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There comes a time in every man’s life when he has to do what he has to do.  When he swallows his pride.  Bites the bullet.  Pays the piper.  Admits defeat.  Throws in the towel.

I was lucky enough to discover an auto restoration shop three miles from Chez Capitán.  Been in town (yet under my radar) for 40 years.  The owner is restoring his own 1946 Ford, his very first car that he sold to someone decades ago and was fortunate enough to be able to buy back. A part of his youth he wanted to recapture.  When finished, it will take its place as part of his collection.  The guy understands the symbiotic relationship between a man and his car.  He  and his team do everything in their shop from simple repairs to complete restorations.  Top notch work.  How I missed him all these years, I can’t explain.

However, once I discovered him, I did what needed to be done.  I called him and twenty minutes later there was a huge wrecker in my driveway and I was humming, “There’s a girl, my lord, on a flatbed Ford, slowin’ down to take a look at me.”  Just seemed appropriate.

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An hour after that I got a phone call.  “Tell me what we’re looking at here.” Gary was on the other end of the line, already looking at the Ford.

I tried to relay the history of what had taken place with the Fairlane 500 thus far, attempting to condense it down to just the essential elements.  (Buttercup says I have a tendency to embellish and make stories drag on way too long.  “Just get to the point,” she’ll say,” and I’ll struggle with what to leave out.  It all seems relative to the story.) But with her advice in mind, I gave Gary, the new best friend I’d never met, the saga of the Fairlane 500 and its refusal to start.  He seemed a little bored at one point, but we got through it.

“Okie dokie,” he said.  “We’ll get on it.”  He was a man of few words.

I pictured a team of crack auto mechanics waiting for him to hang up the phone and be launched into action, much like a pit crew at Texas Motor Speedway, jacking up the car.  Two of them would remove fuel lines, two more take off the gas tank, Gary barking orders from a crow’s nest up above it all like a commander supervising a hardened crew on the deck of a battleship.  He called me back the next day.

“So here’s the deal. The fuel lines are clear.  The problem is in the pump. We ordered a new fuel pump.  When it came in, it was the exact same brand and model as the new fuel pump you had installed.  We put it on.  Still no-go.  Do you have the old fuel pump that you removed?”

Of course I did.  I jumped in the car and handed it to him in 20 minutes.  Standing behind the counter, he took the original fuel pump, held it up next to one of the two new fuel pumps and looked at me, assuming I saw what he saw.  “Ohhhhh,” I said.  Though, I didn’t have a clue what I was looking at.

“You see how the arm that sticks out is longer on the old one than on the new one?”  I kind of did, but the difference seemed to be negligible.  Apparently it wasn’t.  And size matters.  Gary gave me a quick soliloquy on the quality, or lack thereof, on parts from China and then a detailed course of action.  “We’re going to try to take the arm off the old pump and put it on the new pump, if we can.  If that doesn’t work, we’ll rebuild the old pump using the guts from the new pump.  Then we’ll reinstall it and see if that doesn’t solve the problem.”

I remembered back to earlier posts when some of the blog readers warned that the new pump could be the problem, and I didn’t believe them.  Silly me.

Two hours later the phone rang.  “The old arm is on the new pump.  The new pump is nestled into that Mileage Maker Six like the baby Jesus in the manger.  The Fairlane 500 is purring like a kitten.  You can come pick it up.”  I had an instant Man Crush on Gary.

“Not so fast there, cowboy.”  I said.  “I have a few other things that I’d like you to take a look at while you’ve got it.”

“Let me get a pen.”

I went on to tell him that the vacuum operated windshield wipers didn’t work.  The horn didn’t work, but I had the part for it in the glove box.  It may or may not need a brake job, I had no idea.  I knew it needed shocks all the way around.  And the heater core had crapped the bed and would need to be replaced.  It is getting cooler in Fort Stockton, after all.  The tappet gasket looks to be leaking a bit.  Gary was writing as fast as I was talking.

The next day I was sitting at the desk working on a new series of stories about meetings taking place in Detroit at the end of the 1957 model year in between phone calls from clients when the phone rang.  It was Gary.

“Just wanted to keep you up to date,” he said.  “The wipers have been fixed and it didn’t even require any parts.  The wheels were removed on all four corners of the car.  The brakes are all new.  The wheel bearings have all been recently repacked.  Whoever had the car before you apparently had all that done.  No need for any further work there.  The rear shocks are readily available.  We’re working on replacing the tappet gasket.  SHould take care of the leak.  The front shocks have to be ordered.  They’ll take a few days to get here.  We’ll get them all installed when they arrive.”  I was starting to tear up, but didn’t want Gary to hear me cry those tears of joy.

“We got the heater core out.”  Thankfully, he didn’t even realize how emotional I was getting  as he spoke.  “Looks like a family of mice had been in there for quite a while.  The last one never moved out.  We had to remove his carcass.  We held a brief service.  Nothing too somber, just a quick celebration of life.  Replacement cores are not available for 1960 Fords.  Do you want us to send it out to a radiator shop and have them rebuild it?  That’s about all we don’t do right here in the shop.”

I’d given him my whole list.  He was checking off every box.  Things I’d been putting off or bumfuzzled by since it rolled off the car hauler back in April were all being handled in one fell swoop.  I was experiencing OCN in real time.  (Old Car Nirvana.)

As I write, we’re waiting on the front shocks to arrive and the heater core to be rebuilt.  When I pick the Fairlane up I’ll talk to Gary about seeing how much it will cost to have rust issues repaired and repainted as they exist around the lower edges of the car from its time spent in Massachusetts with the original owner.  And I’ll decide by then if I want to invite him to Christmas at our house or just give him a CMC cap.  

It could go either way.

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Tomorrow starts a new series.  It’ll run for six days, a new story and new car featured each day that somehow all tie together over more decades than I’ve been alive.  I hope you enjoy the journey.  Like Lucinda says, “Don’t forget to tip your server.”

In the meantime, just remember . . . When a woman says “Just do what you want,” do not, under any circumstances do what you want.

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