Neanderpundit

the more they suck.

AC and all in the truck working wonderfully- an excellent time for the trucks radiator to begin puking coolant all over the place! So I drove the Van today to run some errands, though it’s got a whine in one of the idler pulleys that’s just loud enough to really get on my nerves.

So I yank the radiator (it’s amazing how fast you can do that, once you’ve done it two or three hundred times) and find the leak, and it’s anopther two hundred bucks on top of the hundred from last week.

Yay!

There are those who mark time by the seasons, and those who gauge their lives by the women they have known, the jobs they have held.

I’m not the type to speak openly about the women in my life, and the seasons are just seasons.

But cars. Oh, lord, do I remembere the cars. I’ve marked time by cars since I drove.

The first car I ever owned was a 1967 Plymouth Valiant. It looked a little like this. Mine wasn’t in that kind of condition, though. It had an automatic transmission- that was it’s option.

The Valiantrs came stock wiht a slant-six engine. The curse of the Chrysler Motor Corporation. The Slant Six was an engine so indestructible it made people keep cars well beyond their useful life, simply because they still ran. The Valiant was one of those. It had rust spots in the most incomprehensible of places- like the tops of the front quasrters. Chrysler figured they didn’t need inners, so the salt and spray ended up inside the fenders, which rusted at an alarming rate. The Valiant didn’t have a radio, either- it didn’t even have a hole in the dash. So I laid my hands on an AM radio and made a wood box, whcih sat on the floor under the dash.

Yeah, under the dash- imagine that? There was room under the dash of this beast to put an egg create, and still have room for your feet. I often did just that. The seats were woven out of some material that resembled multicolored monofilament fishing line, and the years of some drunk sliding in and out of the front seat had left it frayed and at any moment a stray thread would poke you hard in the nether regions causing you to involuntarily jump, or perhaps veer into oncoming traffic.

Yeah, the previous owner was a drunk. THe seventeen hip flasks of Beam jammed under the seat were mute witness to this, and more than one had to be broken to be extracted from it’s hiding place. I have no idea how he managed to get them in there, but they were jammed good.

Anyway, I kept that car the first year of my full-time employment. It’s single-barrel carburetor gasped and wheezed like a man posessed, and I had to plan when I might be ascending a hill, or accelerating for any reason. Passing was strictly out of the question. The engine was so old, tired, and worn, that there was no saving it. So I got my hands on another engne, rebuilt it, and proceeded to stick it in the Valiant. Pitiably, it didn’t match the transmission, so the Valiant sat in the driveway until a friend of Dad’s bought it for parts.

Made the mods to the bolt friday at work. Seems to fit OK. Have to do a little hand fitting.

Bolt and barrel fit together nicely. Have to get the barrel wrung in, and test the fit of the entire assembly- but I think it’s gonna be fine. Hope to testfire it next weekend.