Am I at a Crossroads?

As I started drafting this missive, one word kept coming to mind – disheartened. It’s been one year since I posted the first video in my LeMans restoration series - the one where I extracted the car from its stall behind my garage and rolled it into the sunlight for the first time in nearly ten years. What have I accomplished in that year? Two doors and a fender have primer on them. That’s about it. At this rate, I will be in my eighties when this car is finally roadworthy. There’s just too much going on in my life so I can't devote enough time to this project to complete it in a reasonable amount of time. The original plan to have it painted, upholstered, and running by this spring was a folly I quickly replaced by hopes for its rollout in the Spring of 2019. At my current crawl, however, that, too, is a joke.

Then there’s the Corvair that sitting behind the garage with a bashed in front end. Repairing that is supposed to be a father-daughter project – one I promised myself wouldn’t occur until the LeMans is on the road. Will my youngest daughter, Mikhaila, still be willing to work on it with me in two years (or more)?

Now I’ve got another project crammed into the garage next to the LeMans. I recently bought a ’96 VW Golf GTI for Mikhaila. Her current daily-driver has over two-hundred thousand miles and, while it’s been reliable lately, it is showing signs of possible issues that will sideline it. I got a good deal on the GTI since it needed a water pump, a clutch, and a heater core. The water pump’s been replaced, and the car is currently on jack-stands in the midst of the clutch replacement. It’s going to take another couple of weeks just to finish that project, and then the heater core job will be an additional eight hours of removing front seats, console, and dash just to get to the leaky piece before putting it all back together. Once it’s done, I’ll trade her for her Mazda MX-3.

So what’s a very frustrated car-guy to do? What’s a new, near-term plan that’ll remove “disheartened” from my vocabulary? Is racing part of the solution?

Fortunately, my current daily-driver Mustang is not part of the equation since it’s: 1) a blast to drive, so my credo (“Life is short, drive what you like”) is met; 2) reliable, so I never have to spend time fixing things; 3) rust-resistant, so I can happily drive it year-round; and 4) practical, so I can haul bikes, pull a trailer, fill it with camping gear, etc.

What else can’t change? Getting the GTI on the road must take priority. With all that being said, here are what the options I came up with.

Option 1 is to just come to grips with the current state of things and consider myself very lucky that I have a nice, newer Mustang as my daily-driver and a desirable car in the works, albeit a long time in the works. The MX-3 will be sold; the LeMans will take as long as it will take; and Mikhaila’s Corvair will get attention. At this point, I’m not considering putting the Mustang on a road course, so my racing would be limited to autocrossing and drag racing.

Option 2 is to swap Mikhaila’s Corvair for the LeMans, so she and I can get that car back on the road before her time is harder to garner. Once that work is done, I’ll be at a crossroads again, but at least I’ll feel good about getting a car on the road and I’ll free up space behind the garage to provide more options. The cost of this option is some paint to re-spray the front clip (sheetmetal in front of the windshield) once all the welding is done.

Option 3 answers my desire to have a track car – one that I’m willing to risk on a roadcourse. Think “Zoom-Zoom.” I’d keep the MX-3, squeeze it into the garage, strip out the interior, lower it, install a GUP (Good Used Part) seat and harness, GNP (Good New Part) shifter bushings, decent tires, and hit the track. Yeah, yeah, I know it has a lot of miles on it, but a replacement engine from a junkyard is a small investment. An upgrade to the V6 with it’s commensurate 20% increase in power is feasible or maybe a turbo. Stock these cars are lightweight (around 2400 pounds) and handle like a go-kart (Zoom-Zoom).

Option 4 is the dramatic one. Assuming I’ll never get the personal satisfaction equal to all the hours and dollars the LeMans will suck up, I’ll sell it. What could I get for a running, driving (after I bolt on the fenders and doors), rust-free 1965 A-body convertible? Hagerty says ten grand in fair condition. Even though it’s not restored, the rust-free-ness of it should cause it to hold its value, but let’s say I get $8500 for it. What would I do with that much cash? There are many, many fun vehicles that would be on my track-car list. It’d have to be a smaller car to better fit in the garage, so no Camaro or Mustang. The candidates would include the aforementioned V6 MX-3, the first-gen Tempest I've written about, a V6 MX-6, a Miata, a Corvair, a Triumph GT6, a Triumph Spitfire, an MG-B, and maybe even a last-year Fiero.

Hmmm. Quite the crossroads.

Metal and Weather Get In The Way of Painting Progress

For a while now I’ve been talking about my struggles with paint color and how I believed that shooting a door or other body panel in each of the top candidates would make it apparent which color I should go with. I wanted to have done it sooner rather than, what it’s turning into, later. What’s been hampering my progress? Well, it IS winter and I don’t have a heated paint booth. Even if I did, though, I’m still struggling to carve out enough time to properly prep both doors for primer. I’m also working on the front fenders hammering out dings and patching a rusty area. All these efforts are documented in my YouTube videos which now number 21 episodes. The latest ones are: 19-Sanding Bondo, 20-Fenders, Doors, and Gauges, and 21-More Sanding Plus Making a Patch.

With my progress drawn out, I’ve had the opportunity to fall in love with another color. Recently, I read a Facebook post from Rusted Iron Customs showing their beautiful 1963 Tempest convertible. The paint job was flat black over House of Kolor’s Tangerine Kandy. I asked their painter, Matt, what color primer this was shot over and he replied PPG K36 (gray). I’ve done some more research on the paint, and it’s recommended that the transparent paint be shot over a silver or gold basecoat. From the photos, though, it sure looks gorgeous over the gray. I’m toying with the idea of getting a pint of the paint off eBay for $30. I’d also need a can of reducer ($25) and one of catalyst ($50). That’s $105 I could easily spend elsewhere, so this color may be off the table just due to the cost of painting a sample panel.

I’ll be getting some time in the garage tomorrow evening, so I plan on finishing the patch job on passenger fender by cutting out the bad metal to match the patch I’ve made, welding it into place, and grinding back the weld flush. The five day forecast has daytime temps in the high-forties and low-fifties this weekend, so I might strip the outside surfaces of the fenders, finish sanding the doors, and shoot all four pieces with epoxy primer. When motivated, I can work in an un-heated, well-ventilated garage in that kind of weather.