Tube

2008-08-17T08:11:00.000-07:00

Let's see if some video works.

Me on the Manta Ray "stupid tube," a flying inner tube.

More random pictures

2008-08-17T07:54:00.000-07:00

Just some fun pics, to move them off my computer.

My Mini Cooper, with my Friendship 2 Sidecar on top.

The same Friendship 2 Sidecar pretending to be mounted to my Katana:

My old Opel GT:

Random Car Pics (all mine)

2008-07-31T12:17:00.000-07:00

Some decently high resolution pics of some of the fun car projects I'll be working on eventually:

1948 American Lafrance 700-series pumper truck. This is going to be my tow truck for taking cars to and from shows, some day.

1970 Opel Kadett 1.1L sedan. No idea what I'm going to do with this one, though not ruling out jacking it 18" in the air on a pair of Suzuki Samurai axles.

1975 Opel 1900 (Ascona) Sportwagon. This one's getting a Manta nose and probably panel sides, still on the fence about the drivetrain.

The Mopar connection

2008-07-29T20:27:00.000-07:00

While I was burning through imported cars faster than shoes in High School the one constant around the farm was an old Dodge truck. Seldom the same Dodge truck, as my dad was going through them faster even than I was with cars, but there was always at least one truck around to do those farm things that need to be done. As a general rule Dad stuck to the '61-'71 Sweptline vintage of trucks, but once in a while we would move up to one of the '72-'82 body-style for a while.

We ran the gambit with these trucks: long and short bed, standard, club, and crew cabs, step-sides or not, the entire line of engines and transmissions. Dad tended to gravitate to short-box, step-side trucks whereas I tended to prefer long beds myself. Almost universally the trucks belonged to my Dad, but there were a couple that he never drove that were for the most part "my" trucks. This was way back before the Cummins motors were put in Dodge trucks too, back when the 360 was the biggest motor they had available after the government bailout, back when it was not even a tiny bit cool to be driving a Dodge.

The history with the Dodge trucks goes way back, well before I got my own first car. At 11 Dad and I towed home one particular '60's short box truck with some weird modifications. Seems the previous owner had swapped in a Dart rear axle for the taller, more highway oriented gearing, but it was really too narrow for the truck. Besides looking a bit funny, wheels all tucked in and such, the tires would rub the inner edges of the fender wells if you put any sort of load in the back. Looking back the axle must have been a Chrysler 8 3/4, which would have been a pretty hard to come by axle for a Dart, worth some $ now, but then all I knew was that it didn't work right in the truck and that Dad wanted to swap the truck axle back lamented losing the gear ratio from the Dart axle which he actually preferred.

At the time Dad was working an evening shift, 3-11:30 pm or so, and I hardly ever saw him while in school. The truck he was actually driving at the time was a '69 Crew-cab Camper Special with a short box, one that I had helped him swap motors on years before and which I currently now own the cab from some 20 years later. At the time it was not particularly reliable, though I forget the specifics. After one weekend of wrenching on the driver truck just to keep it going, listening to Dad bemoan how he wished the other truck was running, I decided it was time to do something about it.

I proceeded to remove the Dart axle from underneath the back of that truck. Turns out the truck axle I was putting back in was also a Chrysler 8 3/4, but everyone had told Dad that the trucks used coarse and the Darts used fine splines on the axles so the differentials couldn't be swapped. (It might have been the other way around, it was well over 20 years ago after-all.) Once they were both out, though, it's a pretty simple matter to swap spider gears, and with a manual around I was able to check clearances and bolt it all back together just the way Dad wished it had been done. It went back together and to the best of my knowledge the rear end was never an issue again with that truck.

That was one of the very first major operations I did on an automobile by myself. Since then I've swapped out scores of axles, more motors and transmissions than I could begin to count, and done pretty much everything that can be done to a car. It was that differential, that Mopar differential, that started the snowball rolling though. I still have a soft spot for the old Dodges, and have my own Crew-cab Camper Special, but at least now they're sort of cool.

(My father still owns this truck, in 1994 I drove it from SD to Houston, TX towing a trailer to fetch a car and had not a single bit of trouble. It doesn't look like much, but I could hop in it tomorrow and drive it anywhere.)

Heart strings

2008-07-28T20:21:00.000-07:00

During the first half of my Junior year of High School I was holding down three jobs while attending High School full time. At the time the law stipulated that a minor was not allowed to work more than 25 hours a week while still in school, but since the different jobs never talked to each other they could all maintain plausible deniability. I started my day around 5am with a paper route, @110 papers on weekdays, 135 on Sunday, probably 35 blocks or so. This was finished up by 7am, so I could go to work at the kitchen in the Middle School, initially doing their stockroom chores, then basic food prep once I got things in the stockroom running smoothly. After school I would put in another 30-45 minutes at the High School kitchen cleaning and mopping, basic dishes and such. By 5pm I would be over at one of the local supermarkets working in their bakery/deli/cafe until it closed up at 9pm.

Why is all this important, and how does it relate to cars? At the start of the school year I was driving a 1972 VW Super Beetle, but as the weather turned it got replaced with a fully loaded 1981 Ford Granada on loan from my Dad. Later the Granada made way for a 1974 AMC Matador, one of my favorite cars to drive to this day but terrible on fuel, then eventually to the pinnacle of that year, a 1973 Opel Manta.

This Opel was significant because I was only the second owner of the car. It belonged to a local guy who had taken it apart to restore it and had somehow never finished up the work. During the years post dis assembly the poor guy divorced his wife and when she kicked him out he didn't have room to take the car with him. The wife worked with me at the High School and after a couple months it somehow got brought up in conversation and the car was given to me, as in free. Thinking back, it was my very first free car.

This particular woman had a daughter a couple years behind me in school, and truth be told I liked the mother so much I always sort of hoped the daughter and I would hit it off, but we never really managed to revolve into the same circle. I would work with this woman again a few years later at another job, and she would work with my Mother for a while after that, and there was certainly the potential for a close knit couple of families, but it never really blossomed. For the time being, though, we were friends, the mother and I, and she gave me a free car at the ripe old age of 16.

Now the car had been partially disassembled, but it was in remarkably good shape. Hardly a speck of rust to be found, paint still shiny and glossy, just no interior and non-running because, well, it had been partially disassembled. I managed to wire it up enough to get it running again, and my parent's gave me a new muffler installed by the local muffler shop for my birthday that year. (It was a $28 muffler, and another $25 to install with some pipe, total was $53 I didn't have for whatever reason.) I installed a pair of bucket seats from a car that happened to be sitting around the farm, and not much else, and started driving it into the second semester of the school year.

That semester I dropped the paper route and went down to part time at school so I could attend college part time as well. While taking four classes at the High school I was also taking two at the local University because at the time my school didn't offer AP classes. I remember getting and paying my first college tuition bill, $45 a credit hour plus another $48 or so an hour in fees and misc. Over $900 out of pocket, cash money, for a 16-year old, back when minimum wage was barely $3 an hour. In reflection, those #s work out as a bit frightening: Figure I was taking home after taxes and SS about $1.85 an hour, that's almost 500 hours of work spent on college classes by a teenager. I'm so much lazier now.

Now parking at the University was then and continues to be now a terrible chore. One class was in the middle of the day, so I had to get to the college, park, get to class, attend the hour of class, get back to the car, then get back to the high school all in under 140 minutes. As college students are wont to do, sometimes this meant I had to get creative with where I parked, and one fine spring day it bit me squarely in the bottom.

I had parked behind the main business building on campus, which had a single lane driveway out to the street. To the left of the driveway were two "motorcycle only" parking spaces then one "compact car only" space to ensure that there would be visibility for cars leaving the driveway. On this particular day there was a pickup and a full-sized van parked in the motorcycle spots, and I couldn't see around them. I waited, impatiently, for an opening, then goosed the little Rallye out into traffic. Unfortunately the gap I was shooting into was already occupied, by my insurance agent's secretary.

The Opel crumbled like a trooper, water pump skewering the radiator, lower valance piercing the oil filter, fender collapsing in on the tire. The poor little guy bled all his fluids out right there on the asphalt. We had been together for less than four months, this car and I, and it was all over. It would stay parked out at the farm for the next 6 years, until at my ex-wife's insistence it was sent to the scrap yard. It still had the new muffler on it when it was crushed, not really new anymore, but still very new to me.

Now I have another Manta, new to me just a month ago, that's the same color, and about the same year. This one's a bit fancier, with a factory sunroof and cloth interior, but when I look at it it looks the same to me. I hope it fares better than it's heart-sake.

