Here is a project that has been 7 months in the making. I bought this gem over a year and a half ago for 300 bucks. The guy had lost the keys three years prior to my looking at it. With a little fiddling I got it to sputter to life, gave him the dough, and away I went with a Rambler in tow. I got it to my house, and there it sat. So then a month later I moved it to my parents house, where I took out the ignition and brought it to the lock smith. I think it sat till about November of 06 when I finally got around to fiddling with it again. After inspection I found the radiator to be shot, and there began the frankensteination of the car. I took a radiator I had laying around and using wire installed it into the car. Started the puppy up on some gas in a glass jar and listened to it purr after 10 minutes of misfiring and cranking. I noticed that the motor seemed to smoke pretty dang good. I then drove it down the road and found that the transmission was trashed, no 3rd gear. Oh well. So the car got parked out back next to all the other derelict cars sitting behind the shed. I pretty much forgot about it over the winter

 With spring came ambition. I tinkered with the brakes and found out somewhere along the way, the rear end was replaced with an ancient 40's era rear end with a hillbilly custom drive shaft. I wasn't the first person to have jury rigged parts onto this thing. The wheel cylinder leaked on the passenger side in the back, but since it was a mystery rear end there was no way of getting parts. So I took the line and pounded it shut, and presto three wheeled brakes. Amazingly it actually stopped pretty decent and in a straight line.

The next item that needed attention was the gas tank. It was shot, so off to Wally-World I went to get a boat gas tank. I threw the tank in the trunk and viola, no leaks. I drove it for a while, with no third gear, and burning a quart of oil every 50 miles. To be fair, the car was ancient and had close to 200,000 miles. I was surprised that I didn't get any comments on it. In fact most people just ignored it. I guess it looked too generic.

Once the coil went out, and an older man stopped, looked at me and the car, and said, "Whattaya got there, a piece of crap."

After a while the points went bad and I decided to replace them, which I did, but by then the trans was just about shot; it would hardly go into gear. So  after thinking about what I should do I decided to replace the whole works with a newer engine and trans. And thus began the 400 dollar odyssey into frankencardom.

I started the re-power project in August of 07. My friend was parting out his AMC Eagle so I grabbed the 258 six, got an auto trans out of a Concord from the junkyard. Out came the 196 inline six and air cooled BW transmission. It took a while but I got the engine in with some custom hillbilly engine mounts. It was quite the job and if I were do it over again I think I would have put in a four cylinder. That 258 barely fits.

I also replaced the rear end with a AMC Eagle rear end. And then it came time for the transmission, yeah three torque converters later (the parts shop kept getting me the wrong one) causing a month and a half worth of delays I got the trans in.

Another month went by until I decided to see if I could get the car going. When I did I found the radiator I wanted to put into the car had been stolen. So I had to use the other radiator which was pretty plugged. I started pouring antifreeze into it when I notice that the stuff is running all over the ground. The damned drain plug was gone. 

So then I filled the trans with fluid and found that the dipstick also leaked around the base. Then came the big moment. I turned the key, the car bellowed to life with a deafening roar. There was, and still is no exhaust what so ever on the car. It ran like absolute crap, and the motor had ridiculously bad blow by. And it was a real pain in the butt shifting the car through the hole in the floor.

After my less than stellar test drive I fiddled with it. It wouldn't start back up, no gas getting to the fuel pump. Replaced the fuel pump. Same thing. Replaced with an electric one. Still no dice! So I ripped out all the fuel lines and put a gas can under the hood. Car started, with a lot of cranking, and once again ran like a pile. I managed to "fix" the blow by problem by hooking up a vacuum line to the valve cover. I decided to quit trying to start the car and run it until everything was fixed and working the right way.

I replaced the plugs, they were all pretty much fouled out. Changed the oil, it was full of gas. I took the carb off and tried it on another car. It also seemed to run like crap. So I am holding out hope that a different carb will solve the problem.

Now that the weather is nicer I am hoping to get it going by the end of the week. Hopefully I can keep the ambition thieves at bay long enough to finnish it. All in all it is one of those projects that would have been best left sitting in the previous owner's garage. I hope in the future to have it run on wood gas. But for now I would be overjoyed if it ran nice and moved itself down the road on gas.

Having spent most of the winter heating my house with propane I can say with confidence that propane is one of the lousiest ways to heat ones house short of kerosene. It is expensive as heck. While I know my mobile home isn't the most well insulated thing in the world, it is only a lousy 520 square feet. I have a 30,000 BTU propane heater in the house. How much does it cost to keep half of 520 square feet heated? Try around 150 bucks. Double that if I try to heat the whole house. I moved out from the middle of January until the end of February due to the impracticality of living in freezing temperatures.

In extreme cold weather (25 below and greater) it can't even heat my bed room, the hall way, and the small room where the heater is located in to a comfortable temperature. Plus I found out blocking the rest of the house off resulted in condensation all over the cold areas of the house. Seems like propane gives off a bit of water vapor when it burns. My rifles are now covered in a thin coating of rust thanks to this.

