A True Adventure from Start to Finish

So this is it. The last hurrah. The fat lady hitting the final note in her encore performance. 

She has been sold, and she is no longer in my possession. Can I just say this has been one of THE most stressful weekends I have had, full stop. I learnt a lot about myself - perceptions I've maintained for a long time got blown out the window, and I haven't coped. I've always thought that one of my best qualities has been the ability to be completely objective; to shut off all emotions and take things for what they were. Yet this weekend I've found myself being completely overwhelmed by my emotions to the extent where I've struggled to function as a human being. This is something I've never ever experienced before.

I'm sorry if this is all a bit too serious or full on, but I want to use this blog entry as an opportunity to try and make sense of what's gone on. Getting thoughts out in writing has always worked well in slowing my head down - doing so in such a public manner is a risk I'm prepared to take. Look, I know that a lot of you as readers have shared my pains and triumphs with this - consider this my way of concluding this journey for both myself and you, the reader.

Let's rewind a little bit to where this all started.

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A bloke approached me with an offer on Stacey. He was the first person to actually give me an offer - everyone else was more interested in trying to get me to swap - motor bikes, low lux's, a motor bike with a car, etc. While the offer was a fair bit lower than what I was originally asking for, realistically I knew it was a decent enough starting point for some negotiations as I knew I was asking too much. Problem was the guy lived in Miriam Vale (near Gladstone, ~600 km's away), so all of this was done over text message. His brother lived locally, and was able to inspect the car on his behalf. He liked what he heard over the phone and so began the negotiations.

Questions were asked, answers were given, and a price was eventually settled on. A date was put in the calendar as to when he'd be down to pick it up, and I began to get her ready to be sold. I should note here that the conditions of her being sold weren't exactly kosher, so I had a lot of vested interest in him getting home in a) one piece and b) with as little attention from the boys in blue as possible.

While there were a lot of little things that needed addressing, my biggest concern was her being driven such a distance in such a poor cosmetic state. Cops aren't forgiving on imports at the best of times, let alone one like this that makes a dogs breakfast inviting. I raised my concerns in the negotiation stage and said I would do a rattle can paint job if he bought the car. He said nothing on this, yet the next day confirmed he was purchasing it, so I assumed he agreed with this idea.

I was only really interested in the mismatched panels, as the rest of the car was already black. My experiences with a gloss black rattle-can not coming out glossy led to a decision to go with a satin black instead, as it's non-reflective nature would work in our favour. $30 later I had 8 cans of the stuff and plenty of drop sheets and masking tape to get started.

With one side completely finished, I was actually amazed at how good it came up for such a care-free job. Unfortunately it left quite a stark contrast between the already black panels... couldn't leave it like that!

I proceeded to do the rest of the car in the satin black. With prep work being minimal (quick sand with a scotch-brite and a rub down with wax and grease remover), this wasn't an overly time consuming or difficult procedure.

With the whole car done, I showed this exact picture to old mate expressing my elation at how much more subtle she was. I'm sure you can imagine my surprise when he came back saying he wanted to drop the purchase price by a grand - I'm not meaning to bad mouth the guy so I won't go into specifics, all I'll say is that took me a good 2 days to convince him that I wasn't hiding anything by doing this, and that the value in her was due to the parts that were in her, not her appearance. He did request that I leave the wing off...

... but I had to see her as I knew her COMPLETELY one colour. Wing, eyelids, everything the one colour and one finish. While I always knew she would look great as the one colour and finish, but actually seeing it come to fruition (even as a cheap and care-free job), I was stunned as just how much of a difference it made. I found myself commenting on several occasions that she actually looked good for the first time since owning her.

I proceeded to work my way around, finishing up small outstanding jobs that needed to be done before she left my possession. Since I had replaced the front pipe, I no longer had a mounting solution to support the exhaust (the previous front pipe had a bracket that lined up beautifully with the gearbox mount). Nothing a little bit of ingenuity can't fix!

After I finished getting her ready, I moved her out to the road so she was ready to go. I couldn't resist the opportunity to grab a final couple of snaps as this was the last time I'd see her in daylight.

What really blew me away was seeing this effectively 'done'. Sure, it's nothing like what I would've done had I gone to the effort of seeing her the whole way through, but for all intents and purposes this was a complete car. From the outside she looked good, and when you popped the bonnet she looked amazing.

I was also very impressed with the difference that the guards made vs. the old bolt-on fenders. I know I've said this before, but I think seeing it like this really did validate the point. 

