Chasing Another Dream – Part 3
Mothballs be damned, I did tinker and distract myself with the 57 occasionally throughout 2020-2022. I painted the new front inner and outer fenders, got them mounted and aligned, and installed enough of the front suspension to make it roll again. Most of what I did was keep an eye out for pieces and parts, putting aside some money from selling cars and parts in that time to try and have everything I needed when the time came to focus solely on this project. That time finally came in June of this year(2023 for future readers). On June 3rd, I deemed the Wartburg worthy of a “functional vehicle” parking spot in the garage and moved it off the lift and lifted the “project car” label. That was quite an albatross to lift, after 5 years of work. Even better, the lift was freed up for the 57. With the help…
Chasing Another Dream Part 2
Patience is a virtue, they say. When the 57 got dropped off just after Christmas in 2018, I was mid assembly on the Wartburg gasser, so I couldn’t just stuff the 57 in the garage and tear it down to rebuild. Nor did I have the room inside(or outside). I did what any perfectly sane person would do and backed it up to the front of the garage door and built a temporary shelter over it with some pallet racking, shelf pieces, wood, ladders, and tarps. Throw in a road sign for good measure, and nobody could tell there was a 57 Chevy hiding in plain sight there. As much as it pained me to mothball such a car, I am only one person and can only really focus on one project at a time properly. This, nor the Wartburg, were projects to put half an ass into. They needed…
Chasing Another Dream
Back in January, I wrote about chasing unicorns with my Skyline. You can check it out here: https://weldsandwheels.com/2023/01/chasing-my-unicorn/ The Skyline is Gran Turismo playing teenage Patrick’s unicorn. In that post, I alluded to the Super Chevy magazine subscription that my mom got for me when I was 7. That’s right in the sweet spot of a kid’s formative years, and between dad and our neighbor being into classic cars, I was hooked. The volume of 1957 Chevys on the cover of that magazine was more than any other car at that time. I’m not sure if that’s the reason, or because they’re just so iconic and representative of everything Americana, but I fell hard for them. It became 8 year old Patrick’s dream car. I ended up with a 1954 Belair as my first car – and still have it – but always lusted for the shape of the 57.…
The Wartburg Story Part 7: It’s Done!
I said last time that we’re getting this ship moving. Here we go, I even rode on a couple different boats last week so it’s a very appropriate analogy! Here are some highlights of the balance of the project, which took about 4 years to complete from where we left off due to lots of life stuff. Working too much, expanding my shop, a pandemic, getting my head on much straighter, getting my body in better shape, and rebuilding our house all meant I worked on the car for a few minutes here and there every few months. Not the way to get a project done, but when you’re literally rebuilding everything about your life, shit takes time. Let’s speed things up with a list of things that occurred in this period, and a gallery of some of the highlights: Also of note, on July 5, 2019, I had a…
The Wartburg Story Part 6
We last left off in the saga of the Wartburg with me in stitches, quite literally. Get a partner who will drive you to the emergency room on her birthday instead of having a special dinner because you attempted to amputate your thumb with an angle grinder. After the doctor laced me back together like a football, I took almost 2 weeks off the car. It was bad enough that I had to go to work as a carpenter a couple days later, and every post-work evening after the ibuprofen wore off, my thumb hurt like it was being put in a vise. Fun fact – if you bump your freshly stitched thumb with a pry bar, you’ll probably drop your hammer and break the customer’s floor tile. I got back at it and exercised the demons of the piece that tried to claim my finger by finishing the cut…
My Unicornniversary
Last month was an important anniversary for me. May 13, 2023 was the 1 year anniversary of buying my dream car. My unicorn. My Skyline. I had saved and pissed away money for one for such a long time that I felt like it would never happen. I’m not sure if it was being sick of it never happening, or the market taking off and wanting to get one before they would be out of reach, or just sheer determination, but I made it happen, and it’s been a more fun year because of it. I’ve always been enthralled with the thrill of the chase. I get all tingly at the thought of tracking down another neat car, even when I help others instead of it being for myself. Chasing a Skyline, however, was a rollercoaster of emotions. Knowing that I needed X for a nice GTR a few years…
The Wartburg Story Part 5 : Let’s Get Cutting
When we were last together, I had made the decision for the Wartburg to be a Gasser and accumulated some key parts. Thus, with stuff moved around and the car in position in the front of my then 2ish car garage, it was time to start disassembly. Removing the body was as simple as 4 nuts and lifting off with the makeshift gantry, a chainfall, and some creative rigging. With that, I rolled the chassis into the driveway to start work, both because I have a pretty flat concrete pad to work on there and also because the garage was so packed full of tools and hoarded parts that I had no hope of making it happen indoors. I’ll spare the mad scientist driveway engineering details because not everyone reading will care for the details of my insanity, but this post is covering 10 build days from body off to…
RADwood Charlotte Recap
A couple weeks ago, my friend Brad texted me. “Any chance you want to go to Radwood Charlotte? Looking for a co-driver.” The text came in the evening on March 22 and the show was April 1. After a quick deliberation with Carli, we decided that worked and it would probably be excellent for my mental health to do a little road trip and hang with my friends. So with that settled, I was heading to my first Radwood show! I was set to attend the Cleveland show last May, but morning of I was depressed and could barely get out of bed let alone drive to a car show, so I was still itching to see what this thing was all about. We met up north of Akron around 1pm and set off for 500 miles south. We had Brad’s modified 911 twin-turbo and it was looking to be…
The Wartburg Story – Part 4: Making up my Mind
With the goal of a $2000 Challenge victory behind me, I lost interest entirely in Darth Nader. It no longer served me as the purpose for that car was no longer a goal for me. I sold my beloved 454 swapped 5 speed 1990 C1500 Chevy truck. I cut up the stock car chassis for the tubes because water had intruded on the frame rails and blew them up from inside when it froze. In this time, I was also itching to build a gasser. What is a gasser, pray tell? In the mid 1950’s gassers emerged in the NHRA, doing things like moving the nose of the car up and the engine rearward in the chassis to transfer weight to the rear wheels at the dragstrip, making the tires grip better. Nowadays, we don’t do this stuff because tire technology is ridiculous, but that era from mid 50’s to…
The Wartburg Story – Part 3: Making it home
When we left off, I had bid adieu to my drunk Delaware friend and his musings on life. There were still 420 miles between me and home at 10pm with no plans to sleep is pretty daunting, but since I got a huge Coke at WaWa, I figured I could pull it off. Come 4AM I was done. I had to sleep so I didn’t kill myself on the Pennsylvania turnpike. I rolled into a service plaza, nestled between a couple big rigs in the truck parking, and set my alarm for 5AM. Let me tell you, laying the front seat of a 2016 Ram back and attempting to sleep sucks. I probably got 30 minutes of sleep but I did get an hour of rest with no driving. The balance of the trip was uneventful, and I pulled into the driveway at sunrise and went to bed. I got…