Because I can

2008-07-10T09:14:00.000-07:00

Besides cars the other love in my life is my small fleet of furry love: my cats. The three that had been eating all my food and kicking me out of my own bed are here in the only picture I have of them all together. The old fellow of the group, my grey tiger-stripe named Lump, was recently moved back to my parent's house in SD so Mom would have someone to cuddle up with on the couch leaving me with just Murrey and Patty.

Sadly, after a couple months of happy purring at Mom's, Lump's health took a turn for the worst and he's passed on. Now he'll be missed by two house-holds.

Opel 1900 Ascona

2008-07-10T09:12:00.001-07:00

Some first-look pictures of the 1900 Ascona sedan.

Projects revisited

2008-06-06T20:55:00.001-07:00

So the automotive landscape around here has changed a bit the last month or so, a wholesale changeout of drivers and projects. Here's the big run-down:
-Mini Cooper sold to happy new owner from FL.
-Trooper sold
-Opel Gt sold
-Morris Minor sold

Added the following to the fleet:
-1990 Chevy 1500

-2002 Chevy S10

-1973 Opel Manta

Both of the new pickups are runners, no work required, though the S10 is going to get a 4.8L Vortec LSx-based motor swap when I get some room in the shop (either the Midget together or one of the Opels.)

Wall Drug

2008-05-15T17:14:00.000-07:00

Last week I had the occasion to drive across my home state of SD both directions on a last minute trip out to Rapid City for a funeral. Growing up in SD I have made all or part of that trip countless times, though not in the last 10 years or so. Sadly, this time the trip had an entirely different flavor and I couldn't put my finger on exactly why until almost half-way back across the state: The Wall Drug signs are nearly all gone.

Growing up in SD there are a few constants that the locals all know but the tourists don't:
-Mt. Rushmore isn't really all that cool, but Crazy Horse is amazing.
-A top-down or two-wheeled trip through the Needles is an experience you'll savor.
-The Badlands are a destination spot every child should get to experience, and every adult too.
-When you drive through Chamberlain you stop and eat at Al's Oasis.
-The Iowa-esque boredom of a drive across the state is made bearable by the Wall Drug signs.

Used to be there was maybe 12 places along I-90 in SD where you could stop on the side of the road and not see a Wall Drug sign. Now you can go miles and miles and not see one. Sure they were campy, kind of like the intermission commercials at a drive-in theatre, but they were a tangible facet of that particular stretch of road. And now they're gone. I remember how my Mother cringed a bit inside as I read every sign aloud, the entire trip, in the proud but halting way only a 6-year old learning to read can. I remember playing the alphabet game with the family on a trip to the Hills and getting through the alphabet a dozen times thanks to the Wall Drug signs and SD's "AuthoriZed Vehicles Only" signs. All those things you had to do back when the speed limit was 55 and it took 8 hours to cross the state and there was no TV in the car.

I never suspected billboards would go the way of the pay-phone, and it's a bit depressing.

Project Opel GT, post 1

2008-03-21T14:17:00.000-07:00

So, some pictures of the Opel GT, just after trying out my new baby pressure washer on it. Got some rust issues on the forward edges of the rear fenders, as well as on the back part of the front fenders. Probably going to need a new hood as well, and some patching here and there. Not sure it's really worth trying to "restore" this one, but it shouldn't be too bad to clean it up, patch it and make it safe, and end up with something that would turn heads and probably be competitive at local cruise-ins.

Project Round-up

2008-03-17T16:01:00.000-07:00

Seems I haven't gotten around to updating this in ages, and I'm going to swing it a bit into a different direction. I'm going to come out and say it right now, I have far too many projects, far too many things I would like to have or have completed for a lifetime of work to ever achieve. As a transition to talking more about the minutia of each of them I'm going to do a brief run-down of the biggies here, so I can refer back to them later. These are in no particular order, at this point, just a listing as them come off the top of my head as I sit here right now.

Project one: 1970 MG Midget Arkley: The Arkley kit was purchased already installed (poorly) on a very rusty and engine-less car, and a replacement tub has been scrounged to transfer the kit too. Motivation for this vehicle is planned to be a Geo Metro 1L 3-cylinder bolted to a Suzuki Samurai 5-speed manual transmission and mostly stock Midget running gear. This is hopefully going to be a fair-weather non-highway commuter, and if it goes as planned should be 40+mpg. Currently the kit parts and most of the engine bay stuff is unbolted from the Arkley tub and I need to start the cutting and patching on the new tub before bolting it all together.

Project 2: 1992 Isuzu Trooper: The trooper was a screaming deal from e-vil-bay, sadly with a blown motor. Initial plans were to replace the 3.2L DOHC V-6 with a 2.8L push rod V-6 I had out of an '89 Trooper, but the logistics of making the transmission work without the engine computer feeding it data are over my head at this point. Current plans include an '89 Chevy 4.3L V-6 paired to either a 200R4 or NV3500 and converting it to 2WD which I prefer or a 700R4 out of an '83 Suburban to keep it 4WD. Currently the front axle is unbolted from the chassis and suspension but not yet removed and both drive shafts are out, and it's sitting on jack stands.

Project 3: 1973 Opel GT: This was purchased completely for resale, as the GT really doesn't interest me much but I have a ton of Opel parts sitting around. After getting it home the rust issues it have are worse than initially thought, so I'm going to use it to practice some sheet metal welding and fix it up a bit before I put it on the market. I'm waffling daily as to whether I should keep it stock or drop something exotic into it. It currently sits as I got it, engine and trans out and the rest pretty much complete.

Project 4: 1972 Opel 1900 Sedan: This was purchased in a package deal with the GT and is hopefully going to be my new daily driver when I sell the Mini Cooper. That same aforementioned Isuzu Trooper 2.8L V-6 will be going into it with either a Toyota 5-speed bolted up using a Jeep bell housing or with a regular Chevy S10 2WD T-5. The motor still retains the Isuzu deep but short front-to-back oil pan, but has been modified with a FWD timing cover and pulley set-up to shorten the engine a bit, as well as an Edelbrock 4-bbl carb manifold and Mallory distributor. Should be plenty quick int he little bugger, might need to swap in the Toyota truck rear axle I was initially planning on using in the Kadett. Currently the car sits as purchased, not run in several years and no attempt to start the motor at this point.

Project 5: California Friendship 1 Sidecar installation on my 2006 Katana 750: A fixed rig would be too easy, I want a leaner, and since sport bikes aren't supposed to have side cars the chassis and mounting points on the bike are all going to have to be fabricated by me. I'm optimistic, but we'll see. Body for the sidecar is in my spare room, getting some sanding and paint prep as I get to it watching TV or what-not along with the Samsonite saddlebags I want to paint to match and install at the same time.

Project 6: Locost #1: My friend Dorri and I are building a Locost, the first hopefully of at least two, maybe 3. This one will utilize a Miata rear IRS set-up and fabricated front arms with Opel Manta front spindles featuring BMW/Volvo brakes. Still undecided on drive train, but the chassis was sized to be able to (barely) fit all the biggest engines in my shop right now, including the Toyota 5MGE that I recently sold and a small block Chevrolet V-8. This should mean pretty much anything smaller should fit, and it ends up being the one I keep it'll probably get an Opel drive train, but if Dorri ends up with this one it'll be an SBC for sure.

Project 7: Locost 2: This one was supposed to be the one for Dorri, featuring a late-model Camaro rear and Corvette spindles to match the SBC V-8 and Corvette rims all around. This one might not happen as I'm leaning towards Locost 3 for myself more and more and Dorri would then end-up with Locost 1.

Project 8: Locost 3: Locost 3 is going to be a ground-up redesign of the classic chassis, mostly because it'll be a mid-engine unit featuring a Toyots 1NZE from a 2--6 Scion XA. Currently still in the doodle stages the biggest hurdle was crossed last week when I figured out how best to successfully build the rear suspension using a combination of the stock Scion spindles and Miata IRS geometry. Currently it's little more than the loaded sub-frame from the Scion sitting on my motorcycle trailer in the carport, and I may decide it would serve me better as a trike, but time will tell.

Project 9: Morris Minor Traveler: This was purchased to be a gift for my father. It's hardly more than a rusted out shell, but I may still fab up a scratch built chassis for it and make it a runner. I'm leaning towards stretching it a bit and making it a pickup instead of van, and installing something small and fuel miserly in it like a Festiva engine coupled to a Miata transmission. This is pretty low priority though, really little more than something to ponder on once in a while.

