Greetings. I have been enjoying reading all of your stories of
introduction and felt encouraged to write my own.
I’m new. Both being younger than our 1965 Series V and having owned it
for less than six blissful months. I am an engineer with the State of
California residing in the San Francisco Bay Area. I grew up in remote
Humboldt County California where we spent a lot of time trying to get our
four wheel drives to run consistently and our trucks to run into
something other than redwood trees on Friday nights.
Until about six months ago I had never heard about Sunbeam, Alpines, or
otherwise. As some other people have mentioned, my wife also has her
priorities straight. She bought the car. She drives the car. I fix the
car. Although I get the distinct feeling that some of my fixes are
sabotaged. Every time she breaks down she comes back with a new story
about the investment banker who stopped and let her use his cell phone
and wanted to buy her "Tiger", or the 6’6" totally buffed Asian American
highway patrol officer with cheekbones sharp enough to shave with who
stopped to tell her not to play in the freeway. She also seems to know
every AAA tow truck driver on a first name basis in the greater San
Francisco Area. Her priorities are strait, I am starting to wonder about
mine.
She had an Alpine that her daddy bought with a blown engine way back when
she was just a little girl. The stick shift bothered her and they got
rid of it. She’s felt so guilty ever since that when this one came along
in the newspaper for cheap and we needed a second car she jumped. While
I was still sputtering about the concept of actually paying money for a
car that used Lucas electrics, she was sweet talking the guy out of
another hundred on his asking price. He got his revenge though, someone
had replaced the engine and transmission with what he assured us was from
a Ford Cortina. Not being a gear head I had no idea what this was (for
those of you wondering, it is apparently a British Ford made for the UK
and Australia). I now believe, hopefully, that it is some model of a
1971 Ford Pinto engine (especially since under the grime a partially
destroyed sticker states it meets California smog for a 1971 Ford 1.6
something or another). This might be better than sending to Sidney for
parts.
Its in poor shape and most certainly resembles a rolling work in
progress. My list of projects grows by two for every one that I
complete. Most important is getting blinkers installed. I have heard
about folks having trouble with Dept. Motor Vehicles inspections. I got
this through by insisting that it was "too old to have blinkers, see
there is no place up front to put them". Of course once I got the manual
and actually thought about it, how stupid could I get, apparently just
stupid enough to get by DMV . . .
I have been having lots of fun calling Rick and Shelly at Sunbeam
Specialties every week and ordering something new. As has been mentioned
previously, they are great folks to deal with.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Sep 05 2000 - 09:32:34 CDT