Staging Lanes

For those that don’t know, the staging lanes are the section of a drag strip where all the cars that will be racing line up and wait their turn to race. So the title of the post implicitly states that this is the first in a series of posts revolving around the same general idea. So what is this idea you may ask? Graduation and future plans of working on Valarie.

I am 26 days away from graduating. Well. Kind of. In 26 days I *will* graduate, but I am contemplating going right back into the fire – to get my master’s degree in one of my minors. While I desperately want a reprieve, the drive to push myself further and further all the time and the desire to financially secure myself and future family are making me heavily consider going right back to school.

What this whole thing means for Valarie is that in 28 days, I have the first jobs for working on Valarie on my calender. Then, for almost every weekend and some weekdays, I have other jobs. I have a personal goal to be able to safely and confidently drive Valarie to Shelley’s house (and back) before the end of the summer. This means I will have to get myself in gear in order to accomplish this. Unfortunately Shelley won’t be around much this summer, so while I won’t have much else to do besides work and work on Valarie, I also won’t have her help and insight on what to do if I get stuck. Next post will be when I am closer to graduation and a little insight into my game-plan and the like.

Last time I was in a staging lane I caught an alcohol dragster’s exhaust to the eyes
– Sooner Dead

A Mime’s Box

I have seemed to of forgot a major part of being able to go out and race or drive or whatever with Valarie. The car. See with all the dreaming and drooling and other minor distractions (school, career, etc) I have seemed to forgot that the very first piece of this whole muscle car puzzle is to actually be able to drive the car. Actually, I am getting ahead of myself – I need to be able to start the car first, then worry about driving it. While I have a good excuse right now for not working on it – having all of, maybe 6 hours to work on it between school and trying to keep my career as close to full time as possible – I won’t have that excuse in about 6 weeks.

Of course that isn’t the only thing holding me back, I have quite a problem with anxiety and perfectionism, meaning I am constantly worried about things, constantly self-doubting, and by me wanting and almost expecting everything to go perfect, I only amplify the anxiety problems. Anxiety and perfectionism is something I have faced in everything I do, and I think it may be an underlying cause as to why I don’t do some of the things I would like to do in life. Anxiety and perfectionism suck the fun out of things that are supposed to be fun, and who wants to do things during their free time that aren’t fun? Work is work, but hobbies are supposed to be fun, and I guess between thinking I should be perfect at things and constantly worrying about not doing something right or being able to do something well enough to make it something I can be proud of and show others.

So that is what I need to figure out, and the one thing I do love about this blog, even if almost no one reads it – it lets me think and figure things out as I type them out, giving me better understanding as to what the issues are and how I need to fix them.

Winners find the flaws in conventional logic and exploit them
–Sooner Dead

Spring Break

Sorry it has taken me so long to post, but there is a good reason for it: I have been busy getting a job. Yeah, I know I already have two, but those are just college jobs and this one is the start of a career. This has been a very hectic few weeks as I interviewed, waiting for callbacks and doing even more interviewing. I even had a business ethics choice to make already and while I had a difficult choice, I had a lot of great people behind me, most of all my fiance. Speaking of my fiance, it has also been a rough week with her; she lost both dogs that she grew up with in less than a week.

So what this career thing means is that I will have much more time to spend working on Valarie because I no longer need to go to class all day, only to come home and have to worry about homework or tests. I work from 8am until 5pm and when I come home, all the rest of the time can be spent doing whatever I wish. The only downside is, because I will no longer be receiving student loans, I will be technically be getting less money, so I won’t have as much to go around to work on Valarie, especially since I need to be saving for the wedding and a home. As always, family come first over possessions, I would sell Valarie and everything else I owned before I put my family in any financial struggle.

I start my new career on Monday, so I will be busy learning the ins and outs of the job for a little bit and once school is out I may be able to really get a lot of work done. I hope to drive Valarie around a little bit this summer at least – and if I can’t do that maybe it is time to admit defeat.

