MAGAZINE

"How much did you spend putting together that pickup, Bub?"

"Oh, probably (I really wouldn't TELL anyway-so I tell him what he expects to hear) about 10 Grand."

Horse pucky. Horse damn stinkin' pucky. If you value your time at $3 per hour, you have to factor in about $300,000 in wasted time, mileage, phone work, research, pulled-in markers, incorrect parts, bad advice.............it's a dang lucky thing we LIKE this fool's errand! The simplest of rod or custom projects has hundreds of separate challenges that take RESOURCES to solve. One of them is money. Usually, money is the LEAST resource we invest into this folly. It's our TIME, the commodity that gets more and more precious as we get older.

But ain't it worth it? Yeah, I guess. But SOME days......................

JUST 'DROP' IT IN, BUDDY

The 'stat housing was an example of what you have to invest in time, money and aggravation to contribute a $12 part to the project. On that day there was a list that went something like this:

Stat/Housing/Gasket
Radiator to shop
Fasteners for heater
Material for radio mount brackets
Find 1" fan extention in parts loft
Fan to powder shop
Carb to shop
Heat/Bend breather pipe
Get gaskets for drive-line, trans tower
Find headers/header paint (ended up with exhaust m-folds)
Figure out generator mount
And more...........

Each of these items did not 'materialize'. Remember that we (I) know, in every instance, WHAT to do. But maybe not HOW to do it. The above list is only a portion drawn from the major list for the project. The project? "Drop a 283 into the '37 pickup". You just say "DROP", like you lifted the cherry-picker and released the thing and gravity frickin' made the motor land in the right place and the motor mounts were right, and the fasteners incredibly wound up perfectly tight, and all the wiring and cooling system were accidently reuseable. And the drag link still cleared.

"DROP?" I got yer "DROP".

When it's all over, the boys will listen to it and say, "Hey, Dude, sounds like you finally got the 283 dropped into that junker." And it will be over. For them. If they only knew............But for years - probably all the years WE got left, we're going to enjoy this aggravating piece-o-poop, and from time to time we will remember that thermostat housing situation, and all the other situations that accrued, resulting in a useable old truck. A Rattle Can Special. And when you drive IT, or even the nicer ones, and the Chump in the gas station says, "Nice car, how much ya got in it?" Don't tell him.

He'd never BELIEVE it.