3/25/16 – 3/27/16
So it turns out that Friday was a good Friday after all. Feeling better after getting the car to start I came home Friday afternoon and began to clean the garage in earnest. If I was a pregnant woman, my behavior would be described as nesting. I am not sure there is an equivalent word for a guy getting a garage ready for a car. Anyway, I moved junk and swept up dust and other stuff and eventually cleared more room for the car. Dirt and cobwebs were everywhere, and I was an allergic mess. Normally I would have hired someone to do this for me, but I have turned over a new leaf on this project I did the dirty work myself.
The next order of business was to start the car. Using the same process that Mark had drilled into me, I started the car and let it idle in my backyard for a while. It felt good just to listen to the motor.
On Saturday, I finally worked up the courage to back the car out of the garage and down the narrow driveway to the front yard. Once there, I broke the drought rules and washed it. Oh My! Washing a car with peeling paint, old rubber and partially coated wheels results in the kind of runoff to which the EPA would object. Soon the outside of the car was pretty clean. It still looked bad, but it was clean.
So I decided to take it for a drive around the neighborhood. For the most part the drive went well. And as I backed out into the street, I kept repeating a line from the song Hot Rod Lincoln: …but I ain’t scared. The brakes are good, the tires fair.
The drive was a little problematic. I think the clutch engages way too high, and I am convinced there is a problem getting into second gear, unless the gear box is always supposed to grind when you change gears. Mark thinks that I just need to learn how to shift an old sports car, which includes rev matching up shifts. I think the problem is more than that. We are at an impasse until I drive the car more and get over the problem or Mark drives it and acquiesces. It will be less expensive if my credibility continues to suffer and Mark is right.
I feel strange driving around with an unregistered car, especially in Beverly Hills where the police look critically at every car that does not fit in the neighborhood, and the 1977 Targa most assuredly does not fit now.
On Saturday I begin to clean the interior in earnest. I wanted to use my new steam cleaner, but I could not find distilled water. I found purified at the market, but not distilled. One of the reasons I feel I will be successful with this project is that Mark is a good mentor. He also is a purist. I would have used the purified water, but he wouldn’t let me. So I had to put off using the steam power until Sunday.
On Sunday I found the distilled water. It’s surprising how difficult it was to find. Anyway, I fired up the steam cleaner and went to work. When I was done, I could sit in the car and not sneeze. Progress. Kimberly, my younger daughter, was at the house, and I asked her if she wanted to sit in the car. She took one look, and even though it was really clean compared to earlier in the week, said, “Not until it’s sterilized!”
The last item on the agenda for Sunday was to go to Mark’s and get a few things for the car. Despite Kimberly’s dissing of my car, I let her drive my Cayman to Mark’s. She really likes putting it in manual mode and shifting with the paddles. I was somewhat encouraged when she said learning about gear selection would be good practice for when she tackled the manual gearbox in the 1977 Targa.