Apparently I am about to join the rat race
–Sooner Dead

House Of Cards

A house of cards, for those that don’t know, is an expression that describes something that is built around something that could come crashing down at the slightest breeze. I felt this was an appropriate title for the post because I feel like a lot of things I have going on right now are a house of cards. Valarie is in a garage at an apartment complex I do not reside in and only got in by calling enough people. Now I have been hearing that the apartment complex is struggling and I just got a call a day or so ago from someone representing them and looking over their records. I felt the easiest way to keep Valarie in a garage was to kind of stay below the radar and just make my monthly rental payments, but now I am not so sure how long they will be looking over the fact I do not live there. If they were to end my month-to-month lease with them, I would have no place to keep Valarie, so I am on edge and trying to figure out a way to be able to get the car drivable asap, all the while I am trying to prepare for the AMS Conference and the career fair so I get a great job when I graduate. I really want to work on the car, but time is hard to come by and I just don’t know if I have the aptitude to teach myself automotive restoration – I wish I could find a friend or someone to help.

Am I racing an invisible clock?
–Sooner Dead

Michigan Adventure

I have been on a well deserved ‘vacation’ and visiting my family back home. As always, Shelley came with me and – as always – the snow melted just before we came up. Featuring I have been wanting to show Shelley a true ‘Michigan winter’ for some time, this was very disappointing. Luckily for both of us, however, unlike the previous years, this year had snow in our future. And not just a little snow – a lot – of snow. A front came through and dropped about 4-6″ on top of the ~2″ base of snow we already had. This isn’t anything to write home about, at least until the lake effect snow machine started up in high gear. Once the lake effect snow machine got going it started snowing heavy and it didn’t stop for anything. When it was all said and done we were sitting around 2.5 feet of snow.

We now had plenty of snow to go snowmobiling and plenty of ice to go ice fishing – and did we ever take advantage of this opportunity. In fact, Shelley found her new favorite hobby: snowmobiling. We really had a blast, but like all good things, it had to come to an end and now I am back home and it is time to start working again.

There is so much to do between now and the next month it is almost sad, but there is great opportunity to be had as well. I also really want to change Shelley’s favorite hobby from snowmobiling to drag racing, as she has never drag raced before. I want to get the car running soon, I need to get the car running soon – but this is all reliant on that little thing I previously mentioned called ‘will power’.

I slam the gas down and hear just stuttering
–Sooner Dead

No Brakes!

As was the focus of the last post, life has been busy, hence the lack of recent posts. Shelley and I got to go out to the car on Saturday, she secured the ram air vents and we worked at troubleshooting the parking brakes. While we didn’t actually fix them (hence the title of this post), and now are searching for how to fix. I am hopeful that the car will be running soon and be able to drive around the parking lot or something.

On to other news; I am building a new computer here in the next month. My old computer is now two years old and there are some awesome games coming up like BioShock, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Portal, Team Fortress 2, and Spore. Needless to say, my old computer won’t run 4/5ths of those games at least, an depending on the system requirements of the one I think it could run, it may be all 5 not being able to play. So I am building a 2 core system built primarily for gaming for approximately $1000. Not too bad if I do say so myself.

Why am I fixing brakes on a non running car? It isn’t like it is going to go anywhere!
–Sooner Dead

Life Over-Torqued

Something I have always been guilty of is not following the sage advice ‘all things in moderation;’ whether it be big things like overloading schoolwork, the buffet-line plate, or simple things such as over-tightening screws until I strip out the grooves. With school starting up and now trying to balance it with work, Shelley, Valarie, and sleep – there is hardly time to actually dedicate to all of them. It is all coming back to me now of just how hard it is to actually work on my car while keeping up with everything else.

So please allow me to apologize about the lack of posts recently as well as the lateness of the two guides I have been talking about for a couple of weeks now, it isn’t that the guides are hard, just that I haven’t had any time in which to write them up. Now for a little update on the car: Shelley and I went out to work on the car, a rebonding that needed to take place between Shelley, Valarie, and I. We pulled out the drivers seat to better work on the car, checked out the front suspension over good, and looked at the problems with the parking break. We found out that the front suspension is good, except it needs springs an shocks replaced – something I already knew – but everything else is in order, which is great and will save some money.

I have plans to go out with Shelley this weekend if I can find the time and we plan on working on fixing the parking brake, resecuring the ram air scoops, and a few other things. As I have said before, I am dedicated to making everything work this time.

I’m only stopping to regain feeling
–Sooner Dead

Small Steps

Last night was good. Really, really good. It may of not of been real mechanically based jobs, but I got things done on the car and I didn’t make matters worse for what feels like the first time since I have owned the car.

