2005 C6 Corvette

Guess what I found a good deal on recently? Yeah, it is mine now. Only 41,000 miles on it. I have been wanting one of these since I first saw it in a magazine in 2004. Want to come help wash it?

There in only room in the garage for one more. What's next?

Hello Roger

Thursday night while browsing Craig's List, I came across an interesting ad: For Sale: 1967 Morris Minor, yada yada yada.



(To get a good idea how big this car is notice the Volkswagen Beetle in the adjacent spot.)

Thirty-six hours later it was parked in my driveway. When I saw the ad, I knew it would go quickly. I called the owner. He said two others had already made arrangements to come see the car. I made my appointment for earlier in the day!

This car is roughly the same size as a VW Beetle. The interior is spacious but sparse. The exterior styling is reminiscent of cars 20 years older that it. It has a very small engine (1 liter) and a fairly large trunk boot. The paint looks good in the pictures and from about 20' - closer than that you can tell it needs some attention.

It quit once on the trip home. The previous owner said the gas tank was full. The gauge showed the tank was full. Fewer than 15 miles later I was out of gas. The gauge still showed the tank was full - it was not. In what seemed like a fortuitous event, the car ran out of gas right in front of a gas station. Unfortunately it was an unattended commercial refueling station. None of my cards worked there. My neighbor Brian who was still following me at this point, went and bought a gas can and brought me back some gas. At this point I headed straight for the station and filled up the tank and the empty gas can, just in case.

Did I say it quit once? It also developed a vacuum leak on the way home. This is kind of the opposite of quitting. The leak caused the engine to idle high. Nothing that couldn't be dealt with if I ever made it back home. Because it was idling high, I turned the motor off each time I had to stop for a light. (This reminded me of my hyper-mile-ing experiments the summer of 2008.)

Each time I stopped, there were one or more people there to ask me about the car. Two British car guys stopped to chat, they both wished me luck which I understand one needs when they have a car from the UK. Lots of people waving also. I think this car was getting more attention than the 1925 Chevy truck did. Amazing.

It has a few problems, but nothing we can't live without. I hope to get it running a little smoother soon. It won't be too soon though, my calendar is booked pretty solid for the next couple weeks.

Several folks have asked me what I am going to do with this car. The short answer is nothing. I don't plan on restoring it - basically I just want to keep it running and go get a milk shake from time to time.

Oh, yeah, we have decided to call it Roger, a name that stuck very quickly.

Challenger 2010

(Terry and) I went to test drive the 2010 Challenger R/T. Here is the car parked in my driveway.

Sunday I spotted a '69 Chevy LWB pickup parked at an auction lot. The truck looked to be in good shape, probably parked in a garage for an extended period of time. Out of curiosity, I emailed yesterday to find out what they wanted for it. The response came in this morning - a very reasonable $1100.

I went by at lunch today to get a closer look. A mere 3 hours later it was already gone.

Missed it!

Wouldn't this look nice in my driveway!

Alabama Jubilee

Yesterday J and I went to a car show at Alabama Jubilee in Decatur. The jubilee is an annual hot air balloon rally. Also included is the car show, a antique tractor show, and some other stuff that currently holds no interest for me. This event falls on the weekend Memorial day each year.

J agreed to the car show under a single condition. He wanted to take pictures of the cars. No problem. He did a great job with the camera and we came home with lots of good pictures.

While at the show, I saw a 1968 Corvette convertible, triple black, which was for sale. The price was reasonable as well. I have been thinking about it.

Today was a wonderful day to be outside.

I drove over the Athens this morning (in the freshly painted Miata) to attend Cars on the Square. It was a really nice show centered around the old downtown square. It was a really big show considering it was only its second year. I ran into several folks I knew while I was there. I also looked over several old Corvettes with for sale signs in their windows. All in all, it was a very pleasant morning.

During the afternoon I finished planting the garden. I added cantaloupe, okra, cucumbers and more corn. For a small garden, I definitely over-planted. I will have to thin it out some once I see which plants are strong.

The Big One that Got Away

I spent the last week watching a local car on Ebay. The car was a 1968 Corvette convertible. I was very tempted to buy this car. I contacted the seller last Thursday and arranged to look at the car on Saturday.



This car was very sound mechanically and it looked pretty good from about 10 feet back. Did I mention I was tempted. After giving the car a good look over I went home to sleep on it.



I eventually decided to let it pass. While the price was right, there were just too many little things that it needed. All these little things could add up to many-many weekends of work (and a empty wallet). I don't need another project right now. I already have a few.

Stay tuned...

Today the local blog critic awarded my blog the most boring blog in the neighborhood award. I guess he missed the geometric proofs from a couple of years back. And the lyrics for 'Oh, Yes Wyoming'. (If your interested, I recently proved the triangle inequality theorem for vectors.)

Then I remembered my blog wasn't really meant to be entertaining, it was intended to document my current obsession, whatever that might be, for example a Miata, a 1925 Chevrolet,rebuilding a 1972 GMC pickup, hoping to acquire an unspecified year Corvette or Volkswagen Beetle, building Furniture, hot tubing, auto body repair, camping, hiking, biking, welding, metal-meet, camping, Dodge Chargers, low carb dieting, school, procrastination, hypermiling, building a foundry, melting aluminium, state quarters, container gardening, MDF, STL, model railroading (n gauge), tenth scale RC cars, RC airplanes, Vertigo, slot car racing, Formula One, the US Grand Prix, attending car shows, Mini Coopers, ping pong, foos ball, chocolate chip cookies, fembots with a penchant for evil, cast iron skillets or even fried okra. Whatever. I feel so validated now.

Mmmm, fried okra.

iMike and Terry did not even get an honorable mention because their blogs are too interesting. Sorry guys.

Hello, Hello, Hola!

Kruse Auction In Huntsville

I attended a classic car auction this weekend. I had never been to one before and it was quite enjoyable. The I only lasted about 5 hours. I suspect the entire event was 10 or more hours. During my time there, the lowest price was $2100 and the highest price was $110,000. Quite a few muscles cars sold in the 60 to 70 k price range.

This '57 convertible went for $110k.




At one point one of the bidders assistants was messing with me. I had accidentally made eye contact with him and he offered to place a $57,000 bid on a '62 convertible Corvette for me. *** Shakes head side to side and looks at this feet. *** The car eventually sold for $67k. I did not buy it.

If possible, I will try to attend this again next year.

The weekend snuck up on me. What a pleasant surprise. I suspect this can only happen if you don't go to work for a while.

The sky has gray all day today but there was practically no wind. Around the middle of the afternoon, I decided the Miata needed to roll toward no place in particular. (It had been parked since New Years Eve Day.) I was quite successful in this venture in that I did get to no place in particular in a reasonable amount of time.

While going no where, I stopped an observed a motionless C3 parked in a previously used automobile facility. I copied down the VIN so that I could research it online. It was a nice black car with a gray (leather?) interior. Visually it had a few minor problems, for example the passenger side seat belt needed to be cleaned and the leather boot around the manual stick could stand to be replaced. Online research revealed the car to be a '77 with the standard L48 engine package. The L48 is a small-block Chevy, 350 cubic inches, and made between 165 and 185 HP depending on who you believe. This is a relatively low number when you consider my much lighter Miata had 140-ish HP from the factory. Still, a C3 is a pretty cool car. $7355 is a weird price if you ask me.