Quick Update

This is the "Readers Digest" version of what has happened over the past year:

Former wife filed divorce paperwork May 9th, 2007 . . . after all the BS it was finalized February 20th, 2008. Started going out and God brought someone (Peggy) new into my life, and ironically the first serious date occurred the very day the judge signed the paperwork. I proposed May 5th, 23 years to the day I was confirmed in my religion . . . a great testimony to faith. I've worked hard on being a dad and backing my words up with actions. After going through the year of seperation/divorce/etc... I've got my friends back, my self back, and I'm much deeper in my faith in God. Peggy and I are fantastic together and we have done a lot more projects and things together than my former wife and I ever did. Who knew that painting a room, cleaning a garage, or making dinner together could be so much fun?

On the cars . . . the MGB has been sitting forlorn in the garage . . . another victim of "do I dare do anything lest it come up in the divorce." The Dakota project finally got done and was on the road a number of months before the headgasket really did let go. It never got hot, but I have one steam cleaned #2 spark plug. No water/oil mixed so it's gotta be a minor breech of the gasket . . . and I had just moved it into the garage to fix it when some more funny things happened. I drove the truck in and started working on it, but between my fiance, work, church, etc... it's a little hectic at times.

I noticed one day that I had some fur in the front seat of the truck and figured that the cat must have been bored with the MGB seats and wanted the posh fabric of the Dakota. No problem . . . I'll roll up the window. Well, I also noticed that my cat was leaving "little suprises" around the litter box. I thought maybe he was having issues. I seen the cat at the neighbors house hanging out and it turns out he was sick . . . I ended up putting him down. It was sad because he's been my shop cat for a long time and provided me some comfort when I came home to an empty house. I was leaving to go some place one day and happened to catch a glance of something moving in the truck . . . I went to the driver side and opened the door and the smell of cat whee nearly knocked me out. Apparently the neighbors cat had gotten in the garage and had been hanging out in there. That would explain the rapid food consumption, and the new surprises I found. He was in the truck for 3 weeks, but he was still alive! The neighbors say he was missing for 4 weeks, so I suspect he was hanging out in the garage for a while before I rolled up that window on the truck. It made a lot more sense why the neighbor's other two cats were outside crying at 4 AM in the morning when I had Bucky (shop cat) put to sleep!

So . . . what do you do with a urine soaked truck? Well, you yank the seats and carpet and see what you can do . . . which wasn't easy. I cut the driver side carpet out just to get the worst of smell out. Then my son yanked the bolts for the seat, so we took it out and then the rest of the carpet. I didn't anticipate that little wrinkle in the truck repair project, but with the interior out, I can possibly change to bucket seats and get it looking a little better. My sister did the same thing to her Dakota and Dodge Shadow/Sundance seats bolt right in with one minor bracket bend. It's half off weekend at the junk yard this weekend, so I'll see what they have available and go from there. I think the seat might just have some minor urine issues, and I've read on how to wash the seats at car wash, so I might give that a go also.

Well, that's about it in a nutshell. Former wife is gone, kids are good, cat is at the Rainbow Bridge, and the soon to be new wife is fantastic. Hmm . . .life is good. The MGB project is on back burner, but the best part is looking forward to having someone who is willing to help and be right by my side as we do the project together. That's an awesome feeling.

Fuel Pump Hell

A picture is sometimes worth a 1000 words . . . unfortunately the only thing missing here is the number of fuel pumps I've went through. So far I've had two Airtek ones from O'Reilly's . . . and then two from Autozone, both in Master boxes, one with a Carter pump and the other was another Airtek just like the O'Reilly's one. ARGH!! I've cleaned the tank out and drained it AGAIN. This is beginning to get old . . . so we'll see how this latest one goes. It completely comes down to fuel pump issues . . . I've been through the wiring and everything and it's not that. I put a jumperbox on the leads, it doesn't whirr. Ugh.

