Playing the Undertaker

Some people shouldn't be allowed to buy cars.

I've wrecked out about 15 cars. A lot of the time, they're worth more as parts than as cars, the cars are so devalued you can buy them at practically scrap value. This has been the case with the XD-XE-XF falcons, fairlanes and LTDs I've done. They're profitable to wreck, because they're cheap to buy and people still work on them, creating a market for the parts.

Some of the cars I've wrecked though, have been cars I'd have preferred to keep, if they were in salvagable condition. A HJ prem, the Chevy truck I wrecked, and this most recent aquisition, a ZH Fairlane.

I got it for $250, complete less engine and box. I really dig the lines of these cars, they have one of the best looking faces on any australian car and they're based on the XC Falcons, one of which I owned and was rather fond of back in the day. It might look alright in the picture, except for the buggered door, but believe me, it's mostly scrap metal now. The roof is shot through with holes, the sills are practically nonexistant, and there's a hole in the floor behind the driver's seat you could get both feet through. It is, in short, fucked.

There's a rego label on the floor on the passenger side that says it was last registered in June 2000, almost 11 years ago. The guy I bought it from said he's had it about 10, so it had probably just run out when he got it, or he got it with a bit left and didn't re-register it. It came from a house on the semi-rural fringes, probably a half-acre-ish block with a somewhat large house on it, and in the back yard, down the driveway, on the front yard, and in the street, around 30 cars all of the same sort of vintage. Not one was in roadworthy condition, and this Fairlane was, in fact, one of the best cars there.

Without much prompting, the seller began to spill the beans. He'd had some land, 38 acres, and had filled it with cars, from what he said, somewhere between 60 and 80. At some point, someone had vandalised most of them, probably a pissed off neighbor sick of looking at them, so most of the cars I saw had all the windows busted in. It was about 10 years ago that this had happened, and no effort to cover them up had been made, so they were mostly worse than this fairlane. He had moved to this semi-suburban house and had, over the past two years, moved all the cars to this house and another nearby house, where another 27 were supposedly parked. Presumably they were each as fucked as the ones I was looking at. Too many projects, he said. He told me over the phone that this Fairlane had "half a chance of getting back on the road". Buddy, no way.

I've seen it before. There's a wrecking yard in Cooma, just off the highway that leads to Jindabyne, where maybe 300 cars make their final resting place, and they range from '30s stuff to '70's, including maybe 50 Fords between mid 30s and late 40s. Not one of them has a chance of ever seeing asphalt again, but the owner thinks he's sitting on a goldmine. I tested him- asked prices for a few things- exorbitant. He even wanted twenty bucks just to get in, as if it were some sort of national attraction. Granted, there are a few decent parts among the lot of them, but for the most part they're scrap at best. They'll be nothing more than one big iron deposit in the ground at some point, or, with any luck, it'll get cleaned out and they'll get recycled into soup cans and park furniture.

I always feel a little sad, ending the 'life' of a once nice car, but I have to remind myself, it wasn't me that killed it, it was 10 years in a paddock. And why the previous owner thought he'd ever get around to doing anything with it other than allowing time to destroy it before selling it at, presumably, a big loss, I'll never understand. I've been known to have a lot of cars, probably slightly more than I can handle, but I will never be like that. I will never allow nice cars to deteriorate into uselessness whilst hanging on to the delusion that I have the capacity to restore 50 cars or more, or that storing them in a paddock, surrounded by dirt and long grass, with the windows smashed in, is any better than buying them and lighting them on fire the same day.

Epilogue- When I went to pick the car up, only a day after I had looked at it in the first place, the seller, after giving me the story that he was seeing the light, downsizing, cleaning up, had bought two more cars. Due to this he declined to sell me a second car I was interested in because he was, to quote, 'afraid of not having enough parts to finish the two new ones'. Another two bite the dust.

Home stretch

I feel like I'm on the home straight with the Red Lady. She's beginning to feel like a car. Like a thing that lives and breathes and moves through your life with you. For so long she was just a concept, a collection of ideas, and the memories of the car that she was sort of went sepia toned and nostalgic. I guess that part hasn't changed, she's as different now as I am different to the kid I was when we first rode together. Those memories won't be coming back, but plenty of new ones will be made.

There's not much left to do now. I thought, earlier this year, that my November goal was a bit optimisitic. Now I think I might even beat it as the to-do list shrinks down to the point where I can think of it in terms of how many weekends of work there are left in it all. Money is a bit of a problem now, I really gotta sell the '68 before I can take care of some of the last few things on my shopping list. Two semi-major components remain to be bought: A driveshaft and a new windscreen. Apart from that, most of what remains is free or cheap and the jobs that still need doing aren't the ugly, pain-in-the-ass kind but the fun and exciting ones. The wiring, the thought of which used to fill me with dread, is now exciting and piece-of-cake thanks to a wonderful wiring kit I was able to buy from Late Great Chevy. It's more or less an exact, complete wiring reproduction, including new headlight switch, ignition switch and highbeam switch, plus all the lightbulb sockets. It's also somewhat modified, intending to be used with a high output alternator and full-voltage ignition like a HEI or MSD. So that's pretty awesome.