Projects 10 (were done with whole cars for a bit): Big-ass BBQ Grill: Big fire-suppression pressure vessel, about 125# of steel and 200gal capacity, 5' tall and 3' diameter that I want to turn into a custom BBQ grill. I want it split into two halves, one side set-up for propane and the other for charcoal. Currently waiting on me getting the plasma torch operational again and purchasing some steel to build the framework out of.

Project 11: Engine Coffee Table: What's left of an old Maxwell flathead 4-cylinder engine out in th shop, want to drive out the pistons, remove the crank and cam, then paint the block flat black and toss a piece of glass on top for a coffee table. Not sure why I haven't got to this one, lazy I guess. Maybe this weekend? Companion piece could be the MG block and crank that came with the replacement body tub turned into an end table and lamp.

Project 12: Opel 2.2L Turbo motor. This should be the top of the Opel CIH food-chain all said and done. Features a 1.9L block, 2.2L crank, 2.2L head with over-sized valves and porting, custom pistons, hot cam, new lifters, roller rockers fixed by Jim in NZ, sheet metal intake manifold with SDS EFI injector bosses, Mustang throttle-body, custom fabricated exhaust manifold, turbocharger, intercooler, aluminum flywheel, S10 clutch, T5 transmission, Crane Hi-6 ignition with boost retard and a slew of other parts still waiting final assembly. Need to decide which block to use and get it machined, then start the wrenching. So many parts, so many $, years and years into this one. This engine is bound for my Opel Kadett wagon race car, which you will notice isn't even brought up here yet, because it's still at my folk's place in SD and none of thos projects are listed here yet.

Project 13: New Dual Opel car trailer: Going to have a 24' deck plus a bit more on the tongue for the Opel to hang out on, feature dual torsion axles with hydraulic disc brakes actuated via surge coupler, and weigh in under 1000# if all goes as planned. Not something you want to load a couple of '74 Impalas on, but should easily handle 2k# Opels two at a time. Currently waiting on the gas kit to come in for the MIG welder and me to borrow Mike's truck and fetch the steel.

Call that good for this installment, I'll add some pictues and more information later.

College bound

2007-05-24T09:39:00.000-07:00

For my Sophomore year of college at UH I was all set to make the trip a week early back to school to make it back in time for the Honors college's retreat just before school started, this time as a councilor. The plan was to drive down the trusty Opel Kadett wagon from SD, and my GF from Houston had flown up to do the drive back down with me. We had already done the long road trip up to SD together earlier in the summer, and despite that trip being in a non-AC '63 Dodge pickup pulling a trailer with the heat on the whole way, she had been a trooper the whole trip.

We had everything loaded-up, we were ready to go, and then we were off. Now I had converted this particular Opel from an automatic to a 4-speed over the summer, and was a bit concerned as I have not had great luck with Opel 4-speeds in the past. Since I had a spare, and I was going to be in Houston for the semester, I had loaded-up the extra in the Opel's "way-back compartment" which is something you only know about if you drove a station wagon in from the 60's, to take along just-in-case. Turned out to be a good plan, as we ended-up having to replace it in a rest stop half-way across Nebraska. Proudly, that took under 25 minutes, drive in to drive out.

Somewhere mid-KS though was when we started really having issues. The car was running like a champ, perhaps the best it ever had, but unfortunately the brakes were fading fast due to an internal leak between the master cylinder and the brake booster. With a full master cylinder I would get one, maybe two stops before the cylinder was empty. Took a while to fully diagnose, but by the time I reached my own personal Bermuda Triangle of Perry/ Ponca City Oklahoma I knew what was going on and needed to do something to fix it. We stopped everywhere in Ponca City looking for a replacement master cylinder, and of course no one had anything for an Opel. If I had known then that a BMW one would interchange in a pinch I would have been fine, but I didn't learn that tidbit until 2001 or so.

So, what do do? Were were in a manual transmission car, on the Interstate, with a fully functional parking brake to bring us down the last little bit from what down-shifting would get us to. Do you keep going, or stop and get the problem fixed?

Of course we kept going.

All the stops, though, had really lengthened the trip, and now instead of getting all the way to Houston, as planned, we only got as far as just south of Oklahoma City before I was too dog tired to keep going. Spent the night in a Red Roof inn, in Norman, I think, and it was the best hotel I ever remember sleeping in. The bath had the little pressure jets in ti, and after that day it was pure heaven. We slept in enough to only catch the tail end of rush-hour traffic then headed on through Dallas to Houston.

If you know you're highways, though, you know OK City to Dallas is just under 4 hours, as is Dallas to Houston. By leaving just south of OK City just after rush hour we got into Houston right smack in the middle of it. My right arm was twitching and burning, and the rear brakes had all but failed by the time I finally got my girl home. Spent the next day with the GF's car trolling BAP-Geon and various other places looking for a master cylinder before finally finding one, used, at a little junk-yard. Swapped it in, bled the works, and the following day we were off to the Honor's retreat.

Background Noise

2007-02-22T17:54:00.000-08:00

I've been struggling the last few days to work out the timeline for cars I've owned over the years, and decided to commit it here so I can do some editing and detail work. This is mostly for my own personal use, but it might give a reader some insight into what I've been up to.

-Cars I've owned and in which I was just the principle driver: (Blue signifies ones I still have, parts cars not included)

-1969 Dodge D200 Crew Cab Camper Special (Long Bed) (Teal)
-1974 Opel Manta Rallye (Mustard Yellow)
-1973 Datsun 610 (Yellow)
-1970 Opel Kadett Sedan (Blue)
-1983 Toyota Tercel 4WD Wagon (White)
-1979 Datsun 620 King Cab 2WD Pickup (Brown)
-1967 Dodge Dart 4-Door (Beige)
-1967 Ford Econoline Van (Red)
-1979 Datsun F10 Wagon (Blue)
-1978 Toyota Corolla Sedan (Yellow)
-1967 Dodge Sweptside (Yellow)
-1973 VW Sandrail (Blue/White)
-1972 VW Super Beetle (Orange/Black)
-1980 Ford Granada (Brown)
-1974 AMC Matador (Blue)
-1973 Opel Manta Rallye (Blue)
-1974 Dodge Club Cab Pickup (Orange/White)
-1978 Dodge Club Cab Pickup (Blue)
-1970 Opel Kadett Wagon (Bronze)
-1981 Audi 5000 (Blue)
-1969 Opel Kadett Rallye (Blue)
-1987 Chevy Astro (Blue)
-1940 International D-Series Pickup (Blue-ish)
-1995 Geo Prism (Red)
-1970 Dodge Sweptline (Blue/Red/Yellow/Green/Primer)
-1970 Opel GT (Green)
-1979 Chrysler New Yorker (Brown)
-1971 VW Bug (Green)
-1967 Dodge D200 Club Cab Camper Special (Long Bed) (Beige)
-1985 Dodge D350 Crew Cab (Long Bed) (Blue)
-1995 Chrysler Cirrus (Red)
-1973 Bradley GT (Brown)
-1970 Opel Kadett Wagon (Green)
-1998 Jeep Cherokee (Red)
-1971 Opel Kadett Sport Sedan (Mint)
-1948 American LaFrance 700-Series Pumper (Red, of course)
-1978 IH School Bus w/15' flatbed (Yellow)
-1992 Honda Accord (Black)
-1978 Dodge Ramcharger (Green)
-1970 Opel Kadett 4-Door (Green)
-1985 Dodge D350 Crew Cab Dually (Long Bed) (Gray)
-1967 Opel Kadett Sport Coupe (Blue)
-1967 Opel Admiral (Beige)
-1969 Opel Kadett Fastback (Blue)
-1971 Opel Kadett Sedan (Red)
-1985 Dodge W150 4WD (Gray)
-1975 Opel 1900 (Ascona) Sportwagon (Orange)
-1975 Opel 1900 (Ascona) Sportwagon (Yellow)
-1987 Jaguar XJS (Blue)
-2006 Scion XB (Green)
-1983 Toyota Pickup (White)
-1992 Isuzu Trooper (Blue)
-1970 Dodge Crew Cab Camper Special (Long Bed) (Blue)
-1987 Dodge Ramcharger (Blue)
-1969 MG Midget Arkley (Black-ish)
-1959 Morris Minor Traveller (Cream)
-2007 Mini Cooper S (Green)
-1973 Opel GT (Red)
-1972 Opel Ascona (Bronze)
-1990 Chevrolet C1500 (White)
-2002 Chevrolet S10 (Red)

Calling car #3

2006-11-18T12:33:00.000-08:00

(Picture is two old friends, both of which left after my freshman year of high school.)

