Welcome to another Terrible Idea Thursday, in which we all share our own awful car ideas and encourage one another in our individual manias. Why? Because these are the reasons why we have virtual friends. I’ll start. I’m in love with my $3,000 E39 BMW, but it still needs a few things. Up first was the legal requirement to have a front license plate. I ordered the part, primed, and I need to paint it when I touch up the front paint on the car.
The obvious thing to do, of course, is to paint it so that it matches the rest of the car. I’ll have the touchup paint. This should be easy!
It’s already primed so… what if I painted it a different color? Maybe a bright blue? Seems like a terrible idea and, yet, I can’t get it out of my mind. I should stop, right? RIGHT?
Trivia Night!
Just a reminder, if you’re a Velour or RCL member: The long-promised Zoom Trivia Night is going to happen this March 24th at 8:30 PM EDT. That’s tomorrow! You’re going to have the opportunity to go multiple rounds with quizmasters David Tracy and Jason Torchinsky, with some guest appearances. RSVP to david@theautopian.com. We’ll send out the Zoom link out tomorrow afternoon.
Cheers!
It’s not Thursday anymore and that’s still hideous.
Well not exactly added to. Had a 1974 Maverick. Was walking around the junkyard. Saw a perfectly nice Maverick with mag wheels which as a wannabe car guy I couldnt help but want. Well was sitting on the ground i found a jack in the trunk tried jacking it up sank into the dirt. Found a board for support jacked it up. Vehicle started shifting. I used a half assed support system to get the rim off. Went to the other side no rim. I spent 2 hours getting the 1 rim off only to find no pair.
Lesson learned if you need a pair make sure there is a pair.
The stuff I did to my second Mustang II (the ’77 with the 2300 four) wasn’t exactly controversial… EVERYONE hated it. A buddy of mine owned it and rebuilt the engine as a project for an ASC engine-rebuilding certification class, but made the mistake of swapping in a horsepower cam rather than one with more of a torquey profile, so it was a real dog. He painted it a beautifully vibrant metallic blue but got some overspray on the windshield, which he removed with an orbital sander, which… well, it was a learning experience. Anyway, then he sold it to me for $400. I used it on a rural paper route, and since it was already a ridiculous P.O.S., I decided to embrace the P.O.S.ness fully. I used a torch to cut a “sunroof” into the roof, the better to toss newspapers to both sides of the street on my route. The cutting route happened to go through some reinforcing sheetmetal, which I then had to clamp in place so the remaining sheetmetal didn’t flap so hard in the wind at freeway speeds that it would tear itself apart. And then I figured I’d improve the faux-woodgrain instrument cluster by hand-painting it in psychedelic day-glo colors, labeling each gauge and turn indicator in groovy fonts. Wish I’d kept that piece or at least taken a picture, I really thought it looked cool.
About five years before that I’d driven my first car (a 1978 Mercury Zephyr wagon) down to Rosarito Beach in Mexico with a couple of pals, and while there I bought a pair of horns removed from the skull of a bull. I initially thought to attach them at the front of the hood like an asshole ’70s Texas oil baron would, but the horns were smallish and black so it looked too much like a mustache, so I mounted them above the windshield instead. For some reason I thought that looked pretty nifty. When I eventually unloaded the car, I filled the holes and kept the horns and still have them. Never did get around to installing them on any other car, though.
Got a good one, mk4 Jetta suspension was blown out as in the raceland coils put on by the PO broke the springs. We ended up using focus st struts with “custom” fender liner bushings/sleeves for the lower shock mount. For springs, f56 mini Cooper s springs fit the bill good enough to make it a few months.