I have a wood cook stove, but that sucks too. I don't know if it is because of a poor design or what but it is incredibly hard to get a fire going. And with its tiny fire box it is only good for about an hour and half before you have to stock it up again. Plus it only puts out a decent amount of heat if you have super dry wood, as in 40 year old red oak. Lately I have been considering moving up to Alaska, one thing that is not going to be following me up there is that propane heater. So in short, save the money, but/make a waste oil heater and a nice wood stove. Wall mount propane heaters are good for emergencies and that is about it.

Yesterday I decided to take a little trip on my motorcycle to my friends house, 75 miles away. It was a balmy 20 degrees, and figuring a few extra layers of clothing would take care of any problems with the cold I left. Let me tell you, 75 miles is a incredibly long journey when your motorcycle decides it only wants to go 35 mph and you feel like a walking and talking block of ice.

Let me be the first to tell any would be winter motorcyclist, uninsulated Carhart bibs do not provide any sort of warmth even with a pair of pants underneath. Also, winter goggles are definitely not overrated. Unfortunately I don't have a pair, so I had to go without. Another thing to keep in mind is that a scarf made out of an old beach towel is a very poor substitute for the real deal. I would also like to pass on this little gem of advice, good gloves are worth their weight in gold. By the time I got done riding my hands were purple. I had also made the mistake of wearing tennis shoes. Boots would have done wonders.

Now that I have that out of the way I'll go on with my experience. I started off about 4 in the afternoon. It was starting to clear up, so I figured Id save a few bucks and take the motorcycle over the huge gas hog 63 Ford.

I have found riding in snow and on ice takes a bit of finesse and requires that one looks ahead at all times to read the road surface. After a bit of trial and error I found 30 mph on packed snow works much better than going 20. The bike is much more stable at faster speeds.

Back in high school, when all I had during a couple months of winter was a well worn 1977 Yamaha 400 dirt bike, I learned to ride in the snow quite well. Unlike now I wasn't given to the notion of reasonable speed. Dry or ice the speed was always the same, wide open. Looking back on it I am amazed I never dumped the bike while doing such crazy stunts.

But getting back to the trip of today, by the hour mark I was really really starting to get cold. I was starting to shiver, and I couldn't feel my fingers. So I had the great idea to try and warm them up on the exhaust pipe of the bike. After gasping the manifold with my right hand for like a half a minute I out of nowhere felt the sensation of my hand being burnt. I ripped my hand away and noticed a couple new blisters. So lesson learned, exhaust pipes can still burn you regardless of if you can feel anything or not. I got back on the bike and continued on my long trip. After a while things started to feel warmer, my face didn't feel as cold, and my hands and feet actually felt okay. But I was still shivering, so I could only deduce that I was feeling the on set of hypothermia.

As the sun was starting to set I saw a bar amongst the woods and farm fields and decided to stop in. As I got off the bike my legs ached. I could hardly walk, or take the key out of the ignition. My poor right knee was really feeling the pain. My lower legs and feet felt as if they were one solid unit. So I proceeded to stumble into the bar Storm Trooper style and went right to the bathroom to warm my very very numb hands. It was a very painful experience. I stumbled out of the bathroom onto a bar stool and told the bartender to serve me the stiffest drink I could handle, a Root Beer. She promptly served me the mug, since I was the only patron in the bar, and went back to what ever it was that she was doing. As I poured over the map to see how much more of this hellacious journey I had left there was a meteorologist talking on the TV about the weather. It grabbed my attention. From the sounds of it there was going to be some 15 below windchills coupled with increasingly colder real temps. It was now 4 degrees above zero. I finished my root beer and donned my helmet and homemade scarf. My trek continued.

After a while of riding it really started to get dark. I noticed that the lighting on my bike really sucks. It is just enough to warn other cars that there is something coming down the road. Unfortunately it does a lousy job of lighting the road. A good flashlight would out shine the headlight on high. As I get closer to my destination more traffic joins me on the road. Luckily for me most of the traffic is heading towards me, so I didn't have to worry about pissing off people with my leisurely 35 mph pace.

My mind starts to wander, and I kept finding it increasingly hard to pay attention to the road. My poor legs felt as if they weren't there. When I shifted or braked I felt as if I was moving prosthetics and not actual limbs. I start thinking to myself maybe this trip was a bad idea. At one point though I was getting the urge to stop at a dairy farm and sleep amongst the cows and the copious amount of heat that they radiate. But I kept slugging through it, figuring there was no where to stop until the big city.

Finally I reached the outskirts of town. I make it though uneventfully past two cops and one ticked driver who didn't like going 35. When I finally got to my friends house I set about to rewarm myself. It was a very painful and itchy experience. My hands got more and more purple as I warmed them up. My legs felt like lead weights and I stumbled about the place like a drunk. After half an hour of a very warm, okay hot, shower I finally felt warm. Plus my hands returned to a normal color.

After all this I asked myself, would I do it again. The answer is yes, but only with a few changes. More layers, better gloves, and real boots would have to be in the picture before I would even consider such a long trip in the future. Also I will have to get my motorcycle fixed. I don't think a 50 mph cruising speed from a 100cc motorcycle should be all that difficult to attain. And I will have to find out why the lights suck so bad. One of these (much warmer) days I'll have to bring it down to the dealer and have them fix it.

So what was my reward for all of this punishment? The satisfaction of doing something few people would even consider, and saving a load of money on gas versus my pickup. I used less than a gallon of gas on this trip. The pickup would have used 5 times that easily.