So, in this Blog I've given some details of the first and second car I owned, and as I just today stumbled across a couple grainy old disk camera pics of car #3, we'll share a few stories from that particular time in my youth:

Car # 2, the Datsun 610, had been involved it an accident and was a total loss. Luckily no one was hurt, but as I was still not even 15 yet the parents pretty thoroughly took away all driving prevailed for a while. Being the industrious student I was, though, I made it so hard for them to get me to and from various functions that they finally capitulated and let me get another car. Dad did, however, try a different track with this one, buying it himself so he could then sell it out from under me at any time he saw fit, just in case. I was fine with that, and car #3 was another Opel, which was good too.

unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, Dad had outsmarted me with his choice of autos. The old man had at one time run a fairly successfully import auto repair business, and he chose for me perhaps the best kid-car ever, a 1970 Opel Kadet sedan, homely as a car could be and powered by the tiniest of 1.1l, 52hp motors. Seriously folks, I can carry the motor under one arm, there's one in my shop right now I had to lift onto a shelf just last week. Top speed on this car was a mind numbing 73mph, with 4 miles and a hill to get it there. Now around town was another matter, with the tiny tires and 4.11 or so rear gears this car was a hoot around town, it just wasn't a great highway cruiser. I loved the car after getting past it's homeliness, and have owned another dozen or so of them since, maybe more.

That's not to say the car was all peaches and cream. Quite the contrary, I didn't know anything about Opels back then and there are a few quirks to them you really need to know:
-Quirk one: There is a handle under the dash to the right of the steering column. Push it towards the firewall to divert air through the heater core, bull it back to maximize air flow from the outside through the two center vents on the dash. If you don't know this you may try to drive the whole winter with no heater or defroster.
-Quirk two: Opels had aluminum taillight sockets. This doesn't seem to matter much, except that 30 year-old aluminum oxidizes and renders your lights inoperative. You can fix this by pulling the battery negative wire and inserting a battery terminal brush in every bulb socket on the car. 99% of the time the lights will all work after that. Add a little petroleum jelly or if you have it dielectric grease to make it last anther decade.
-Quirk three: Those pop-out side windows are held in by tabs glued on to the front edges, and the glue breaks loose if you don't have material conditions perfect when you glue them on. Find the front edge trim from a 66-67 Kadett, it actually has a channel to clamp the front of the glass and keep it from falling out at speed.

Drove the wheels off that particular car, until an unfortunate parking incident with someone who did a poor job of parking behind me and me not being able to see exactly where they were through the frosted-over glass. Then that Opel too left my life, never to be heard from again. Shame too, I'd buy it back in a minute, it was an excellent runner with a host of (unknown to me then) rare speed parts on that little motor.

First trip on I-10

2006-11-17T21:37:00.000-08:00

If you've been reading this Blog you may have noticed a previous post that was somewhat of a cliff-hanger. We're tracking back in this post again to my Freshman year of college, the same week after Thanksgiving that I got back to Houston just a bit later than expected.

So, there I am, getting in on Tues. morning, literally running across campus with a hand-written paper that was due the day before after 8 days of weird driving adventures. I hadn't even stopped by the dorm because my roommate was in class with me anyway, and after lunch and afternoon classes and whatnot I didn't actually get back to my room until after dinner that night. Keep in mind that there was another trip to New Orleans planned for this coming weekend as well, and it was a trip to fetch an old car at that.

That very trip was already planned out to be almost as weird as the one I just got back from. We were going to drop my roommate off at his place in Lake Charles, LA on the way, and he was going to get a ride back to school with his folks. We, my automotivly inclined friend and I, were also taking along another classmate to visit her family in exchange for lodging. That's four of us. In a Ford Festiva. Ah, the picture resolves itself...

Now, to fully appreciate the mood in the car, you need to understand as a reader a few more things abut me and the buddy I was taking along. We were both on full-ride scholarships based on academics (actually, everyone in the car was) so this was a bit of a nerdy group. I had been on the weight roller-coaster for so long, and dating the same girl essentially since 8th grade, so I wasn't much of a Casanova. My roommate was in much the same boat. My buddy, on the other hand, was one of those good looking guys who always got the girls. And there was a girl in the car, and turns out she was a cutie too.

I hadn't really paid a lot of attention to this particular gal, after all, right up until the week before I was planning on marrying my High School sweetheart. She had helped me study for a couple of exams, and had done a great job, but there wasn't much more there than a casual acquaintance. Somewhere along the line either my buddy or myself had actually taken a good hard look at the girl, though, and we had both decided she would be someone worth getting to know better. At the time I was wishing him good luck because, again, I was already spoken for. But now, on this trip, we were the fiercest of competitors, vying for the hand of the fair maiden.

I thought maybe I even had a chance. On finally getting to my room the night I got back to college my roommate handed me almost a whole pad of "yellow stickies" the gal had left for me wondering what was going on, how I was, and if we were still on for the weekend. I put the laundry away, cleaned myself up a bit, and set off to find her to make sure everything was OK still. When I finally found her she caught me completely off-guard and tacklehugged me. I'll even admit to it, a 105# girl knocked me clean over, and me at 165. Now, keeping in mind that I was a college student, with all the appropriate hormones, and I had just been kicked in the teeth by my fiance, either this gal was truly interested or cunningly manipulative, and I didn't care which. This was all making for an interesting weekend.

So, now you understand the mood in the car. I'm the underdog, the squire competing with his knight for the princess' hand. It was hard to tell how I was doing on the trip over, after all, my friend was smooth and this gal was soaking all the attention up like a sponge. When we got to her Grand parent's place, and the room assignments were doled out, though, I was sure I had lost after all. My buddy got the spare bedroom, where a new couple could talk the night away in privacy, and I got the couch. I was sure that meant I was out of the picture entirely. Sure that is until she came out and sat with me at 2am for a few hours. Ah, young love; I couldn't tell you a thing that was said that night, or what she was wearing or pretty much anything about the quiet conversation there on the couch, but I recall vividly how she smelled and how often I saw a sparkle in her eye from the reflection of the porch light through the front window.

We ended up buying the car and driving it back to Houston, though it never did do much more driving after that. I brought my other car down a few weeks later for x-mas break, and it mostly sat around until it finally got home to SD over the summer. We got pulled over just shy of the LA state line by a highway patrolman for not having taillights or license plates, but since we were heading out of his state, he let us slide.

I got the girl too. We dated for over a year then I asked her to marry me as well. We were happily engaged for almost another year until shortly before I left college and joined Uncle Sam's Canoe Club. It would even be fair to say the break-up precipitated the enlistment, but wasn't the only factor. More happy times, times that started with a couple of very weird road trips.

Teenagers across Iowa

2006-11-10T17:26:00.000-08:00

Over the summer between my Freshman and Sophomore year's of High School, a good friend of mine moved to Iowa, the other side of Iowa. Keeping in mind that this was before the Internet and cell phones, we were still just kids, we did manage to keep in touch with the guy and my whole group of friends missed him.

Through the course of the Sophomore year, I somehow got on the hardest diet you could imagine: a bottle of Squirt soda and a king-sized Snickers bar was the breakfast/lunch of choice. At the time I was working a paper route from 5am-6am, working for the school cafeteria 6am-8am, then rushing over to go to school at 8:20. I would stop at some gas station on the way, grab the chosen "meal" and then head on to school. After school I worked another hour at the High School Cafeteria, then off to afterschool activities, then off to work 5pm to 9 or so most nights. The evening job was usually concessions of some sort, so there was food available there as well, so it wasn't like I didn't eat, I just never made time to eat.

That same fall there were two cases of students in my High School being bitten by Brown Recluse spiders, one of which was a very popular guy and pretty serious. School was even shut down for fumigation.

I also had progressed through a couple more cars that fall, a '79 Datsun 620 pickup, '83 Toyota Tercel 4WD station wagon, '66 Dodge Dart 4-door, '69 Ford Econoline, and finally a '78 Toyota Corolla by Spring Break.

How does all this fit together? Well here goes:

The school had been fumigated over holiday break, and still another student was bitten. The decision was made to fumigate again over spring break, this time with all the lockers and desks and everything throughout the school open. This, in turn, meant all the lockers had to be emptied out. By Spring Break the collection of glass Squirt bottles in the bottom of my locker had reached 200+ in # and was still growing. While SD didn't have bottle deposits, Iowa did, and all the bottles were marked for Iowa deposit refund. They were loaded in to the back of the Corolla, all 6 paper bags worth, and the whole group of us decided to meet up with our friend half-way across IA and bring him back for the break. His Mom drove his half, and I drove mine. We lucked out, because at a nickel a piece for the bottles and 97 cents a gallon for gas we were able to fund the entire excursion on Squirt bottles.