After finding out I needed to remove the radiator to get the fan shroud out, I was all ready to go and yank that radiator, and then I stopped. This would mean I would need to drain the majority of the cooling system, and that was not something I was prepared to do. So instead I put things back how they were and decided the car could live without a new shroud for awhile, as 3/4 of the shroud is fine, and I could make a temporary fix on the top 1/4 if the car is over heating.

Once I got the radiator back in place, I went to my second job: figuring out that valve cover breather that had been bothering me for some time. Instead of trying to push it through the valve cover hole, I removed the valve cover and used the extra leverage to put my weight against it. It didn’t go perfectly at first and I had to reposition the rubber grommet once or twice, but eventually it got itself into place! One job done. A guide will be coming on that soon.

Coming off a small victory, I pushed on and replaced the license plate light holder that was broken. The previous one had been broken off and the pieces still remained on the screws, but I replaced it. Two jobs done in one night and not one setback! A guide will be coming out on this job soon as well.

So here I am, 2 jobs closer to driving the car in the wedding. Tonight I am turning my sights on enjoying the victory and studying up on 8 more jobs I hope to be getting closer to finishing by the end of the weekend. The actual goal is to have the car able to run again by next weekend, but we shall see if that is a little too ambitious. Getting two small things done without a setback can really really make you feel like yo u can do anything again and really helps the momentum.

The trip of a thousand miles begins with a single burnout
–Sooner Dead

Tick-Tock

So here is the deal: I made a promise to my fiancé that I would do my best to have my car presentable before our wedding so we could drive off in that. We have 676 days and a couple until we get married. I have about 50 major jobs to get done on the car before it is “presentable” by both her and my definition Of course each of these major jobs have sub-jobs and there is always unexpected things cropping up to complicate matters, but let’s ignore those right now and say it will all boil down to 50 major jobs. A little quick math (676/50) says I can average about 13 days between accomplishing a single job. Sounds easy then, right? WRONG!

While some jobs will be quick and easy, such as resecuring the ram air vents, others will be much more time-consuming and complicated, such as bodywork. The jobs will run the spectrum in difficulty, cost, and time-consumption. So this is how I figure it: do any job you can currently do asap and after that, start working to being able to do the others. Job by job is the only way to restore a car, it doesn’t all just fall into place by itself.

I visited Valarie Sunday night, with the help from the guys over at TransAmCountry I was able to remove the key that has been stuck in the ignition for sometime. Sure it took some swallowing of pride, but at least it was stuck in the ignition due to something I doubt most people would have ever though of: a pseudo-column shift key lock when the base of the steering column is twisted to the right. Twisted it back to the left (putting it where the ‘park’ position would be if you had a column shift), turned the key back and it fell right out!

I also worked on getting the fan shroud out and replacing it with one that didn’t have a huge chunk out of the top. Come to find out (again from the guys at TransAmCountry) that due to the steering box, I have to remove the whole radiator. Oh well, in order to learn how to work on cars I am supposed to play with everything, and a radiator falls into that category. I plan on going back tonight and doing some more stuff, including replacing the fan shroud. I will keep y’all updated.

I lost my pride asking how to pull the key out of the ignition
–Sooner Dead

Marriage Counseling

Shelley is to thank for the idea for the title of this entry. Restoring a car is quite like a marriage if you think about it. You meet through some chance coincidence – be it a friend’s tip or just searching at the local hotspots, you see her and must have her. You spend a lot of money on her just to sign a certificate and take her back to your home. Just like in some marriages, sometimes things do not always match up the grandeur plans that were in your head though and you need a little couple’s therapy.

Valarie and me have our moments, grandeur plans and frustrating failures. Sometimes you have to wonder if she likes me at all with as difficult as she is always giving me all kinds of trouble. Get her a nice new garage so I can work on her and she is protected from the elements – she won’t start, and then gets the key stuck in the ignition! I hope that soon we will start seeing eye to eye so I can really get to work on her. I visited her today, gave the garage a good cleaning, hooked up an electric splitter so I can run electric stuff and bought a high output fan to keep the air circulating on hot days (like today). Both front tires were flattening, so I lifted her up and put jack stands under her – which I am going to need to do to work on her anyway.

Tomorrow’s plan is to change out the fan shroud, get the key out of the ignition, and check out all the front suspension to see which parts should be replace. The goal is to be able to drive it locally as soon as possible just in case the garage falls through sometime (though I doubt it will, it is always nice to be prepared).

Why should I pay someone to tell me I’m wrong when you do it for free?
–Sooner Dead