Let The Fun BEGIN!!

So check it out,

The leaves changed, and then fell. So did the snow. It was time to park Jess in my garage and begin the rebuild. This was a very special time to me because not only was I going to spend time with my dad, John Mayer playing in the background, and cigars in hand....but we were spending this time together with Jess, in the only place in the world I'd want to rebuild my car....my grandpa Sam's shop.

A little background on the shop...
The house that my grandparent's lived in has been around for a pretty long time. This was the home my dad and his brothers were raised in. The home they were taught to be the men that they are today.  The home was my grandpa's pride and joy. When times were hard, and when times were great, the shop his haven...his escape...his home away from home...and his paradise.  He spent many years building the shop into what it is today. From its own little bathroom, to the lockers on the wall filled with tools and supplies, to the car lift and full air-compressor built into the floor. This shop was capable of rebuilding and fixing just about anything that my grandpa could get his hands on. If only the memories in this shop could be relived over and over again.....I guess i'll just have to be making my own in it from now on! If only he was here with us now every step of the way. But I know he's looking down on us from up there getting mad at us not because we clean the floors everytime we are finished working for the day...but because you can't get down on your hands and knees and lick the floors when we're done. Thats how he would've had it, but we're doing our best Grandpa Sam!! I promise!!

I am planning on purchasing my grandma and grandpas house as soon as I can get enough money...but for now, working in the shop is the closest I can get to being with my grandpa. Working on the car with my own dad makes it that much more fun and special for the both of us!

First thing's first. Finding out what is wrong with the motor was our first project. To do that, we decided to take off the valve cover to get to the motor head. After spending an hour or so removing the carburetor, all the spark plugs, and hoses, we got the head off. First look at the cylanders we could instantly tell that the guy we bought the car from was an idiot. Reasoning for this was beacuse from all the extra carbon burned in the cylinders, and a couple burned valves in the head, we knew that he was burning unleaded gas in the motor. For those people who don't know, back in the old days we didn't use the unleaded gas we all put in our gars now. Gas was leaded and motors were built to run with leaded gas. The burnt valves caused low compression in just about ever single cylinder. For those of you who don't know the car lingo, my car was only using about 1/4th of its power.

These pictures show what the cylinder heads were lookin like after all that unleaded gas and carbon was built up. After a couple weeks, you wont even recognize this engine!

We took the head down to C&T Automotive Machine who is run by a good friend of the Barber Family, Rod Thurber. He did an AMAZING job in helping me find a new head. Rod found there was a crack where my carburetor mounts onto the head which means a new head was needed. We ordered the new head and rod replaced the valves in it so I  would be able to run unleaded gas now so I would be able to stop at any ol' chevron and filler up! So with the new head (pictured to the right) it was time to take the rest of the motor block completely out of the car and rebuilt the cylinders. Now comes the fun part!!