Imagine, if you will, four 16-year olds, loaded into an old car, driving on free gas, half-way across Iowa. Sure, the car didn't have enough power to get us up any hills at over 40mph, that wasn't going to stop us from passing everyone we could going down the other side of the hill pedal to the floor! One poor guy in particular played hopscotch with us for over an hour, passing us going up, and getting passed by us going down the hundreds of hills on HWY 20 in western Iowa. He was a great sport about it, and we all waved our happy waves at each passing. I think how angry I would be now f a car load of kids did that to me and I wish I knew when and how I changed. How some things sure have changed.

It was an excellent spring break, too. Great time for all of us, and a couple great trips half-way across Iowa.

Of firetrucks and deer

2006-04-14T18:52:00.000-07:00

In Aug '04 I separated for the Navy and moved back to SD from Upstate NY. In my time in NY I had acquired a 1948 American LaFrance pumper intending on it replacing my '85 Dodge crew cab as a car hauler. As the summer passed, though, it became apparent that the truck wasn't going to be complete enough to drive home to SD under it's own power, so I was going to have to make a trip back out to NY to fetch it.

Now, the fetching of a firetruck is no easy task. You have to figure in it's 4 ton weight, massive size, and in my case weight imbalance front to rear because of the bed being already removed and it being a cabover. Also important is the fact that I didn't have a class A CDL, which would allow me to pull a trailer over 5 tons, nor a big truck and trailer combo of my own to really work with. I did have a truck, an '85 Dodge D350 Dually, but it's motor was tired, and on the last trip the outer dual had grenaded, taking the only good part of the all rust bed with it. The trailer I would have to make, and make light enough to squeak home under the 10k total weight limit.

As luck would have it, the city was busy condemning mobile homes left and right in an attempt at beautification. These condemned trailers ended-up at the city dump, where pretty much everything except the steel frames was buried in the land-fill. The steel frames could be had cheaply enough, though, if I went through the work of removing them from the trailers myself. Which is just what I did.

Armed with the steel from two trailer frames, a set of axles, my new plasma torch, and my old trust stick welder, I proceeded to build a 35' gooseneck trailer. The plasma torch proved invaluable, as did my Father, who was surprisingly a much steadier hand with the torch than I am. We spent the better part of a week cutting and welding, and though I was not happy with the final tongue set-up, Dad assured me it was good enough. We then yanked the bed off the truck, fabbed up a hitch and some fenders, and called it good. Last minute fixes included a new steering column, because the last one had been fried by someone improperly wiring up the trailer brakes to the left turn signal. Also last minute my Uncle decided to join me for the road trip, though not too familiar with a big trailer I was thankful for the help.

Now, if we had taken a trip in the way-back machine to look over my Uncle's track record with road trips, we might have decided it was best for him not to come, His history with breaking cars is apparently legendary. Live and learn, I guess.

The first 1/4 of the trip was pretty uneventful, making it to and through Chicago uneventfully. I took over driving just before we got into the brunt of the traffic and was planning on driving to mid-Ohio. I didn't quite make it, or rather, we stopped mid-Ohio, but not because I wanted to. Some silly deer decided to commit ritualistic frogger-style suicide that night, and do it with my truck. I plowed through it at 70 mph, tossing the deer 150 feet and the radiator through the water pump on the truck. As I fought the truck to the shoulder with the hood up my sleeping uncle was tossed onto the floor and very rudely woken up. Some deer are so rude, I tell you...
I called the Highway Patrol, my Uncle called AAA, and we had plenty of time to kill. After 10 minutes or so of waiting, I decided to break out the tools and see how bad the damage was. By the time the Highway Patrol got there I had the used the Hi-Lift to straighten out the header panel, and pulled out the rad and condenser. We were basically ready to bolt in the new parts when the tow truck got there, and he dropped us off at an Autozone.

This is where the road Karma that dominates my driving life took over. Who would have believed that any auto parts store would have a clutch fan, fan clutch, water pump, radiator, turn signal, and all the misc little parts all on hand, on any given day, for a 19 year old Dodge truck? No store should have all that stuff, but it did, because I needed it. All I had to do was spend $, which is how my life works. We hit the deer at 3:45am, and we were driving away, with a 2 hour nap and breakfast at Denny's, at 10:45am. Pretty good, I think. The truck was even uglier, but everything worked.

The rest of the trip out was fine, even loading was uneventful, then we got stuck pulling the trailer out of my friend's yard and the tongue on the trailer buckled. Dad's "good enough" has a bad track record too, come to think of it.

So now what? Trailer's got a 4 ton truck on it, and no tongue, and we're 1200 miles away from where we need to go. Called around, got ahold of a gas-powered welder, dug my sawzall out of storage, and while my Uncle cut off the old tongue I took the truck to get some scrap steel at the yard in Albany. When I got back I cut the new metal to length, welded it in, and after returning the welder we were ready to go again.

This time we made it all the way to the middle of Iowa before something happened, but it sure was a doozy when it did. Seems the lug bolts on the driver's side didn't think they needed to be there, so all 10, that's 5 on each wheel, fell out, and both wheels fell off just outside Iowa City. Now, what are the odds that the only auto parts store in town would be open on a Sun. and would have 10 lug studs for a mobile home? Doesn't matter, with my Karma they had just that many, and opened 10 minutes after I found them. Just took more $ is all.

Back on the road, got home just before dark. Total trip time, 4 days, total cost gas +about $900 in repairs, but the pic of the way we rolled back in is worth it all.

First solo trip

2006-03-26T12:12:00.000-08:00

Growing up in the Midwest almost requires that kids get a license early and start driving just for the sake of getting around. I was no exception, getting my "farm" drivers license the first Friday after my 14th birthday in January of 8th grade, and only waiting that long because they only did driving tests on Fridays. For the first few months my driving experience was limited to the back and forth the 5 miles into town for school and church, then over the summer my range expanded to back and forth to work, which was 23 miles each way. Most of that driving had been on a motorcycle as well, as I did and do generally prefer them over cars and the fuel mileage was a lot better on a 250 Yamaha 4-cyl street bike than it'll ever be in any car. I didn't really go more than 25 miles from home then until I had had my license for almost 8 months, when I went the 55 miles solo to Sioux Falls, SD to go school clothes shopping by myself.

Now to this point in my life my mother had always procured my school clothes for me, usually by trying things on at the local Sears or K-Mart and mail ordering from Sears, JC Penneys, and Wards. We didn't have a lot of money, so the wardrobe usually consisted of whatever from last year still fit and 5 new shirts, 3 new pants, and a couple new packs of scivvies and socks. Usually they were also the cheapest clothes available, much to my teenage embarrassment. Things were even worse because of the hand nature had dealt my physique, being at the end of middle school not quite 5' tall and over 180#. That working summer, though, walking 8-12 miles a day through corn fields all summer and simultaneously experiencing a major growth spurt, I was going back to school 4+" taller and 50+ pounds lighter, and looking good. The school clothes for this year needed to reflect that, and my Mother saw it as much as I did.

So, we struck a deal that would last the rest of High School. She would figure up her usual fall clothing order, and I had veto power over anything I chose. If I vetoed something she would give me half the item's value towards buying suitable replacements myself and order the rest. This meant that if I wanted name brand jeans or shoes I wouldn't be shouldering the cost burden entirely myself, and it freed Mom up a little $ to spend on my siblings instead. As I was working as well this was a great, and we agreed fair, plan.

So, that fall before my Freshman year of High School, I set off in my recently acquired Datsun 610 for Sioux Falls armed with a summer's worth of savings, a new check book, and some cash from Mom. (The Datsun had replaced my first car, the Opel Manta posted about before, because it had slot mag wheels, was a hard top, and didn't suffer from any rust issues.) It was the tail end of August, the car had no AC, and the torn shift boot was letting hot and exhausty air inside the car, but all was good in my world.

This was back when even on the Interstate speed limits were still 55. I was brave and foolish though, and pushed it up to just over 60 for the whole trip. I passed a couple cars, was passed by even more, and I waved as I could to every one of them. What more could a 14 year-old have ever wanted? The trip went by smoothly enough and soon I was getting off the 41st street exit in Sioux Falls, onto what I believe is the busiest road in the entire State, at the time 2 lanes each way with a suicide/turning lane in the center. The mall was right there, though, a quick right hand turn just off the Interstate, so I was soon in the relative safety of the parking lot.

