After working on cars professionally for 17 years, it erodes the psyche, especially if working on cars was the only employment gig one can land.
Selling, hell getting rid, of the car isn’t an option. As I have previously mentioned, for the last decade around here, that I’m a former mechanic, I have also owned my 9 since 85 (it went on the road 87 for the haters out there who are out to get me) and it was put together using my other bird I bought in 77. So as far as the steering wheel, seat, shifter, brake, gas, I’ve been nonstop operating them since 1977. That’s one hell of a long time. PCI wouldn’t sell for $20k. I wouldn’t sell for 100k.
The reason that ‘these cars require constant tinkering’ is because they belong to people who tinker with cars, not to a well-seasoned professional mechanic who has maintained, in essence, the same car for 35 years.
It doesn’t get any easier to figure out and fix things than on these; also, there is virtually zero mechanical failures if you do minimal inspection and pm. (At the other place that a guy found metal on his magnetic drain plug and oil filter. He goes on that it’s a new build. He ran break-in oil. After, he changed the oil and racked up THREE-THOUSAND-FIVE-HUNDRED miles before he changed the oil again. I would have been on at least my fourth to fifth oil change. No wonder you guys phuck’em up the moment you buy them!)
Other than inspection and pm, I have done virtually nothing to mine in the 300k since I put it together: 4 or 5 batteries, 2 alternators, 3 water pumps, a chain, 3 th350’s, cannot recall how many shoes, 3 masters and 2 sets of wheel cylinders. Also toss in few thousand gallons of oil changes, and a 55 gallon drum of brake fluid as flush.
Bottom line: I work on car as a default, not a desire.
Also not trying to come off as an ahole, but if I had one-tenth of the issues that hobby car guys have with keeping their vehicles running, I would have bailed decades ago.
I could help resolve some of the car drama that people have with their cars. And it isn’t as if I tried in the past. Rather than discuss the past, the board has made it perfectly clear, I’ll do as I always do, focus on now and the future. I’m done as a technical advisor and will only act as an occasional consultant.
