Month: August 2021

The ultimate downside of being a shade tree/backyard mechanic is the budget. Read one article on doing engine rebuilds and you quickly find that most of the people who write the articles are working from a company budget. The authors think nothing of spending 7-8 hundred dollars on a camshaft upgrade, another 8-9 hundred on new heads, got to add that new intake and carburetor otherwise the camshaft and head upgrades are useless. For the writers some of that comes out of corporate budget but the rest is probably covered by the manufacturers wanting the free advertising that comes with your product being used in a (fill in the blank) of any automotive “influencer”. I use the term influencer because whether it is a print article, posting on a website, or youtube video; the content producers are trying to gain market share and sell themselves to the consumers of said content to generate sales or drive ad revenues. I have nothing against the business model, in fact more power to them as everyone needs to make a living, however if you are talking budget builds make them truly budget builds.

As an example I have read two different articles on doing a “budget” rebuild of a Chevy 350 and if you take the article and look up the costs of the parts you soon find that “budget” is 2-4 thousand dollars depending on the choices you make. Now not everyone is going to have that kind of cash laying around and building your own hot rod, or restoring an old car or truck is of course a conscious decision. A decision that should not be made lightly. And so I will be spending several nights with a spreadsheet and compiling a build sheet for my motor, I know I want performance, however I do not want to break the bank as there is still a lot of sheet metal work in my future. Funny how my project seems to be more sitting at the computer researching than it is wrenching.

Managed to get the workshop cleaned up on Sunday morning. Double checked through my pile of parts for the brakes to ensure I had everything ready to go, realized I need bolts for the rear brake cylinders. Since I am going to need to take the front end back apart I am debating about getting new Grade 8 bolts to replace all of the original bolts. I know at this point I definitely need new bolts for the back brake cylinders and the shocks since I seem to have misplaced the originals, there is a definite disadvantage to working at a snails pace.

Getting excited to see some real progress on the truck, have ordered and received the wheels. Need to consider purchasing a new torque socket as the u-bolts require 145 ft/lbs and the one I have is old school with the moving bar, it would require getting the truck higher up to see the bar move. I prefer the kind you set to spec you need and it just clicks when you get there, unfortunately the one I have only goes to 80 ft/lbs. More things to think about.

Warning the following paragraph contains recommendations of vendors I have no relationship with other than giving them some of my hard earned money, my recommendation is based on personal experience and your experience could be completely different.

If you are in the market for tires check out tirerack.com selection is really good and you can have them drop shipped direct to a participating tire shop for mounting and balancing. Since I wanted a lower profile tire that is not a standard size I am having to wait a few weeks, but getting them at a real good price. I choose to have the tires sent directly to Firestone as they have given me better pricing on tires than other vendors, they are also the ones who directed me to tirerack.com to find the exact tires I was looking for since they did not carry the size. They are also where I will get alignment done once truck is drivable.

It is odd that I started this blog after my Father passed away as a catharsis. His death was a long process of increasing pain for months without a diagnoses, then he fell and his hip shattered, it was during the surgery for hip replacement that we learned he had cancer that had metastasized to his bones. From October to January he fought and we endured; chemo, radiation, constant pain due to a disintegrated vertebrae that shattered at the same time as his hip. I learned a lot about being a caregiver, going from work to the hospital or the nursing home, relieving my Mother so she could get a few hours rest. Sometimes spending nights with him or working remotely from his room when I could. Then there were the phone calls I had to make… letting family know he had cancer, the worst of which was having to call my brother on his birthday to tell him that our father had passed away. Life does not come with any instructional material on how to do certain things, you just have to do them in the moment and live with the pain.

So I started writing, trying to be consistent, trying to find my voice among the clutter of emotional luggage that I carry around. When my Mother fell and broke her shoulder I split my time between work, helping her, and trying to be at home with my family. We saw her through that crisis and her shoulder healed. Some of the things I wrote on my blog, the personal soul searching, writing about my mental health issues; my Mother worried about them and it hurt her that I was hurting, so I stopped writing because I did not want her to worry.