The mall was walked, clothes were purchased, with only one snag from a merchant that wouldn't take a check with a #<250 from a 14 year-old. Seemed so unfair at the time, but looking back now I wonder why anyone took any of my checks. All was loaded in the car, and I was off to make a quick jaunt around town. Not knowing my way nearly as well around Sioux Falls then as I would come to know the city, I missed the turn lane onto Minnesota Dr. and ended-up continuing straight on 41st street. Even at 14, though, I was well trained at the fine art of vectoring, so I made a couple lefts to get back to where I had meant to go.

And then it happened.

I was cruising along, building up a good head of steam, and I boldly blew clean through an intersection without even noticing the traffic light. I blatently ran the red and didn't notice until I was well past the interection and saw it in the mirror. Luckily there had been no one at the intersection, including Johny Law, so it was a no-harm, no-foul situation, but it left me completely shaken and I had to pull over and let the tremors pass. I came very near to crying, even, because the thought running through my head was what if someone had done that to me while I was on a bike? I would have been kersplut.

After I had calmed down some, I high-tailed back to the Interstate and booked for home, 54 mph the whole way. It was weeks before I drove a car again, and years before I told anyone the story. The shame and terror of it still twinge me, and I've done much worse things on the road since. I often wonder, now, if anyone else looks at their close calls the same way? I see kids (and adults) doing stupid stuff daily, and I think I must have been in a very small minority then. Too bad for all of us, eh?

Been a while, but here's another:

2006-03-25T11:36:00.000-08:00

My first semester at college my folks wouldn't let me take a car because they felt I should save some $, it would be too dangerous for a rural kid in Houston, and because they didn't think my Opel would make it all the way there. (1159 miles, BTW) My roommate was in the same boat, and we were quick to learn that there is nothing within walking distance of the University of Houston. We also learned that the bus was less than reliable in Houston, and we were too scared to ride it in our neighborhood anyway. (My what a dumb kid I was.)

That left us needing a car, or at least perceiving that we needed one, and sooner rather than later. I had found another Opel for sale in New Orleans through Hemmings Motor News that looked to be just the ticket, but how to get over to get it? If one of us could get a car, even for a weekend, we could drive over and fetch it, I thought. While discussing options in a Calculus class I should have been paying more attention in one of my classmates offered up her grandparent's place on Lee St . in New Orleans as overnight lodging, on the condition that we take her with us. This seemed reasonable, and free, so the agreement was made and plans penciled in for the first weekend in December.

We still needed a car, though. About this time my engagement to my HS sweetheart still in SD going to State was spiraling down the toilet, and I though if I could just get home I could maybe save it. My plight was desperate, but somehow all the weirdness of the world culminated in a 4-part plan to get me home for Thanksgiving, and returning with my car.

Here's how the trip was planned out: A casual acquaintance also at UH turned out to be from the north-central part of SD. She had a car, but was pretty sure it wouldn't make the trip. She was in, though, if I could somehow make her drive less and I paid for gas. I started looking along the route we would take and a classmate from HS was attending school in Dallas. She hadn't planned on going home, but with some persuading I managed to convince her. I would be riding up to Dallas with the one girl, we would swap there into the other friends car, drive up to southeast SD, and get dropped off at my folk's place by the classmate. I would then drive up and drop the girl from Houston off in north-central SD and return home. Since my fiance was in school in north east SD, I could even pick her up on the way back from dropping this girl off and bring her home for the holiday as well. I could even surprise her by picking her up instead of her Dad doing it, and I conspired with her parents to make it a workable surprise. After the holiday I would follow the girls in my car back to Dallas and then back to Houston behind the one gal. Sheer genius, or so it seemed.

We both got done with class Mon morning and opted to skip anything on Tues that wasn't already canceled. Houston to Dallas in a Ford Tempo listening to every album Prince put out one after the other is not something that fades quickly from one's memory. Once in Dallas we located the classmate, I made introductions, and we then hopped into a Taurus for the rest of the trip. I drove the first leg north out of Dallas, then we started taking turns mid-Oklahoma. I was asleep in the back seat when my HS friend got a ticket in Nebraska, but she woke me up then to take over driving (early Tuesday morning now) because the weather had turned bad. I drove the last 3 hours or so in to home, got dropped off and we hopped in my Dad's Ford Festiva for the last 4 hours of the trip to take the first girl home. All set with that I proceeded over to State to get my gal and she wasn't there. The weather was so bad classes had been canceled and she had caught a ride home with someone else. That left me driving the last two hours solo home at the tail end of a 36 hour driving marathon, in a blizzard, in a Ford Festiva.

After 10 miles or so at 20mph I decided that the odds of me going in the ditch while driving 70 were slightly less than me falling asleep at the wheel if I drove 30, so I upped the speed and gunned for home. The car behind me saw me speed up and tried to do the same, but instead spun at least 3 times and then backed into the ditch hard and fast enough to bury the car in snow. That should have been a clue for me, but I was too tired to care. I pushed on home, stopping at the girlfriend's place instead of my own when I got back home. Her parents welcomed me warmly, after all we had been dating for most of the last 6 years, but her reception was cold, to say the least. All this drive was for naught, it would seem, but at least I would have my car.

Got home then finally Tuesday evening and babbled incoherently something to my parents about lots of driving and needing a nap. They woke me up for supper on Wed. Dad had assayed the situation and decided that the Opel still wasn't safe for the trip, even with a chase car, and instead I should drive the '83 LeMans 4-door he had just purchased. He had only driven it a few miles, though, after having the heads replaced, and wasn't really sure of it's condition either. It had a hitch and cruise control, though, so that was enough for me. We went and got tires to replace it's bald skins and we were set.

A little quick math yielded an ideal departure time of Sat evening, with plans to drive straight through. Both of us from Houston had papers due on Mon we had basically blown off and would need a couple hours to write. The other girl from Houston's parents dropped her off at my place, and we went in to fetch or missing amigo. Once all the good-byes were said we set off. On the first gas stop I double checked the oil and found it 2 quarts low. Since I didn't check it before we left I wasn't sure if that was where it had been or if it was using/losing the oil. I bought a couple extra quarts, though, just in case. Second gas stop in Lawrence, KS yielded a dead battery. Car would jump, but we had no cables. Ever try to buy jumper cables in middle KS at 2am Sun morning in the days before WalMart was everywhere? Only a couple hours lost and we were back on the road. I lost cruise middle OK, and needed a nap just north of Oklahoma City. We were all pretty beat, so a quick rest was acceptable, but when I slept too long the girls jumped the car and drove the next couple hundred miles with me sleeping. I drove the last bit into Dallas, and as I shut the car off for the last refueling before dropping the girls the car wouldn't restart, even with a jump. We dropped the one girl off to drive on in to Houston solo and went and bought a battery at K-mart. With the new battery it started, but not well and ran poorly, almost like a slipped timing chain. My chase car was long gone, though, so I set out to limp it the last 4 hours regardless. After couple miles, though, I brought it off I-45 to see if it was anything I could fix and the car died at the bottom of the ramp, never to restart.

So, 6pm by the time I gave up, I'm 4 hours from Houston, 13 hours from home, in a car I can't fix. I get to a pay phone and try calling my roommate to see if he can get someone with a pickup to come rescue me, but no one we know with a truck is back from the weekend yet. I call home and curse my father out for sending my with this stupid car, and he sets about to see what he can do from there. Since this is an already long story, I'll cut to the chase. Friend from Dallas came and rescued me, towing me on a strap back to a hotel near her campus. Father rented a car trailer, borrowed a friend and his truck and came down with his Festiva and swapped out for the LeMans. I made it in to Houston finally on Tues morning @10am just in time to turn in a hand-written (in the hotel) version of my paper only one day late. (The prof took it 2 days late instead, and typed, and it earned me an "A", thank you.)

All this would seem like the end of the tale, were it not for the planned trip the following weekend to New Orleans. Seems the girl we were taking along for lodging's sake had been pretty worried about me too.... But that story can wait.

Why not?

2006-01-19T03:23:00.000-08:00

So, I've been driving my scion XB for a month now, and something occurred to me this morning on the way to work: These would be excellent rural mail delivery vehicles. Factor in the fuel mileage, the fact that they are already RHD in Japan, the legendary Toyota reliability, and why not?

Probably because of some policy dictating US manufactured cars only, that's why. Good thing ou can still get a RHD, no wait, you can't get any anymore, never mind. Wonder if those policies will change after Ford and GM go spiraling down the john?