By this stage we were edging pretty close to the time frame we were given as to when they'd be arriving (the drive home was being shared and required a 3rd to actually drop them off), so Kim and myself sat on the driveway, killing time until they rocked up. Once they did, I greeted them and went to unlock the car so he could look it over for the first time in person...

... then this happened. Yes, unlocking the car for a guy who's just travelled 600 km's to look at the car and I snapped the bloody key. SERIOUSLY?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! This car has never life made easy for me ever since she's been in my possession, and even right up to the bitter end she decides to keep this going. Little did I know this was only the start of things to come... (apologies for the lack of pictures from this point, kind of the last thing on my mind with everything that went down).

Being 6pm on a Saturday night, we knew our options were extremely limited, so we began the ring around to who could do the cheapest call out to cut a new key. Once we had confirmed a bloke and a time frame, I told the guys to go grab some dinner while we waited, as we knew it wasn't going to be a 2 minute job. After what seemed like an eternity, the locksmith rocked up and was thankfully able to cut a new key from the snapped specimen. It took some tweaking to get it to work, but the bloke was good enough to talk us through what he was doing, so that was a bonus. Due to the cut though, it actually puts the thinnest point on the key right next to the twist point. Planned obsolescence much? Apparently this is pretty common with a lot of keys. 

We finally got into the car, and I proceeded to show the buyer around, showing the features and characteristics, explaining how she worked and the random 'quirks' she had and how to get around them. Once again questions were asked and answered, and it all climaxed in him taking her for a test drive - it was all systems go. 

I counted the cash, double counted it, but was 100% certain it came up short. I got him to double check it and he agreed, which then proceeded to send him into a bit of a frenzy as it would have appeared he had lost a good couple of hundred dollars. Half an hour later it was sorted, but it was just another stress to add to an already unstable Clinton (I should mention here this is the first time I've formally sold a car to a stranger!).

With all of that sorted, they drove off... once she rounded the corner and she was out of sight there was a massive sigh of relief and a hi5, finally seeing this chapter of my life and nightmare of an evening come to an end. I needed to decompress and I knew it. To say I was peaking (read: highly strung) was an understatement. I would have been lucky to have done 600 km's in the year and a half I've owned her, and here he was about to do more than that in one evening. The major overhaul that had recently happened also meant there was a lot of uncertainty as to whether or not things would work. Sure I'd taken her for a couple of drives but I had nothing that was really conclusive prove she was fine. Being a long weekend down here, I also knew cop presence would be higher than normal, which just compounded the issue. 

A couple of beers and some cranked favourite songs helped a lot - but half an hour later I got a message saying there was something seriously wrong with the diff... my heart sank quicker than a block of concrete in water, and my stress levels hit a new high. It got even worse when he mentioned it now wouldn't go into gear - they had to push it to get it started. Understandably they were on their way back so I could see for myself and either fix it or give them a refund.

They said they'd be there 'soon' but an hour and a half later we were still waiting. By this stage my brain had pretty much given up the ghost - I blatantly didn't know what to do. After everything that had happened leading up to this it was the last thing I needed. Thankfully Kim was on hand to come up with a solution or 2, the most likely thing we could think of was air in the clutch lines. This was further backed up when we heard that the clutch had started working again. To explain the methodology here, this thing has a pretty aggressive 2-way diff in it. The fact it wouldn't go into gear could only mean the clutch was having issues. If the clutch was having issues the diff wouldn't know what to make of the sporadic power coming from the engine, and would be carrying on like a toddler who just had their toy taken away from them (which it was). My brain gave me enough brainpower to come to the conclusion that both the diff and clutch/gearbox had felt fine right up until they drove off - and neither of them just give up the ghost in an instant. Combined with the fact we had so many dramas bleeding the clutch when we re-filled all the fluids, it become the logical choice that there was air in the lines.

After what seemed like yet another eternity, they finally rocked up and we took the car for a quick spin. Our theory was instantly verified when we heard the throw-out bearing whirring while the car was in gear (it's not meant to do that). We got the car into the garage and began bleeding the clutch once again... I should note by this stage it was about 11:30 pm.

The good news was we straight away got air out of the master cylinder. We continued to bleed it until no more came out and I took it for a drive around the block. It still wasn't perfect, so we pulled it back into the garage to bleed the slave as well - same story, got air out of it straight away. We thought it wise to check the diff oil just for peace of mind, so the car went up on all 4 corners so we could get a level reading. Lo and behold, we couldn't get the filler plug open, and with the time now pushing 12:30 am it was certainly going to piss neighbours off if we started using power tools/mallets.

