Wow, That Sure is a Big Bite You Took

Hi. Um...yeah.



The good news is that we do in fact have proper vacuum pressure. The bad news is everything else is pretty well fucked. We're going to attempt to repair the head gasket issue and see if that stops the oil from spewing out of the engine. All other dreams, however fleeting they may have been, of one day restoring this heap have pretty much been dealt a death blow. While jacking up the car we discovered that not only is the "official" jack point on the passenger side made up of bondo and scrap sheet metal (which don't so much help to hold the car together when lifting it but do more of a very unnerving crunching and splintering thing) but that there is a very large patch near the rear of the passenger compartment of undetermined strength and/or quality. Neither one of us felt confident enough in the jack stands ability to keep the car from falling on top of us to get a better look at it. We really need a proper lift to get in there and I can tell you now that this will most likely not happen.

So it will be the dissected frog route after all. It would take quite a bit more money and time to get this thing to where it was safe enough to think about driving. Of course I have already driven it but that's just because, I will remind you, I am a moron.

My Friends All Drive Porsches, I Must Make Amends

Aaaaaaaaaaaand I'm back.

I kinda took a break from this for a lil' bit and enjoyed not sitting in front of a computer all day this week. This is my limbo week where I float between two jobs. I'm starting the new one this upcoming Monday (the 27th) and I left the other on the 17th of this month. It's an odd feeling for me since I'm not used to resigning from jobs. I usually just get laid off which throws me into a minor panic as I scramble for the next career path. This time I chose the time and place. Nice deal if you can swing it.

So what's news? The new job mostly, but since that's the "unknown" I haven't been obsessing over that (much). The most newsy news I have is that I have purchased a Mercedes Benz. I'll just let that sink in for a second. Now calm down. It's not what you think. I bought a 1982 300D. That's "D" as in "diesel". It cost me and my bud Andy a grand total of $800. It is, for all intents and purposes, a POS. But we shall bring it back from the brink of "total bleah" all the way to the rim of "meh, it's not completely awful".

I'm pretty excited about this project. It will represent the first time I've ever attempted a restoration – did I just say "restoration" (well, ok type)? There will be no restoration per se. This is certainly not going to be a show car or anything like that. We're just trying to get a car that needs some help back into good enough shape that it could be used daily again. That's the main goal. There are other goals too like keeping the costs down and not killing each other. Here's hoping we succeed.

As far as time frame on the project goes we haven't really hashed that out yet. Andy's a new daddy so his time is going to be much tighter than mine but I think we need to set up a schedule of some sort once we figure out what actually needs to be done on the car. Luckily the thing starts and runs (and stops!) right now so I'm hopeful that we haven't bitten off more than we can chew. I haven't taken any pics yet (we're picking it up on Saturday so I'll take some then) but I do have this shot of it taken from the seller's ad:

lookit that dirty old girl. Ain't she purty?

I think it's frickin' cool as hell. I'll document our progress (if there is any) and maybe even fire up another blog about that thing so as to not bore people with car stuff. As for now I'm gonna go meet some friends for a few beverages.