Category: Past Indiscretions (Page 19 of 25)

Valuable, if hard, lessons learned

Moby D

August 16, 2006 / Roger

This is just about the closest I have ever come to a new car or truck. This F150 four-wheeler was three years old when I bought it with 45,000 miles on the clock. It was a nice, comfortable truck, and when in four wheel drive was very good at dealing with snow, loose surfaces, etc.

I sold it when I realized I wasn’t using it much–it was a lot of money to leave sitting in the driveway. It was also a bit of a monster, as I don’t like full-size trucks without an eight-foot bed, and with the “supercab” that made this machine almost 22′ long. Perfect for our street-parking-only house in the city!

Ferguson Refresh

June 22, 2006 / Roger

My car project this summer is going to be giving old Fergie a face-lift. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just a bit of a dress-up over her current condition, which is pretty scruffy. I have a new pair of fenders, a new wheel center, and a few bits and bobs…and a couple of cans of paint. New tires, too. The machine will still need a full restoration at some point, but for the short-term this will be great.

Junk City

June 4, 2006 / Roger

So, er, that’s my ’64 MGB. It’s a beauty, eh? This is what happens when you don’t have a garage or shop to store all of your valuable artifacts in. As an aside, humans are weird creatures, aren’t they? Any rational alien would look at something like this and probably have their brains explode just trying to comprehend why, exactly, someone would want to do this.

XJ6 Sold!

June 4, 2006 / Roger

Dave was kind enough to give me money and an old band saw for my XJ6. It was a decent car but just not my kettle of fish!

Trading…Maybe

May 28, 2006 / Roger

How the “mighty” have fallen. I’m seriously considering trading my XJ6, which I really shouldn’t have accepted in the first place, for the Ultimate Blasting Cabinet. I really dislike the little benchtop cabinet I have and I spend a LOT of time during a restoration using the bead blaster to clean things up. Plus it would be large enough to actually hold the entire cage from a Jaguar rear suspension. Hm.

Of course the reason I’m considering this is that there is essentially zero interest in this car–Chuck will be thinking “I told you so!” along with Paul, my wife, the guy who used to own it…everyone but me. Oh, well.

1964 Pile o’ Junk Finally Retreived

May 24, 2006 / Roger

My friend, neighbor and fellow weird car afficianado Paul was kind enough to help me retrieve my ’64 project this evening. We had previously absconded with the parts and tonight we were able to grab the shell. It’s now sitting in my storage bin in front of my ’63…hopefully Reggie the ’63 will be able to pass some good karma to the poor old beast.

Laughing and Scratching

May 20, 2006 / Roger

I have the ’87 XJ6 on craigslist just to gauge if there’s any interest. I still have a few things to do to it but really really need to move it along. I shouldn’t have accepted the car and now find myself in my usual situation of essentially giving it away. Oh, well. Lesson learned.

Frankenstein

May 1, 2006 / Roger

The “free” XJ6 runs! Turns out that some idiot (me) didn’t have the coil hooked up right. Drove it about five miles, and it seems fine. Worried a bit by some smoking under load, but that’s OK for the time being.

No Fire in the Hole

April 30, 2006 / Roger

Or the car is a hole. I got the head back on the “free” XJ6 and on, and now it won’t fire. I’m fairly certain it’s something to do with the fuel injectors…that, or one of the many sealed little electronic gizmos that control them. Sigh. Give me SU carbs any day of the week!

Clean Up at Tax Time

April 17, 2006 / Roger

Taken on Tax Day 2006, in the bed of my truck is the last few possessions we have–an old steel cable and a bunch of half-rotted pallets–on their way to the Internal Revenue Service office in lieu of payment of our debt…