Tonight I'll put new gas back in and see how it works. I'm getting pretty buff bench pressing that truck bed out of the way. :-)

Project Dakota Almost Done

Wow . . . for a MGB site you've probably seen quite the gambit on things I've worked on . . . from boat air conditioning systems, to wave runners . . . to an old Buick . . . and now a truck??? Yea, this is the truck (1991 Dodge Dakota with 2.5L and 5 speed tranny) that I bought to be the engine donor for my little Morris Minor project. Unfortunately I never had time to get the Morris going and ended up selling it. Now I've gotten myself down to only three vehicles (?!) and I think I can squeeze some time in to get this one up and going. So what do I have to do to it?
Oh, well . . . there is one little issue with it not starting. I poked and probed, and tracked down various things until I eventually narrowed my problem down to the electric fuel pump. (Oh what fun that is to change . . .) I've got new brakes for the front, from rotors to calipers and pads . . . it'll all be fresh and ready to roll, or stop I should say. I've put new headlights in it and once it's roadworthy, I'll start looking at the beauty aspects of the truck. I'd love to get some different wheels or something to set it apart . . . but other things get priority. The main reason I'm working on the truck is so I'm not dependent on others to haul things . . . I've been in that scenario too many times over the past 15++ years . . . so I'd like to get to a point I could just do something whenever I wanted to. We'll soon find out on that.

Ye Gads!

It's hard to believe it's almost May . . . well, one day to go. The Buick was sold over the weekend going to a new home in St. Joseph, Missouri. That just leaves the 1991 Dodge Dakota and my 1974 MGB Convertible in the project stable . . . I've waffled on fixing the Dakota, but there are some times I realize that I really need a truck when I need it. With the Buick gone, it's time to get the Dakota road-worthy and then onto the MGB. I did finally do something worthwhile on the MGB . . . I dug the old wire-wheel hubcaps out of the trunk and hit them with my favorite Turtlewax Chrome Polish . . . that stuff is fantastic. I was using the paste version many years back on my old 1971 Honda CB450 bike and it worked wonders. I was able to cleanup the first wheel cover and it encouraged me enough to consider working on all four to get them cleaned up. The wire baskets are in horrible shape, so I'll have them sandblasted and powder coated -- then with the chrome polished up, I think they'll look sharp . . .and cheap for now at least. :-) Cheap is good.

Another month rolling by . . .

Today we close on house #2, but something that I didn't allude to in my posts was the fact that house #2 will be a "time/space" place for the wife to get away from me for a while. I'll continue on at our current house working on fixing it up and getting ready for sale this spring, which means I can't have a car in too much disarray at any point in time, because I don't want to have it scattered when we sell the house. In a perfect world, maybe things will work out and we'll still be together. I don't know the definitive on what will or won't happen, I just take things one day at a time. I have done a few things here and there on the MGB.

I finally got the clutch master cylinder apart . . . nearly blew out a windshield doing that little trick. I used compressed air and it rocketed out and missed the Buick and MGB, and hit (and dented) a metal sawhorse in the garage. Luckily nobody or nothing was harmed in the fiasco. I'll rebuild those components and put them back on the car. The Buick got a new fuel pump and runs really good now -- well up past 90 mph from a little "blow out the cobwebs" pass a couple of weeks ago. Now I just need to get it a little prettier looking and sold. Then the Dakota comes in to get a new head gasket and other things fixed on it. I can really use a truck around the house at times and since we got rid of the minivan, I don't want my car to become a 'truckster'. Since I have so little in the Dakota, anything I put into it right now will still be a pretty good return on investment since a truck is always worth something to somebody.

I guess I am making some progress . . . not as much as I would like, but between weather and marriage issues . . . it's a trainwreck around here sometimes. I'm looking forward to sometime when everything is stabilized and when everything shakes out to where it needs to be.

Slight Change In Plans . . .

Remember the 1903 house? Scratch that . . . we found one in the country on almost 2 acres of land. No garage, but that's the fun of building your own garage how you want it.

New house?

Here's a house we're looking at buying -- built in 1903:


Great old house eh?



Love the garage.



Ton's of space here!

Practical MGB?

 

Wow -- a practical four door MGB? Honey . . . do you want one of these? LOL -- no, probably not. Yike.