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Here are some pics of my first cruise of the year, (March 27,
2010) with my bud Cap'n Camshaft. We spent an afternoon cleaning his '56 Chevy
wagon and pulling & polishing the wheels. Converging at a clandestine
cabinet shop with a supercharged hemi Anglia street car in one of the bays,
local car clubbers caravanned through the hill country out to the interstate
where other like minded and oil-veined folk gather Saturday nights...
None of the rides are mine, by the way. Someday I'll be able to play with the
big kids. Sigh. But you know, for the most part these are working people
who wrench their own. As one commiserated "Young guys wonder why us old
guys have all the nice rides... I've been building this car for 18 years!"
My daily driver is a ratty old 1969 Dodge Dart with a slant six I actually
bought as a parts car in 2008. I've made peace with the fact I'm emotionally
unable to mercilessly part out a 40 year old car that still runs. Easy to
work on, 20 miles to the gallon, and thumbs up everywhere I go. "Daily
driver" is misleading... I don't drive every day. But when I do, I like to
have a selection to fit the mood and I like it to be something with style.
There's also the twins - a '78 Dodge Magnum and a '79 Chrysler 300. The 300 is
an all original E58 360 4-barrel/727 car with buckets & console, factory
tach, dual exhaust, original paint, and front & rear sway bars. Only 3800 or so of these
were made and it has most of the rare pieces that the 300 package (a
one-year-only model in this style) came with. The '78 Magnum is not original but
will be borrowing the engine & trans from the 300 for the time being. Gotta
love that front end (these both are basically Cordobas... the Dodge version was
made in '78 & '79 so they had something to race in NASCAR with) and the red
corduroy interior! They're twins because most of them are the same, and they're
both Spinnaker white with red interior. Eventually the Magnum will go for a
vintage "stock car" look and the 300 will get restored.
The Magnum: 
The 300: 
I'll
let you further into my car life as I can manifest it... believe me, as soon as
the '67 Valiant fix-up is underway and the other thing
with the tunnel-rammed, dual-quad .060 over 318 and 4-speed goes together, it'll show up.
I've dreamed a long time now it's time to start doin'. This is all
low-buck stuff and I'll have to do a lot of the work myself. I mean, I build
guitars for a living. But what the hell,
I've been wanting to do this since I was a kid and rule #1 of the "second
half" is today is someday..
Just a pinch of old Mopar 'tween the cheek 'n gum...
Back to the magical land of woods & gnomes and little
basses!
