It's been a bit of a busy week. I worked with the tuner most of Monday afternoon to hone in on a tune that didn't rely on the MAF - to me, it appears he did a lot of work with the various tables (particularly the speed density) to get it running really good. We're still trying to chase the harsh 1-2 shift - it doesn't seem to matter what he does, the harshness won't go away. We did get the 2-3 shift to soften up, but not really what I wanted. Andy was getting frustrated with not being able to impact the 1-2 shift the way he thought he should be able to after multiple driving/logging sessions, so he took the last log and is doing some research to come back and address the issue later as we were getting late in the day.
Tuesday morning I loaded the '40 Chev on the car trailer to take it to my painter to get a self inflicted wound healed. I think i mentioned in a prior post that I had dropped an under hood light on the leading edge of the hood, leaving a couple of paint chips all the way through to the primer. If the car wasn't going to the GNRS, I might have attempted to repair it myself, but I want it to be done right in this case.
The remainder of Tuesday was spent dragging the car hauler to Nashville, getting to my hotel there around 9:30 PM. The purpose of this trip was to pick up a car for Lori. She has been so understanding and supportive of my acquisition " disease", but subtly mentioned that she has only asked for "one car" and that ask hasn't been answered yet. Her "one car" is a 1955 Chevy Bel Air 2-door hardtop in two tone turquoise and white. I have been looking for months, but the ones that have shown up to date didn't get me excited to the point that I wanted to share them with her. It seemed like most of the ones I came across were either post cars or didn't appear to me to be worthy of their asking price.
The subject of the trip was at Streetside Classics, a consignment/resell company with several locations around the country. Their Nashville location had around 200 cars in the warehouse, 20 of which were owned by the company, the remainder on consignment. There were some really nice cars in there, including a '67 Shelby GT500KR that had a $250,000 price tag on it!!
I had spent quite a bit of time last week talking with the sales guy about the car, since it was a new addition to their inventory and not a lot of info was posted with the sale add. Mechanically, the car has been done very well. It has a Blueprint crate engine with Holley ProFlo IV fuel injection, newer overdrive transmission, Vintage Air heat/AC and an updated interior. The suspension has been completely redone with Ride Tech coil over shock components at all four corners, along with Wilwood disc brakes. The salesman did warn me that there were a couple of visible paint flaws, but the car was "high end driver" quality.
When I arrived at Streetside Wednesday morning, I broke out my Spot Rot tool and started "probing" the suspect areas for excess Bondo. There were a few areas of concern (well, DUH - the car is 70 years old!!), but not beyond acceptable limits. We then took it for a test drive, and it rides, accelerates, stops and handles really well. We then put it on a lift to be able to inspect the undercarriage, etc. While I was very impressed with the work done on the suspension, having the car in the air showed how bad the prep was before painting as there were tons of little "nibs" in the paint, although it felt relatively smooth - in other words, probably not something I can solve with normal paint correction. Lori is a bit of a perfectionist (as she should be), and I just knew bringing home a way less than perfect car would not fly. After talking with her, I called my painter to discuss the cost of getting the car to where we would want it to be. While the salesman and I had agreed on a price last Friday, I told him the paint job just wasn't the quality I expected for the price they were asking. While I was on the phone with my painter, he had called the owner to update him on progress and the issues I had raised. He asked me to "throw out a number", which I did, and which I thought the car would support once the paint issues were addressed. The owner agreed, and we proceeded to finalize the paperwork and get a refund prepared for the reduction in purchase price I had brought a cashiers check for. I took my time getting the car loaded up and strapped down, and got a much later start leaving Nashville than I would have liked, arriving home at 10 PM that evening.
I didn't get any pictures of loading the car, but here it is at my last fuel stop less than an hour from home. The trailer pulled effortlessly at 5 over the speed limit all the way home!
When I got home, Lori was excited about her new ride, and even more so on Thursday after she had a chance to put a few miles on it from the driver's seat! There's some work to do here (absent the paint job) cleaning and polishing some neglect, but I think this will be a good addition to our collection!
However, now the garage is full again once the Z06 comes home from the body shop next week, so I have to begin noodling lift options to give me some room to work on projects!! I know - a first world problem!
Could have avoided a lot of mental anguish!!