Half-way across the US, on egg-shaped tires no less

2006-01-17T19:21:00.000-08:00

So, in August of 2001 I purchased another Opel Kadett wagon after several years without an Opel of any sort. My now ex-wife had forced me to part with all of them early on in our marriage, under the stipulation that if I found a nice one for a decent price I had carte blanche to buy it. I had scrounged one up, it was reasonably priced, and I went ahead and bought it.

The story of this car is you're typical barn find story. Guy had it, stopped driving it for whatever reason, died, kids didn't know it was even there in storage, found it years later, sold it to some guy off the street for cheap. I was buying it from that guy with weak brakes, almost no working carb passages, no fuel pump, and the same bias-ply tires that were on it when it went into storage in 1978 with 68k miles on the odometer. The brakes and fuel pump are old Opel issues, well known and easily fixed, and any carb that sits for 23 years is going to need a little love. All told, though, it was a pretty nice car for $600.

I had gone to look at it in the wife's car, because it was a couple hour drive and I wasn't sure I was going to get it initially, so I had to get a trailer and fetch it the following weekend. This was easy enough, because at the time the local MWR (that's Morale, Welfare, and recreation, for you non-Navy types) had a car trailer I could rent for the weekend for $20 with just a flash of my military ID. Trailer and truck set, I went and got the car and brought it home, getting several thumbs-ups along the way, a trend that continues to this day. (I actually avoid taking it really public places, like super stores and malls, I get inundated with folks wanting to tell me their Opel stories.)

After bringing it home, I fixed the brakes (bad front brake hoses, a very common issue with old cars that no one ever thinks of first), rebuilt the carb, and installed an electric fuel pump. I drove it the 9 miles to work a couple of times, just to make sure it ran OK, and over Labor Day weekend I set out in it for SD from upstate NY having only driven it to that point 75 or so miles. I didn't do it blindly, I had packed along all the normal tools one would need for an Opel, made sure the spare was good, grabbed a good jack and a couple cans of fix-a-flat, tossed in some replacement bulbs and some wire and was pretty comfortable all things considered.

And it was a good thing I did pack all that stuff, because I sure needed it, but not for my own car. See, when you drive an old beater you can't afford to pass up the opportunity to get some good road Karma. I'm referring to stopping to help the stranded motorist's you normally scream past on the side of the road. Being a holiday weekend, everyone was driving somewhere, and knowing I had a nice hydraulic floor jack made it really hard to drive past someone trying to use a screw jack on their car. All told I stopped 11 times before getting across the state of NY, changing 6 tires and pouring out the contents of my gas can 3 times. Every one that trip was great, particularly one family from Cleveland in a minivan with a blown tire and a flat spare that took both of my cans of fix-a-flat. They waved every time they passed me stopped with someone else, and I waved back every time I passed them doing 50 mph on the donut spare. Sure it took me a bit longer, but several people made it home easier that night and I feel good about that.

Eventually, though, the vibration from the tires got the better of me and I pulled in to a Sprawal-mart to get the tires balanced. The guy put the first tire on the balancer and it almost broke the thing. The tires were all egg-shaped from sitting all those years. I had new tires waiting in SD, so I decided I could live with it for the rest of the trip instead of buying new tires just then, besides they didn't have the right size on hand.

Somewhere in MN I decided to see if the AM radio worked, and it did, but the only thing on AM any more is talk radio and gospel. What a shame, too, as everyone should have an old mono AM station playing poodle skirt music. IT only took a few minutes of talk radio to make me turn it off again.

All told, that leg of the trip was a roaring success. No mechanical issues what-so-ever, and a good time the whole way. Got 28-32mpg even, which makes me really wonder why new cars aren't all getting 50+. After all, my Opel's 40 year old technology. The trip back, on the other hand, was a nightmare. But I'll post on that trip later, just to keep you coming back for more.

Quickie

2006-01-16T09:14:00.000-08:00

Nothing new last night, but to get you through the day, here's a quick tip for you if you're thinking about buying a used car: Be very careful what you use to get the soaped #'s off the windshield with.

The set-up: I was borrowing a friend's wonderful V-10 dodge truck because it was deemed slightly more reliabile than my own and I was fetching a Firetruck from several states away and needed the hp. Besides, he couldn't afford to fill it with gas, and I always returned it full, so he made out like a bandit. He was trying half-heartedly to sell it, and had "for sale" and such soaped all over the front windows with a product called appropriatly "windshield chalk." Since the fire truck rescue was going to involve some quasi-legal towing techniques anyway, I figured it best to remove the attention-drawing markings before I set out on the trip.

He had said it would come off with water and a little elbow grease, but after half an hour or so my arms were tired and I needed something a little stiffer than the stream from the hose. I went inside the house and got what we in the Navy called a "green scratchie," one of the products typically made by 3M or an imatator that's a stiff green plastic material as often as not bonded to one side of a snonge and in pretty everyone's kitchen already. I even remember the conversation in my head about whether or not it would scratch the windshield, and it being plastic it was determined that it wouldn't.

I started scrubbing, and spraying with the hose, and mere moments later all the offending used-car lot/ autocross style markings were removed. Unfortunatly, as the glass dried, I realised just how very wrong I had been. Everywhere the greenie had touched the glass it was scratched, including the tempered safety glass side windows.

What to do? I ended-up ordering a scratch removing kit from somewhere, a product designed for old windshields that have been sand blasted by time, and it did a decent job of cleaning up the damage. But how do you bring a truck back to the owner and say "Uh, sorry, I seem to have destroyed your glass?"

Like I needed more stressors that trip, anyway. Anyone else changed a Budd 20" tire on the side of the road with hand tools and a Hi-Lift jack? I don't recommend it to my friends.

Lesson learned: Green plastic scratchie pads have some sort of fiberglass impregnated in them that will, in fact, scratch your glass. Now you know too.

Rest Areas

2006-01-14T16:13:00.001-08:00

So tonight I don't really feel like a story, per say, but instead a bit of a rant on one of the things I feel strongly about as a frequent driver of the US Interstate syste: rest areas. Lately I've seen more and more exciting features in rest areas, some great, some just plain wrong.

Great as in Iowa's installing free wireless Internet access in almost every rest area they still have open. What a great idea, and why didn't I think of that? Of course Iowa's also shut down over half of their rest areas, and blocked them off so you can't even get onto them. Don't worry, though, you can still stop every 70 miles or so as you cross their desolate wasteland of nothingness. Just keep reminding yourself that you're only 45 minutes away when the need to use the bathroom comes upon you.

Great as in the rest areas on the Ohio Turnpike, where you can get your Starbucks and Popeye's conveniently every 40 miles or so. Of course don't try to pull in with a gasoline-powered vehicle pulling a trailer, because you won't be able to park on the "car"side and there's no gas on the "truck" side, just diesel.

Great as in the scenic views available in almost every rest area in Kentucky, though don't plan on doing any actual resting there, as even a short nap in the car can yield you a nice ticket.

Great as in NY's policy on 5 minutes maximum idle time for semis, but of course then you're girl friend will wonder what she did to make you mad enough to stop as soon as she sets foot in the bathroom.

Here's my take on the rest area. By definition, you should be able to get into a rest area and safely park your car half asleep, eyes yellow from "holding it," with your wife giving birth beside you, and generally in no condition to drive. After all, that's why you're stopping. What kind of idiot designs an area where you have to take the off ramp, stop at the top, figure out which direction to turn, wait for traffic, make the turn, figure out on which side of the road the rest area is on, find the entrance, turn in to the area, troll around through a maze of curbing, and then hunt for a parking space? If I need to stop, it's because I'm having trouble handling driving straight at a constant speed witht he cruise control on. How could anyone expect me to survive all that?

Also, in the same vein, you need to be able to take a nap if you need to. I'm not talking about plugging in a motor home and firing up the grill, I'm refering to climbing in the back or folding the seat down and crashing long enough to become a safe driver again. This has to be legal, as it's the whole point of the things. Add all the lights you need to to make people feel safe, up the police patrols and everything, but if I'm in no condition to drive, isn't it a lot better for everyone if I'm not hurtling down the highway at 75 mph?

Bathrooms should be clean, at least better than Walmart and movie theatre bathrooms (the lowest rung on the bathroom evolutionary scale). I'm a guy, so it's not quite as important, but I'd like to not get glared at by my gal when the trip resumes. I do have to admit, though, that whenever I use the stainless steel trough urinals in IL I feel the need to wipe my feet on the sidewalk outside the bathroom before I get into my car.

Anyway, relate your favorite rest area tale if you've got one. Comments are still free-ish.

