Grumpy

Fixing up the Camaro has made me think about how my grandpa, whom we called Grumpy, restored a Dodge Challenger. He liked to fix things, and had a whole garage full of tools, car parts, and spare bits of everything cluttering up the place. He spent a lot of time on the Challenger, and always wanted to go really fast in it. He never got to, though. He died about 4 months ago, in the hospital, from an attempt at a liver transplant. I think it would have been nice, to have him help me with my car. I think we would have had a lot of fun together. Here are some pictures of him working on the Challenger...

I wish you were here, Grumpy. I love you.

The Fixing Begins

Today I started fixing up the Camaro. My dad started teaching me how to reverse (I am proud to say that no one is dead and there was no property damage!), and then we drove down to the Autozone. Then we bought some door locks, an oil filter, and a repair manual, and drove home again. Then we made a Camaro Fixen' CD, which includes Bitchn' Camaro by the Dead Milkmen (♪Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads...♪), Bang Camaro by Bang Camaro, Big Hair Camaro by Red Planet, Dad's Camaro by Tennis Pro, Camaro by Triggerfinger, Cherry Pie by Warrent, and a completely random song that I heard on Talledega Nights (The Ballad of Ricky Bobby), We Belong by Pat Benatar. After that, I went out and changed the oil. This time, the car actually needed the oil change. I also put this big Chevy sticker on the back window. I'm also going to put the locks in soon. Today we might go to the races again but with my dad's friend Seth, and maybe Morgan, this time. For now, I'd just like to say thank you to Jim for selling me the car, and to my parents for paying for it.

MINE!!!!

Well, I got the car. My dad's friend Morgan drove him down to Buckley, near Enumclaw (home town of Kasey Kahne, driver of Nascar's number 9 car). Then Dad drove the Camaro back up, and we found out that the car gets much better gas mileage than we thought it would. Before I ever saw the car, though, I heard it. I have one word to describe that sound; Beastly. The car is AWESOME!!!! It has a very batmobile-like look, and the engine is near perfect. The body is in almost as good of condition, but the interior's going to need a lot of work. Well, anyway, I'm really tired, so I'm going to bed. I'll post again tomorrow.

And now we play the waiting game...

Today I got a call from my dad, and he told me that he had been e-mailing the guy who is selling the Camaro (the 79 I talked about in my first post), and the guy (Jim) sent us some pictures of the car. Heres a couple of them...

So we e-mailed him again about it, to see if we can come and pick it up, but he hasn't responded yet. The waiting is killing me. So in the mean-time, my dad and I went to see a guy with a T-top 79 Camaro here in Everett, and he let us take pictutres of his...

Obviously, it isn't anywhere near as good as Jim's car, and both of them are asking about the same price!!! Of course, we could probably get the Everett car's owner to come down a couple hundred on the price, but still! Right now all I can do is keep waiting for that e-mail. I'll post again when we get it.

I like flames...

Today we got a thing about the local race track, so today we went out to the Evergreen Speedway to see the races. They had the Hornets (crappy cars painted yellow and black), Bombers (cars like camaros and mustangs and such), and the Super Stock cars. We also saw a figure-8, and then another 60 minute figure-8, the 60 minutes of FEAR (Figure Eight Auto Racing). Here is an You-Tube video of some stuff at the evergreen speedway...

The 60 minutes thing was pretty cool, and there were a bunch of crashes. One car, the #85 car, burst into flames at one point. Awesome. With the Super Stock cars, the winner did 21 spins (there was a lot of smoke). Also, my dad said that maybe I could make some money by doing oil changes for my family and friends, which would be cool. Then maybe I can save up enough to get the camaro! Of course there is always the issue of me not having a license, but that is a problem easily solved. Also, my mom probably wont want me to get a fast, cool car, which would make sense with some high-schoolers, but it's not like I'm some sort of rebel or anything. I get in trouble for not doing homework and stuff like that, not drugs or drinking or anything of that nature. It's not like I would go to school and challenge someone to a race! Anyway, that's about all that happened today.

1979 Chevy Camaro - WANT!!!

Today I went to craigslist and saw one of the coolest cars ever. A 1979 Chevy Camaro, with a fully tuned engine, an OK body, and about, oh ... $1500!! Here's a pretty picture of it...

No me digas! I want that car soooo badly (even though I would have to do a little body work, replace a couple of parts, and scrape some rust away) but I don't see how I can get it. Anyway, the whole car thing got me into cars, so my dad and I went out to get some oil (which came with free oil filters) and some car fixing stuff, and some cover-alls from Value Village, and my dad taught me how to change the oil...

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and oil filter, and I fixed a brake-light...

I also added some windshield liquid, and some transmission fluid, and cleaned the corrosion from the battery...

All in all, it was a fairly good day. Changing the oil made me think of somthing my old Social Studies teacher said. He used to go off on a lot of wierd tangents. One of them was, "Ladies, I am SICK and TIRED of when you keep driving when the oil light is on. It doesn't mean that you need to change your oil soon, it means that you need MORE oil NOW!!! And if you don't know how to put oil in your car, just ask a guy to do it. Even if he doesn't know how, either, he'll at least pretend to." Then he would say," and gentlemen, if you don't know where to put the oil, just find the oil cap, take it off, and pour in oil. And if you can't find the oil cap, just look for the cap marked 710." It took a while, but we finally realized what he meant, 710 was OIL upside down. It was pretty funny.