This weekend I intend to get stuck in, I've got a fair bit I want to accomplish before monday morning rolls around. Having the engine ready to go in would be nice, though I've got to repaint it, and I don't know if my old can of POR15 engine paint will be ok, seeing as it's at least 5 years old. Still, if I can get the body number restamped, the floor cut out, and the engine and box put together, that will be almost enough to satiate my desires... for now. Really, though, I've a feeling this fire will stay lit till I slap a rego label on that big beautiful curved windscreen. See ya soon, Hume Highway.

So many irons in the fire

There have been times in the past when I've wanted to make some progress on the car and have had some time earmarked for Chevy progress, only to spend it wandering aimlessly in the garage not knowing what to do. In those times, it was because I've had no one area to work on, nothing stood out as a pressing "next step", or worse, there WAS a next step and it was a sticky, unpalatable, involved task that I had no desire to do, such as the countless hours I spent on my back under her belly, scrubbing off forty years of accumulated road crud and old body sealer in order to prepare it for paint. That really sucked.

Lately though the problem seems to be (and it is a good problem) that there are many fronts I'm working on, and they're almost all fun, rewarding, clean tasks that can be done in a finite amout of time. On the downside, all this progress costs money and I've been giving the Visa a right royal hiding this past two months. It's a little frightening actually, but it's a calculated risk- the US dollar is expected by most to be much stronger by the end of the year, so the credit card interest on all the stuff I've been buying recently should be less than the cost of buying things later with a cheaper aussie dollar. But enough about that.

There's so much good stuff going on with this car right now. Cheifly, tomorrow morning I'll finally get to light the wick on the 383. Last week, Ivan told me it'll be "knocking on the door of 500HP and as much torque". 500HP and 500 lbs/ft is a nice set of numbers. I don't think it'll be quite that high- I'm guessing more like around 460 HP and 450 lbs/ft. Still, that's enough to make for spirited driving to say the least. What's more, the clutch, flywheel, gearbox, driveshaft and diff are all adequately strong to make good use of every one of those horses. No pussyfooting this lady around, fearful of the box or diff scattering like a pile of leaves in a gust of wind if I decide to open the throttle up. So stay tuned for a possible video of the 383's first run. This engine now has all forged internals, H-beam rods, World sportsman II heads, compression around 9.7:1, solid cam with 230/236 deg at 0.050 and 0.488/0.501 lift and an LSA of 110, roller rockers, Edelbrock Victor Jnr manifold and a CHROME OIL DIPSTICK! (which I'll be ditching at some point in the not-too-distant future... DEATH TO ENGINE BAY CHROME!) The shape of the pistons and the zero deck height make for excellent quench and Ivan told me that this bottom end- Eagle forged crank and rods, and SRP pistons did 100 laps in a sprint car at 8200 rpm without cracking. So it should be good enough for my little lady. Contrast all of this with my last post regarding the engine- this reciprocating assembly was quite a bit more substantial than I intended for this (at the time) stop-gap engine, but Ivan offered it to me for a very reasonable $2k. It was from an abandonded project for a customer of his. So this 383 might end up being a little more permanent and a lot more tough than originally intended.

In other news of significance, the TKO arrived last week. The TKO is a five-speed box, capable of taking up to 600 lbs/ft, with a 2.87 first gear and a 0.64 overdrive. I looked at a few gearbox options and it was pretty obvious the TKO was the way to go. I had originally intended to stick with the Turbo 350 and do the box swap after rego, but the more I thought about that, the less I wanted an auto in this car. Real cars have three pedals, and it turned out easier than I thought to get this conversion under way. There are still two semi-complicated jobs to do, and these are mounting the clutch cylinder and cutting the floor to fit the tall-and-narrow TKO in place of the wide-and-low auto box. For the latter, I'm thinking the way to go will be to cut part of a driveshaft tunnel out of a scrap car and make a removable cover out of it that can be bolted in place over a hole in the floor where the box can stick through slightly. I'll be able to take it off to work on the box if necessary in the future, so it's win-win.

I've also had lots of little bits and pieces arrive recently, including the only recently available quarter vent window rubbers, which were previously only available for coupes, convertibles and hardtops. This is good news; the old rubbers on the quarter vent windows are perished and cracked, and were about the only original rubber left on the car. Also got my gauges, tacho, oil pressure and water temp. They're beautiful old style gauges with modern electronic guts, made by Autometer. I was originally going to get Bonspeed Roulette gauges, but apart from being quite expensive they're also slightly silly- more at home on a rat rod than a classy lady. I've already mounted the tach on top of the steering column, which I've also finished rebuilding and is now completely functional.

Also in the recent purchases is my hydraulic throwout bearing and clutch master cylinder set, which is a kit supplied by McLeod racing. It was recommended to me, subtly and with a nudge and a wink, by the very knowlegable and helpful tech guy at Hurst Driveline. They sell their own setup but this McLeod kit looks like a very well engineered piece of kit.

There's bit lots of other stuff too, but less interesting. To quickly sum up: Crossmember, trans yoke, bonnet hinges and springs, rev limiter module, shift light, scattershield (consisting of an amazing, SINGLE PIECE SPUN steel bell with a welded on gearbox flange- stunning piece of engineering), gear stick, an excellent wiring kit from Late Great Chevys, which has all circuits fully terminated, grouped and marked, with reproduction sockets on virtually everything, AND a new headlight switch, high beam switch, ignition switch, all for a measly $600. This will make the wiring, which was going to be an infuriating chore with the other, generic loom I bought, into a fun one-day operation.

Times are good. This is the fun part.