The Naked Milner

If there is one thing we've learned with this project, it is to never, ever indicate that you are almost done. Doing so is like a great trumpet call to the Graffiti gods to awaken and wreak havoc. Even as I was driving home from the shop the other day, a knowledgeable coupe builder was on the phone asking how we were doing on our car. I said "Great, we mounted and hooked up the headers, installed the drive shaft, made some aesthetic changes to the engine...I think we're ready for photography." He responded with "Hey that's great! By the way, I hate to throw a wrench into your project, but we found out..." He proceeded to inform me that the Coupe wears a rare, one year only oil pan. And that it's so rare that if you could find one it would set you back 1,500 bucks. Since my evil death ray thought vibrations weren't working long distance on this guy, I politely bid him farewell and proceeded to the nearest computer to see what kind of horses**t he was shoveling.



First task was to check the Coupe photos from Seattle and see what the Coupe was sportin'. Then to ebay to see what the described part looked like. Yeah, he was right. But there's one for sale so that's lucky. Now...Just which kind of oil pan did we use? To tell you the truth, we hadn't given it that much thought. We had used an early Chevy block, so we had the old pan that came with it. I mean jeez, the oil pan is goofy on this thing too? Figures.



Wait a minute. Our engine builder had given us a beautiful early Chevy oil pan that he had saved over the years. We'd cleaned it up and removed all the paint from it. It looked good. It was the right vintage. It fit. We were happy. At least we thought we were.



That was then, this is now. Now it mattered.

If you are building one of these things don't ever say that you're almost done. Don't even think it. It's part of the curse of this car. An extension of the GraffitiCoupeitus virus. Just know that you will never finish. Assume that it will go on forever. Focus. It's like the Winchester House. Keep building so the demons can't catch you.



You know...you live right. Try to be a good person. Due unto others... Clean living equals good karma. Yup. And as it turns out, Fred had given us one of those one year only, impossible to find, 1,500.00 dollars if you could find one, oil pans. Damn thing was on the car and we didn't know what we had.

I swear. We're gonna finish this thing yet. We're almost done.

'da Hui no ka oi




The Dramatics - What You See Is What You Get