Then one day she got sick and went to the doctor and he took her straight down to the emergency room at Martin Army hospital at Ft Benning. She had fluid building up in her abdomen, they drained it off and sent her home. Over the coming months she got worse, having to get fluid drained off frequently; we went from specialist to specialist looking for a cause of the fluid build up. She was barely eating or drinking, I was her full time caretaker while trying to juggle work and family.

Then finally we got a diagnosis, after months of guesses, cancer; but not just cancer, ovarian cancer and it had metastasized. The Oncologist gave her a prognosis, she had at most a week. We immediately got her into Hospice care at Columbus Hospice, she asked to be in the same room my Father had been in if it was available, it was. Once again I had to make phone calls, it was not any easier. Five days after her diagnosis she was gone, surrounded by family, in a room she wanted to be in.

And life goes on, the person who she had talked to that was going to take her two dogs backed out. I tried bringing them to my house, but they clashed with my other dogs. I could not just let them go to some strangers, they are what links me to my Mother. So I have juggled work, family, and pets for almost two years. I have also had to be a care taker of my wife as she was on bed rest for eighteen months, through antibiotic infusions. I have become stretched thin at times, relying on the help of my children to help me take care of my Mother’s dogs. Trying to balance work, family, and two households has taken an emotional toll on me; I second guess my decision to take care of the dogs and make two house payments, double utilities. I worry about the strain it has at times put on my marriage.

I need the catharsis of my writing, now more than ever. I have never really mourned for my parents. I took the pain and grief, stuck it in a suitcase and piled it up with the rest of my emotional baggage. I changed mental health providers and changed medicines, I have put off going to grief counseling as the Covid pandemic has raged, I do not need more problems. I am trying to get back to writing, but it is a slow process, having to clear away the cobwebs. Trying to find inspiration, when at the end of the day I just feel worn thin. I know I have a voice but I have forgotten what it sounds like.

Return to the garage, or is it the shade tree? Maybe a bit of both. So, this morning I spent some time working on my project truck the 1969 Chevy C10. With the help of my son Trevor we got the rear end into place on the trailing arms. Unfortunately I could not tighten everything down as I did not have a SAE 1 1/16th deep socket since the new U-bolts are about an inch longer that the old ones. Which puts me in the position of having to buy another tool because that seems to be the way of most rebuilds or repairs. The problem is I have a growing pile of tools that have seen single use, which is frustrating.

More frustrating than having to buy a new tool was finding a crack in part of the front crossmember as I was contemplating next steps. Unfortunately this means next steps involve learning how to weld so I can fix the crack. Some may view this as a foolish next step, however the plan was to learn how to weld anyways so I can repair the rusted sheet metal. Realistically next steps involve cleaning of the workshop so I can roll the frame in and work on a concrete pad, this has the added benefit of being where the power is to run the welder. Downside is I have to maneuver quit a bit of power tools and work benches around in order to free up space. The list of projects seems to be growing rather than shrinking.

This week my wife Phoebe and I went to Florida on vacation. We went down the eastern seaboard all the way to the end of the Florida Keys and came back up the western seaboard. While we were in the Keys I faced my fear of heights by going parasailing in Key Largo @ https://www.keylargoparasail.com the peaceful gliding through the air, floating 150+ feet above the Blackwater Sound, occasionally getting gusts of wind that would lift me higher. Being able to see for miles around the surrounding land and water was just breathtaking. I found serenity up in the air despite my fear of heights.

I have never had a real bucket list, however this trip reminded me that there is more to life than just working. Now do not get me wrong I love my job, I especially love working for a medical technology company that makes amazing products that directly benefit patients on a daily basis. I just seem to lose sight of trying to maintain work life balance and tend to put my work ahead of everything else. i know it seems cliché the old saying “life’s a journey, not a destination” however I seem to always be looking for the destination, not enjoying the journey. So, this week I spent some time enjoying the journey, I slowed down and other than the meeting appointment times for parasailing and our trip to the Salvador Dali museum https://thedali.org/ , I did not rush the week. I did not spend each day trying to hurry to the next destination, but took each day as it came.

Now I have to work on a bucket list, two items I already know I want to do are a zipline and to go skydiving.