I recently purchased a house with a double garage. As it turns out the
previous owner was an elderly lady who lived with her disabled son.
Well you can imagine the conditions they were living in. It took nearly
four gallons of industrial degreaser to get the grease and smell out of
it. It is a little rough around the edges but since the end of April
when I took posession I have replaced the kitchen, repaired or replaced
most of the plumbing and stumbled on some issues with the wiring which at
this time of the year it is much too hot in the attic to do anything about.
The old lady must have paid someone to insulate the attic because it is all
up there. Still in the bales though. The elderly are always an easy mark.
Blah blah I do go on ...
Not wanting to continue renting the storage unit, I have put renovations on
hold for a while to get my roadster to her new home.
June 14. The big lift.
After making several trips back and forth with all the boxed roadster and
510 parts, doors fenders hoods oh my!, my good friend and fellow 510 nut
Doug, called me up needing to get out of the house for a while. Not much of
a house for him because he is currently living in a loft over his father's
bodyshop since his wife kicked him out. I picked him up and we went one
last time to the warehouse and loaded the truck one final time. We had
arranged for a tow truck to carry the 510, roadster frame and then the body
shell as three separate trips to the new house.
We walked around the shell wondering just how heavy could this thing be.
If we could lift it maybe we could save a trip by having Max, The tow guy,
stop by with the frame and take the body at the same time. Well between the
two of us we lifted the body off the floor and supported it high enough to
roll the frame in under it. Cool.
June 15 The Roadster gods were smiling.
It started innocently enough. I again picked up Doug and we took a load
of renovation debris from my house and garage to the local waste transfer
station. The plan was to simply clear space for when my cars finally come
home. Being car nuts we found ourselves back at the storage place to pick up
a few engine blocks that were left behind.
Now comes the crazy idea... Why don't we move the car now, ourselves! While
I thought about it for a minute the clouds parted and a ray of sunshine fell
all around the place. I took that as a sign from the roadster gods. We dropped
off the last load at the house and went to U-haul to rent a tow bar. Guess
what? They no longer rent tow bars but will sell you one. After calling other
places only to find no one rents tow bars anymore I took a chance that my
buddy from way back would still have the bar we welded up years ago. As luck
would have it we found it behind an old shed at his parents house. Still
smiling. It seemed that every time we hit a snag there was a solution right
there for us.
We towed the frame to the storage locker, carried the body out and carefully
set it down on the mounts. Just as I was bolting it down a large storm cloud
was forming and threatening to hit hard. We then noticed that one of the
studs on the tow bar had broken its weld. Disappointment! We would not go
this far and leave it all behind. We wrapped a length of chain from one of
the other studs and secured it firmly to another pair of studs. Then the rains
came. We sat in the truck while it rained so heavily driving was impossible.
The roadster gods were just power washing all the leftover bodyshop dust
from the body shell. We drove away with 'rooster tails' flying from the
fenderless front wheels.
We drove out from under the rainstorm into, you guessed it, bright sunshine.
The dry cycle. I took every turn wide and slow for obvious reasons and to
avoid a short leg on the freeway we cruised the beachstrip with my Datsun
Roadster for the very first time. Without fenders, doors, hood, trunklid and
anything else that would make it recognizable as a car we got stares and waves
and approving thumbs up from nearly everyone. Passing motorists rather than
being uptight at me driving slow gave us a friendly toot of the horn and the
same approving gestures.
Back at the house we left the car out in the sun long enough to dry out
before pushing it into the garage.
June 18. You know what Frank? I have never seen a roadster before.
Doug stopped by the house after being on his feet all day searching for an
appartment. Shall we do something with the house or in the garage? Stupid
question. We arranged things in the garage to give us easier access to the
roadster. That's when Doug asked me if he could hang the doors etc just
so that he could get a mental image of what the car should look like.
We rolled the car outside and went to work hanging the doors etc and then
took a bunch of pictures from every angle. If the car can't make it to
Saturday's car show at least we have the pictures.
The new goal... Topless in December.
"October!" Doug adds.
Frank Roggeband | 67.5 1600, 69 1600, 69 510, 71 510, 75 710, 93 KingCab
Grimsby Ontario | http://www.hwcn.org/~ae845/Profile.html
Canada | email-->frankr@hwcn.org
Electronics Technician and Datsun Enthusiast.
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