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| From Frontier Soldier: an Enlisted Man's Journal. |
The Car Table Cavalry
Rewind to 23 days before January 24th, 2016, the day of the Arizona Concours d'Elegance. Trapped by a drop-dead deadline, badly outnumbered by the list of items still unattended to, hopelessly surrounded by the ravages of a brutal winter storm, Tim, Jeff, Dave, The Alfatross, and I were almost ready to bow to the inevitability of becoming a "No Show" when, miraculously, the Car Table Cavalry arrived to save the day.
I've mentioned the Santa Fe Car Table before. It's just an informal group of car people, mostly men, who get together for lunch every Tuesday. It's a diverse group bonded only by a common interest in cars. Simple as that. A lot of them know about The Alfatross and have seen it in various stages of dis-assembly. By the end of December the body, chassis, engine, interior and all the other bits and pieces were back at The Shed for the first time in 3 years.
Among the guys who came to see the car was Terry Morgan. When he saw the state it was in and learned of our commitment to showing it at a major concours in three weeks time, he realized it was time to call out the Car Table Cavalry. The next morning he showed up with his first recruit, Gerry Strickfaden.
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| Getting crowded under here! Toni Carrell. |
Tim's work fitting the window and door seals took first priority, so the rest of us concentrated on finishing the trunk and engine bay while the the car was off the lift.
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| While Tim makes the door seals Jeff, Terry and Gerry work on installing the fuel tank. |
The hard part was recognizing when to stop. Being congenital nit-pickers our natural inclinations were to spend however long it took to find just the right nut or bolt for a particular application. That's what we had been doing for three years, trying to get every detail right. It quickly became apparent that was our worst enemy and it would definitely defeat us unless we got it under control. Our mantra became "Will it keep us off the field?". If not, it got the "do later after Concours" reduced priority.
The wiring harness is every car's nervous system, and one of the first things to go back in after cleaning and painting. The Alfatross' harness is very basic, but it has to go in before the dashboard. The hardest part proved to be getting 20+ wires through a tiny hole in the firewall to reach the fuse boxes in the engine bay. The wiring also has to precede installation of the engine. This is one place where we could have used a lot more time.
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| Terry, in his element. |
Yet Another List!
Weeks before this, realizing that a little advance planning could save a lot of time later, I created a punch list table to keep the restoration on schedule by improving efficiency. The basic idea was to anticipate all the remaining tasks, place orders for parts and materials well in advance, group tasks according to their systems such as "electrical", "brakes", "steering", "suspension", etc., to make sure nothing was overlooked, estimate how many hours each individual task would take to complete, and figure out the order in which they would have to proceed to eliminate "re-dos". The list turned out to be less than totally accurate, but it definitely helped.
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| The secret weapon: page 2 of a 100-item list of tasks to be performed, orders to be placed, priority, type of task, order of assembly, notes, estimated time required, and people involved. |
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| Easy does it! |
The engine bay took a lot of advance planning and work to prepare. The wiring for the starter, generator, voltage regulator, electric horns, air horn compressor and its relay, oil temp and water temp gauges, and fuse boxes had to be laid in first, along with fuel, brake lines and the line to the oil pressure gauge. The oil filter on the intake side of the engine had to be removed, as did the fan and exhaust headers and engine vibration mount on the exhaust side. Following Dan Allen's instructions we unbolted the transmission from its cradle and tilted it up to mate with the engine. It all went together smoothly (maybe we got lucky?) but it still took a few hours.
Getting the engine installed was a big relief--but would it start and run? Just as importantly, would the car stop? We hadn't got to the brakes yet. And then there was the exhaust system that I bought 25 years ago but never had a chance to test fit. It would need cutting and welding and some kind of hanger system. By this time there was only about a week left before showtime.
Even with the Car Table Cavalry on our side it was going to be close . . . .
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| Engine wranglers Jeff Kramer, Terry Morgan, Tarmo Sutt (new recruit), Gerry Strickfaden, and the author. Toni Carrell. |
