Love the Comet!
This is my dad's real deal 1964 A/FX altered wheelbase Comet at Tulsa International Raceway. He ran it in the late 1970s.
Wow, I love that A/FX style. What ended up happening to that car?
My buddy is obviously going a different direction than that though. He wants a comfortable street cruiser with enough power to easily manage modern traffic.
the powerplant he's got in mind is quite different for a car like this though, since he wants to keep an inline 6 configuration, and for him, pissing off the purists is just gravy on top haha
So of course he picked up a 2JZ lol
Should help the motivation plenty
My great uncle had a '63 Comet with the same powertrain. That was my first classic car ride. Produced more noise and seemed to slow down quite a bit after upshifting lol. That one looks great.
Keep us posted on your progress
This comet doesn't even make the noise lol. It just quietly groans away, doing fuck-all.
I'm pretty sure the muffler is actually still factory original on it.
Slowing down after the shift is spot on though. 0-40 is slow AF, 40-60 is slower haha.
Anyways, here's the scheduled Saturday update:
By the end of July, 2021, I was getting very,
very frustrated with my body shops complete and total absence of progress.
I had been checking in with them bi-weekly, and the car hadn't had a single second of work done on it.
To make matters worse, the middle of July is the rainy season for southern utah, and we were getting hammered. The body shop got partially flooded out, and while my car was on casters, and thus high enough that no water touched the car, the shop had to move my car so they could clean out the mud from their floors
When they did that, they moved the car outside, with perfect timing for it to be hit with a
massive microburst of rain.
The unpainted car got rained on.
the bare metal, media blasted car, got rained on
I at least did protect the car with a post-blast treatment, long before handing the car off to the body shop, and the treatment did it's job, reacting with the water and resulting in a bunch of white & black, powdery, nasty, chemical filled substance, rather than out-right rust.
Still all that shit now had to be cleaned. It was a fucking mess, and to make matters worse, fuck-all was being done to the car.
after giving the body shop an ultimatum, that I was going to be taking the car back at the end of the first week of August, that was enough to push the body shop into doing
something and they welded in the new floor pans. Though not particularity well:
Still, it was mostly done.
I took the car back on August 6, and by the end of that weekend, I had the car much cleaner, and the pans were welded in:
Of course, per my Family's tradition, I had a long vacation planned for the second half of August, so work stopped on the car for a short while again.
At least camping in Wyoming was beautiful though:
My friend with the Comet expressed a willingness to help me paint the chassis stuff (basically everything that wouldn't be going color), so in early September, I got myself a Harbor Freight spray gun, as well as some Eastwood paint products, and we went to town:
The silver rust/bare metal encapsulator went down first in the interior (after
extensive cleaning of the raw metal, wire wheels, scotch pads, the works)
After protecting the inside and engine bay, the next step was to get the car back up on sawhorses, with the suspension off, so that we could do the underside, and also start the next layer, which was going to be an Eastwood Chassis Black product.
However, before that could happen, I had an opportunity come up that I couldn't pass on.
First, a bit of background.
You see, I've always had this idea, a plan if you will; that I wanted to expand my road-tripping boundaries. I've never much cared for Hotels, and after Covid, I was even less interested in them.
One of my problems though, is that I also hate tents. I'm a bigger guy, and I'm chronically allergic to manual labor on tasks that I don't enjoy, such as assembling tents.
So, No Tents.
I wanted either: a camp/travel trailer, large enough for me to sleep without curling up, and also big enough that I could change clothes without being a gymnast, BUT small enough I could tow behind the Fairlane (and K5 for more remote camping)
OR
I needed a RV that could tow the Fairlane or K5, and that was small enough to be manageable for a single person.
This was something of a long-term plan. I saw myself wanting to make this a reality in no more than the next 8 years.
I had been keeping an eye out for the right deal for 2 years, when, in September 2021, just the right rig showed up on Craigslist, near Denver, for what was, IMO, a fabulous price.
Behold,
The Winnie
Now, don't let it's initial looks deceive you. This thing is Rad as hell
It's a 1975 Winnebago Brave, 21 foot.
Originally equipped with a Dodge 440 big block, it now sports a
500 cubic inch stroker with a claimed 500 crank horsepower.
I very much doubt that it's actually making that much..... yet
but it's certainly got more motivation than a stock 440. A lot more
The interior, which I didn't get shots of at that time, has already been mostly renovated and updated, and is genuinely in great condition.
Everything on the rig works, the water system, propane, heater, fridge, etc. all of it.
For only $6000, I consider this rig to be a steal. The engine alone is worth that, easily, and with the work that has already been done, it is well on it's way to matching my ultimate vision for it.
Unfortunately, the Winnie was not actually ready for me to drive it the 500 miles home that particular weekend, the carb needed to be fully rebuilt and tuned first.
During my test drive on that first trip out, it was running OK at first, but the longer I drove it, the worse it ran. By the end, it was having a hard time even maintaining 25 mph. Something was dreadfully bad in the cab tuneup, and it was loading up and popping, and generally bogging and misbehaving.
But by October 15, it was ready, so I made a second trip back out to Evergreen, paid for the coach, and drove it 500 miles, all the way back to my home.
I'd like to say that it was an adventure, but most everything worked fine, and I had no issues at all.
It was cold in the morning, and climbing Independence pass up to Eisenhower tunnel did suck a little, since the heater fan was not working, but otherwise, it was a fine trip.
The heater fan has since been fixed. Just a minor wiring issue is all.
If there's interest I can make a Winnie specific thread, and eventually there will be something of a Build, but for now, I plan to continue using it as-is. It's a perfectly suitable tow-rig and dispersed camper, and a damn sight better than a tent.
Of course, pic's alone are all fine and good, but how about some video too, so you too can sample just how good that 500CI stroker rumbles.
Here's a short idle video:
View: https://youtu.be/5NnmVi0edp0
And as short pull to about 55 or 60 mph:
View: https://youtu.be/gXIEC0LjBjI