Hey, is there anybody in there, at all?

Sooo... Quite some time since I posted the last time and to be honest not a lot have happened with the car except that it seems to have broken down for real (screeching noise coming from the drivetrain).

I have bought a house with a proper garage though!

As of now I have taken the rear axle out off the car for two reasons: A) I think this is where the noise is coming from and B) I need to change ratio to 3.08 from 4.11 (or 3.89, can't remember right now).

While it's out I'll refurbish it, the springs and the shocks. I'm hoping that this'll be done within the month.

A new garage - a new start

So, I finally moved to a new garage and let me tell you, it feels great to be able to start working on my car again.

There's a couple of things I need to get done though, setting up a work bench and stuff like that, but I can more or less get cracking on all the things I have been postponing for several months.

Unfortunately the engine still runs a bit crap so I need to take another stab at the valves and the ignition before I begin with the interior (no need for a fancy looking car that won't go anywhere).

I also discovered a lot more surface rust than when I parked the car last autumn so I need to get cracking on that before it eats through the metal.

For a couple of pictures of the old garage and the new one, start here.

A new garage

Yesterday I found a new garage! It's almost twice as expensive but it's a lot roomier, a lot cleaner, somewhat closer to home and the guy owning the place seems to be very straightforward and serious about the place.

The biggest drawback is, besides the cost, that it lacks quite a bit of tools. No welder, no motor lift, few compressed air tools, etc, etc but that isn't all bad as I need to start getting those things of my own anyhow. Plus I'm not at a stage where I need those kind of tools right now.

The guy owning the garage, Kevin, is also best friends with the manager of a big tool retail chain here in Sweden so he can get really good discounts on pretty much any kind of tools which in a way compensates for the lack of tools at the garage.

He said I'd be able to move in the weekend after this so all I need to do now is make sure that the guys in my old garage get their cars out of the way in time (I'm parked at the very end of the garage, as I've mentioned before) but I hope they respect this.

I'll get back with more pictures after the move.

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 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.