The buyer was supposed to be home by 4 am as he lived on a farm and had work to do, so we were well beyond getting him home in time. That said, they still wanted to get on the road just to get the drive out of the way. Given the success we had bleeding the clutch, they decided to chance driving once again with the hope it was all sorted. I was that out of it that it took me 3 goes to successfully drop one corner of the car, but we eventually got the car down and I took it for a (quiet) test drive around the block to see if we had indeed fixed the problem. I went around every single roundabout in our estate to be sure, and while I felt like we had fixed it, I was conscious of the fact that the car was working fine when he first drove it off and couldn't be 100% certain it wouldn't happen again. Alas we were out of time and options, so we took the chance and handed the keys back. I also gave them a handful of cable ties just in case, with the parting words 'if you can't fix this car with cable ties, you don't deserve it'. Way to go brain, seems you had enough left to give me that little gem!

Editors note: To their credit, they were really good about all of this. If I had just bought a car that was having clutch and diff issues, I would be asking questions and asking for my money back, or at least some of it back for pain-in-the-ass tax. When we suggested we thought we knew what the problem was, they were more than happy to give us the opportunity to try and fix it, so to them, a massive thank you for their patience and understanding.

Given how wound up, stressed and delirious I was, I knew there was no chance of getting to sleep any time soon, so I had a beer to try and calm my nerves. It didn't really work though as I kept looking at my phone dreading another text message or phone call saying the problem was still persisting... Fantastic =\ By the time 2 am had rolled around though I still hadn't heard anything, and my eyes really were fed up with looking at things. I decided to chance some sleep... It kind of worked, although my brain decided it wasn't done yet and was still freaking out - waking me up almost every hour, each time checking my phone just in case.

Morning eventually rolled around and still nothing. I could only assume no news was good news, but so much of me still ached to know what had happened. I sent a message at 10 am Sunday morning just asking how things went... 'Yeah got home at 9, all sweet' was the reply.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Was I relieved? Yes. Could I switch all this emotion and anxiety off? No. I'm still working on that as I write this. It wasn't helped by a number of texts during the day from the buyer wanting to clarify things, each time me fearing something's gone wrong. I'll get there, I know that for a fact. And another fact, she's finally been sold and moved on to someone else.

I'll be honest, I'm not sad to see her go. I won't miss her. If anything I'm glad this chapter of my life is over. I haven't been for a drive in MY sports car for over 2 years, and I really do miss it. I've been too scared to drive Stacey around simply because she is what she is. I'm now free to get something I want instead of something that got me out of a sticky situation. Don't get me wrong, I'm incredibly appreciative that I got given such an out, but I'm yearning for another car that I can properly take pride in. All things being equal, that could be happening in a matter of weeks :)

What does suck out of all this though, is that this car represents a freaking impressive amount of time and effort on my behalf. I've put so much blood, sweat, tears and effort into this car - and I honestly believe she is going to her grave. Surprisingly, that's not an easy thing to accept for a car I haven't really cared about.

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With this chapter of my life over, I think it's fitting to reflect on the last year and a half. To look back on what exactly has gone on. There's already more than enough words in this entry, so I'm going to keep this short and sweet.

To start off with something as hap-hazard as this...

... and end up with something that's half respectable. 

Looking back I can't believe that this is the state of the engine bay when I first got her...

... especially given that this is where it's at now. I'm damn chuffed with that effort!

She's been ever-evolving...

... inching closer and closer to that dream of being able to drive her on the street.

This 3-month headache was the first time I properly got to know her, pulling her apart further than any car I had before.

Working under fluoro lights became an all-too-familiar feeling...

... as did attacking her with power tools. Grinders, drills, sanders, buffers, jigsaws, welders, rattle-guns... she's seen them all.

I think she probably spent more time off the ground than actually on it.

When I tried to do what she was designed for, I failed epically. I gained a lot of respect for the guys who do it and do it well, and will always be something I wish I could do just to have as a skill.

I have learnt so much from this car it's not funny. There is so much I would not have dared attempt on Edna because I gave a damn about her. I'm truly thankful I haven't cared so much about Stacey, simply because I would not know what I do now, nor have the confidence to attempt bigger things.

I spent that much time on this car, it was hard to not get comfortable and enjoy it for what it was. And as much heartache as she has caused...

... this made it all worth it.

Being able to drive her flat out on a track surrounded by some of my best mates: priceless. That memory is something I will cherish for a damn long time. 

So long Stacey, it's certainly been an adventure.