Let's start at the very begining... Or at least very near there

2006-01-13T15:46:00.000-08:00

Every car owner has to have had a first car. Some came with cool stories, passed down through the family or what not, others were lame-o graduation presents given to children of parents with a lot more $ than mine. Mine was, of course, an Opel.

To truely appreciate the story you need a little more background information. First off, I grew up in SD, where until some time in the early 90's a child with a rural address could get a restricted (to daytime hours only) drivers license at the ripe old age of 14. You also need to know that my Father was at one point a high school shop teacher and at other points ran his own foreign auto repair business, so there were always cars around as well as the tools to work on them. Even at age 5 when I discovered that a borrowed crescent wrench could successfully disassemble a tricycle in a single afternoon, it was obvious that the tools fell easily into my hands. (Dad did the right thing there, by the way, insisting I put the tricycle back together, by myself, and make everything work before he would get me a real bicycle.) So, at age 14 I was waiting in line for the magic picture to be taken that allowed me to become a dangerous weapon of automobile carnage.

Shortly thereafter, my Father and I went to the first farm auction of the spring season. If you're from rural America you've surely been to one of these events: men clad in overalls milling about, shaking, prodding, and abusing everything they can touch to decide if they really want to bid on anything. Some days the bidding is furious, and the prices reach obscene levels, other times you get just what you needed at pennies on the dollar. This was a pretty middle of the road auction, and there were a couple of farm trucks dad was interested in and a silly '74 Opel Manta all by itself off in the corner. I thought the Opel was sort of neat, and my Dad made some comment off-hand about how he had had one and thought it was a pretty decent car overall.

When they got to the little Opel, the bidding started at $200. With no bites the auctioneer dropped the first bid to $150, then $100, then $75, then $50, then $25, and at that point I couldn't take it any more and I forced my Father to bid on my behalf. "Twenty-five, going once, going twice, any other bidders?" and an old codger stepped up with a $30 bid. Drat! Well, how about $35? "Thirty-five, going once, twice, sold!"

And just like that I was a 14 year old driver who owned my own car. Sure it "needed a clutch" and the "starter didn't always work" but it was mine! We waited until the end of the auction to pay for our things, loaded up all the little stuff in the back of Dad's pickup, and freed the tow strap from it's usual hiding place behind the seat in the cab. Dad and I were expert tow strap operators, having successfully covered several hundred miles in several cars over the years, and the 11 miles home was going to be no big chore, as long as the brakes worked in the Opel. We waited for the crowd to disperse a bit, the proceded to start the trip home with my new treasure in tow. Everything went pretty well until Dad stopped about 3/4 of a mile from the house and climbed out of the pickup.

"How's it feel, sloppy steering, brakes OK?"
"No, good brakes, seems to be fine."
"You know I'm not going to let you tow your first car home, don't you? Besides the principle of the thing your Mother would kill me for dragging it home. We need to see if we can get it to start and you can drive it on in or we might as well keep going to the junk yard."
"Uh, OK I guess."
"Let's pour some gas in the tank and down the carb, then you drop the clutch and well see if we can't pull start it."

And we did. And it did start. And I drove it on into the farm and up on a set of ramps. We then found out that the "bad clutch" was really a case of all 4 bolts that hold the tranny to the bell-housing being MIA. Four bolts were promptly scrounged, with 3 different sized heads but the right threads, and the problem fixed. Then the car was re-started, backed down the ramps and taken for it's proper "maiden voyage" that evening as darkness fell, just me and my Father. Sure the tranny had bad syncros between third and fourth and would need to be replaced with a junk yard one for $50. Sure the starter eventually did give up the ghost and require a $15 junk yard replacement. Sure I spent countless hours waxing and polishing to try and get the car back to it's former glory. But it also got me to and from work that whole summer with 28mpg and a ride that was the envy of everyone who drove it.

That $100 car was my introduction to all the things that endear old cars to the hearts of gearheads everywhere. It ran good, handled better, needed more love than it should have, kept my fingers mostly dirty, and introduced me to the feeling of freedom that has characterized the personal automobile from the very begining. I became mobile that summer, the world shrank, and 2000 miles later I was a changed man.

How to buy your very own Opel

2006-01-12T18:13:00.000-08:00

Opels are interesting cars. They were imported and sold through regular Buick dealerships all over the US from about '57 to '75. That's a pretty good run, all things considered, roughly equivalent to how long Hyundai, Acura, Lexus, and Kia have been selling now. That's long enough to have purchased one as your first car going off to college, then as your second car because of brand loyality when you needed something bigger for your new family. As they were pretty solidly engineered cars, with decent features and in the last few years excellent handling, there's a few of those folks still aroud. They are all by now 50-somethings set in life with the kids out of the house and some $ to spend these days bringing back a long lost friend from the dead.

But the also sold a lot of them, and they are all 30+ year old cars now, and new they were the cheapest cars GM sold here in the US and advertised everywhere as such. Which means they aren't particularly worth a lot. That brings an entirely different demographic under the "Opeler" umbrella, the folks who have an Opel strictly because it's cheap. These are the folks who squirm at the idea of an "expensive" $500 paint job or $800 5-speed transmission upgrade. (Well worth every penny, by the way.)

So what do you get into when you join the Opel community, then, with these two completely different demographics dominating the scene? Strangely enough, unlike most other similar marques you get an amazingly open, helpful, friendly group of folks that'll usually give you the shirt off their back if you really need it. See, unlike the MG, Triumph, Corvair, Jaguar, Fiat, Morris Minor, Etc... groups, the Opel community was all but abandoned for the better part of 20 years here in the US. In 1975 you could get parts at any Buick dealership or parts store. By 1995, I had to drive all over Houston to find a valve cover gasket on short notice, and to get the "good" ones I had to agree to buy all 50 of the minimum batch Fel-Pro would make to get them ordered for me. We would have all given up on our Opels and tossed them into the crusher if it weren't for the internet and the new-fangled shrinking of world economies it provided. This orphaning, though, made for a remarkable tight group of old-timers, and they smack the kids into decent people before they associate with them.

So, now maybe you've decided you want to look into buying an Opel yourself? How does one go about doing it these days? There are club listings, and E-bay, and the like, but they do occassionally show up even in the local paper. Here's how my last purchase went:

Looking through the paper, stumbled across an "1975 Opal wagon for sale, $250" add. The obvious (to an Opeler) mis-spelling of Opel was sure to keep the usual Opel vultures away, and the price was so low the car was obviously junk or the seller didn't know what they had. Either way, well worth the look anyway just-in-case. Called the seller, set up a time, and went to look at the car. Those of you familiar with the ritual of buying an old car know all the usual stuff that happens during that first meeting:

-"Is this the car for sale?"
-"Yep, that's the one"
-"Have you had it long?"
-"No, not long, only (yada, yada, yada) Got it as a project and not going to get around to it."
-"I see, did it run well when you bought it?"
-"(It doesn't really matter, just trying to see if they feel bad for it going down the tubes or good for restoring it some.)"
-"It looks like just about what I was looking for, I was hoping for (whatever) though." (sigh)
-"That would have been nice for sure."
-"Is $250 your bottom dollar?"
-"I could probably let you have it for $200."
-"Thanks, let me go get the $ and my trailer."

Next thing you know you'll be bringing home a car in need of some work for sure, but worth more to your friends in parts than what you paid for it complete. Sure $500 would have been a bargain, but no arguing that $200 is a lot better, right? Besides at $500 you might have to consider the Karma check and the rest of the VW Idiot's Guide's pre-buying techniques, wheras at $200 you can take your chances and give it a once-over at home. What am I saying, I always mash myself into the seat and do a quick "does this car feel right?" check.

Allow me to introduce myself

2006-01-12T17:39:00.000-08:00

So here I am starting up a blog of my own. While not entirely new to the blogging scene, this is a first for me so bear with me if there's some growing pains. Those of you that know or knew me will recognize me right away, and I'd love to hear back from the "lost" friends from way back when.

Now, why would you want to read my blog? Well, simply, for the stories. I'm a 31 year old nut for old cars, mostly stuff most people have never heard of. And I drive my cars. Everywhere. Can you even imagine setting out on a 1600 mile trip in a 1970 Opel Kadett you've only had for 2 weeks? How about driving a similar Kadett 600 miles sans brakes, because you had to and no one had any parts? Have you seen both US coasts, by car, within 6 days of each other, while living in rural SD? These are all easy stories, the bread and butter if you will. The humdingers are what you need to stick around for.

I'm also a damn decent guy, and I'll bet eventually after a while you'll find yourself drawn back whether you really want to come here or not. Maybe I'm wrong, but only time will tell.