The quest for a garage, epilogue

My Buick is finally parked inside a warm and dry garage but it wasn't exactly smooth sailing getting there.

When I decided to drive the car from my brothers house to the garage the weather was clear, the roads dry and the temperature 3-4 degrees Celsius.

When we actually got things going it was pitch black, sub-zero temperature and foggy. Not the best conditions for driving a two ton muscle car with absolutely nothing along the lines of winter tyres on.

This meant that I had to keep the speed to about 20-25 mph which in turn meant that I had to take the back roads to the garage. The journey took roughly 45 minutes.

Worth noting is that the car still had a lot of moisture and water in the coupe - water that froze as soon as the temperature went below zero. There's no heat in the car due to the fan and/or dashboard electronics being broken.

Nothing to do but roll down the windows and put on a lot of warm clothes. It wasn't all that bad though, most of my body went numb after about 15 minutes so I couldn't feel the cold for the better part of the journey.

Well, we finally arrived at the garage but at this stage we were so tired so we just drove the car in, front first, just so that it'd get in for the night. Since I'm going to work more on the front end we needed to turn it around, something we planned for yesterday.

Now, turning a car around shouldn't be such a big deal, right? My reply to that is "It depends."

In my case it depended on two things; does your car have insanely bad ground clearance due to headers and does the garage have a big bulky door that has it's frame protruding up an inch from the ground?

We tried to rig a ramp from planks that we had lying around but no matter what we did the headers caught on the frame and brought the car to a juddering halt. Nothing to do but drive it in, front first, again and work out a better solution to the problem.

To top things off I'm a bit torn about the garage. The guys I'm sharing it with are true characters but great in every way. One guy, Reijo, is currently rebuilding an Oldsmobile estate into a pickup truck, just for fun of course.

The guy who hooked me up with the spot, Anders, works at the biggest Yankee car parts dealer in Gothenburg. Roland, who actually lives in a trailer outside the garage, is apparently an extremely talented mechanic.

All of them very helpful and willing to answer any and all questions I might have. I noticed just yesterday that the garage even has a plasma cutter, something I never could afford on my own.

Still, as you can see on the pictures, there's not even enough room to breathe in there as it is now and I can't help but feel that it's going to be tough getting any major work done on the car.

I'm not going to change for a year or two anyhow - the knowledge these guys bring with them is worth way too much. One example of this knowledge is that Reijo, as soon as he hard my car start, thinks that a crankshaft bearing is busted.

Not great news as I was told that my engine was in good condition when I bought the car but it's better to get the news this way when I still can fix it than in the form of a completely busted engine.

All in all, with the garage solved I now have one less problem to take care of. The rest is a lot more fun.

The quest for a garage, part four

Today I got the call I was waiting for - the garage I was looking at just before Christmas has space for me and my baby (that's the Buick, in case anyone was wondering).

It's not the cheapest option at roughly $140 per month but it is on the other hand equipped with a lot of tools, welders, a car lift and an air compressor.

Another very important thing is the fact that the guys that I share the space with are die hard Yankee car enthusiasts and know how to weld, bend or fix pretty much anything related to cars.

If all goes well I'll be driving over tonight. There's a lot that can go wrong from here to there - the least not being the Swedish law enforcement as my cars is, as it stands, street illegal.

So here's hoping.

The quest for a garage, part three

My brother and I was off to look at another garage this evening. This garage was one of the first ones I investigated but due to a lot of complications it fell through. On a whim I called one of the guys responsible for the garage, Anders, earlier this week and he said that things had finally worked out and that they had one spot left.

It's quite a small garage and I'm not entirely sure that they can actually squeeze my car in there but Anders thought that it would be just fine. He'd talk to the rest of the guys during the weekend and get back to me in 4-5 days.

I'm cautiously optimistic as I've seen a lot of deals fall through when it comes to garages. If this one works out though it should be a very good setup.

Sure, it's located smack dab in the middle of nowhere so I'll have to buy another car to get there (something I had hope to avoid) but the guys that occupy it seems to be really great guys and there's a lot of tools available.

The sound of silence...

... is nowhere to be heard when I fire up my BBB. I need to take care of the noise - no matter how glorious it is - in order to pass the DMV (Bilprovningen) inspection.

I'm not sure what size my current exhaust system is but my guess is at least 3" (and looking at a ruler, 4" wouldn't be far off) with a couple of Flowmaster mufflers. They sound a bit like this Chevelle from 1971.

The header on the passenger side needs to be replaced as it has been quite dented due to the low ground cleareance so I might just get me a entirely new system to begin with and in the process move to a 2" system to get the noise down a bit for longer journeys (but I do love the noise it makes now).

The current system isn't in bad shape except for the headers so I might be able to sell it. Or, if space allows, keep it for my up and coming, secret, project. ;)

The quest for a garage, part two

The garage I talked about in my last post didn't work out as it was too short. The width was ok at roughly 3 meters (118 inches) but it was only 5 meters (197 inches) long.

So it's back to rummaging through ads again.

There are garages to be had but they're from around $240 to $285 a month which is a bit steep so unless I really have to pay for one of those - which I soon have to - I'll keep looking.

The quest for a garage

I spoke to the guy who has a garage that's available but he's not sure how big it is. My Buick is almost 2 meters (77.2 inches) wide and roughly 5.2 meters (206.7 inches) long so not just any garage will do.

I'll swing by him tomorrow at noon and I'll be bringing a measuring tape.

Rain is the enemy

My Buick Gs 455 originates from Alabama where she's as far as I know spent the majority of her life. The probability of her being used to rain is in other words slim to none very high.

Imagine the shock she I got when it started raining here (I live in Sweden). She took in water like she'd hit an iceberg - something that pisses me off as the seller never mentioned this!

I got myself a car cover from local accessories shop Biltema and thought no more about it. It turns out that the cover is anything but water resistant which meant that my poor car looked terrible after weeks of down pour.

After getting the interior as dry as possible I wrapped the car in tarp as well as the car cover I previously bought. Even though they seem to keep the water out they can't resist the autumn storms resulting in them being torn off the car, no matter how hard I secure them.

All I want for Christmas is a garage.

Edit: Found out that it rains in Alabama as well which changes my view on this whole ordeal a bit.

The obligatory welcome post

Hi and such. At the moment I don't have a lot to write about here as work on my Buick is on hold until I find a garage. I have a lead on one that might just work out - I'll know Monday or Tuesday.

I'll update as soon as something newsworthy happens and my best advice right now is to subscribe to the RSS/ATOM feed so that you don't have to swing by only to find a lot of digital dust.