New World Datsuns...

I met with the builder yesterday and we got more specific. Quote was for 36' x 48' x 13'6" with 1.5" insulation, 6" floor with 2' x 3' footers under the hoist feet. He'll stub the bathroom plumbing for me to finish later and trench and bury conduit from my existing meter on the pole to the panel inside. Basic electrical outlets and wiring for lights. 12 x 12 insulated roll-up door and man door. 12 x 36 lean-to cover on the north end with compacted road mix base. He said about 12 days to complete.

The number is reasonable, if not good, and I'm building a shop either way. The timeline is just a little sooner than I'd initially planned. I'm still hesitant to bite off some temporary debt though.

Go ahead and do it. You can’t take it with you. I have never seen a hearse pulling a U-Haul. You and I both know that I’ll probably be too small in about a year and a half.

Probably so. Lots of reasons to do it and only one reason not to. Plus, it'll mean chapter 3 in the Compound/Prison Planet/TBA trilogy.

Got the Muncie swapped back in the Smell Camino. Once I get the Tremec in my '35 I'll list all 3 of my A833s.



Got the first part of my OBDR prep delivered today. I'll tackle the TWs once it's all here.

Shade stretching out from Shadow Mountain. I spent all day down in the bottom pasture area trimming trees and burning. Used up 2 chains on my little Homelite but got enough done for the day. We had a few days of rain recently followed by some sun and warmer temps so the fields are getting green and the trees are starting to bud out. I'll have a lot of grounds keeping in the next couple weeks. Cattle grazing in the corn stubble across the draw.

Go borrow a goat.

Still planning on some sheep eventually.

Sharpened all 3 chains this morning then went down to do a little more trimming. Then I focused on the super crappy fence that the previous owner put up. Its a creative mixture of orange bailing twine, barbed wire, chicken wire, hog panels, and bailing wire with plenty of vegetation woven in for good measure. This section runs about 130' and I still have 50' left to take down. Then, more tree work.


When I bought the place there was what was supposed to be an irrigation runoff ditch that ran through those trees. It was actually just a swamp. I've run a new ditch 6-8' to the east so I'll be filling in this low ground to try to level it out. In the future I'll be adding some evergreens into the mix so that I can eventually get rid of most of the willows and other scrubby brush.


Somewhat unrelated note: Remember a few years back when I was working on that guy's car collection? He's approached me about building him a '66-'67 Nova resto-mod. The example he gave was a Barrett Jackson car that sold for $110k and he's fully aware of what a build like that costs . I'm tempted but it's a pretty huge project, althoughmy current job situation gives me the flexibility to do something like that. We need to talk some more but it's a possibility.

Forgot to update this. My brother sent me some pics a few weeks ago. Paintless dent guy did his magic.




Before, so you don't have to scroll back...

pretty good work. PDR has come a long way.

That turned out alright, but one has to see it in person to really know how well it turned out.

I haven't seen it in person but my brother said it's really close to perfect. Definitely beats pounding out a dent, doing mud work, then trying to match 35 year old single stage paint.
The guy that did the PDR on the top of my Cutlass fender had to deal with some compound shapes. Basically a dent the size of a baseball on three flat surfaces separated by two sharp body lines. It also is where the 2-tone and pinstripe landed. It's a damn near invisible repair. If I showed you exactly where it was and we were under some flourescent light tubes you might, maybe be able to see it. IIRC he charged me $200. Worth every penny in my book.

I don't pick apart peoples body work like some do, I guess I look at the overall look rather than raining on someones parade.

I'm pretty judgy, meaning, I know good work from hackery. But I certainly wouldn't tell someone else their car looks like shit. That's kind of why I'm a big fan of good PDR work. You can spot a bad paint match from across the parking lot but will likely need to be shown where a PDR repair was done.
They aren't all home runs though. Someone managed to drop something sharp and heavy on my wife's car right behind the passenger side mirror. It went through the paint and gouged the metal in the door. It was stretched pretty bad too. I had a guy work it out the best he could and just used touch up paint to seal it. The car is tri-coat pearl white and it really jumped out because of the color flop. You can obviously still see the paint touch up but at least the dent is gone. From 10 feet away it's acceptable. Had I had it repaired "correctly", the whole side of the car would have needed repainted to hide the blend.

Putter on scooters day. White bike got a new chain and knuckle busters.



Blue bike got chain and both sprockets. Rear sprocket was wasted.


New and old chain for comparison...


Both are geared 14/55 now.


I also put a high-mount front fender and hand guards on the blue one.


Planning to do a clutch replacement and install the Clarke XT tank tomorrow. Depending on how it turns out I may order one for the white bike as well.

I wore a rear sprocket to sharp points once, I just rode the thing, I didn't take care of it.

I couldn't seem to capture a good photo of it but the teeth are hook shaped. It made a ratcheting sound when I rolled the bike backwards.

Allllmost got it done today. Got a late start then had a 2 hour interruption to go look at a '41 Ford pickup with my dad. Got the tank mounted. It's for an XT225 so it's not a bolt-on. I cut up some hockey pucks to make some offset mount rubbers for the front to set it back about an inch. For the back I just bent the supplied bracket and used a section of small heater hose. Really, a pretty easy retrofit. My capacity went from 1.7 to 4.1 gallons.


Then I moved to the clutch. No drama beyond gasket scraping.



The only thing that kept me from finishing was that my fuel line was too short. I'll be experimenting with side covers too.

Got the new tank on the white bike. Still waiting for my new front fender.

'Tis the season...