Lowlights

I haven’t been inspired to write much lately since my Corvair experiences have been rather negative. Here are the high(low)lights. I’ve had at least four different people make appointments to come and look at Lucy or Heidi, and only one has actually showed up.

I’ve had one person tell me over the phone that he would buy both for $6600 and that he was on his way to bank at that moment to get the money and he would be at my house that evening at 5:30 to buy both Lucy and Heidi. He never showed and he never contacted me again.

A guy called me on my way home from work and asked to see the cars right then. I accommodated him, and he proceeded to tell me all the things that were wrong with each car and then offered me about 60% of what I was asking. In other words, he wanted to see if he could something for basically nothing.

The one guy that kept his appointment had sent me a very positive “I will buy your car once mine sells” e-mail followed a couple months later by an “I’ve sold my car and I’ll be in Baltimore Saturday” e-mail, so I was rather hopeful he’d come through with a reasonable offer. Instead, he showed up late, wanted to chat even though he knew he was keeping me from a dinner party, and then went on to say he wasn’t interested in Lucy. This was after I'd spent an hour digging out all the parts I was including with the sale since he’d told me over the phone he wanted everything.

I’ve had a guy stop me from working on the lovely Loriann’s car so he could talk my ear off about how awesome Lucy was, take her for a test drive, come back and tell me again how awesome the car was, and then promise me either he or his brother would DEFINITELY buy the car AND I’d hear from one of them THAT evening. Nothing!

Then, courtesy of two parking tickets (Heidi and Lucy), I learned of Baltimore's 48-hour parking limit. It seems I can't park a car in the same place on a city street for longer than 2 days. So, now I have the pleasure of rolling cars around since I want to keep the two that are for sale out there on the street for any prospective buyer to spy.

The truck was finally put into service as a tow vehicle when, last Friday, I got the call from Ariel that she’d smelled smoke coming from the engine compartment and immediately pulled over onto the side of I-97. When I got to her, I discovered the alternator bearings had failed. Fortunately, I had a spare, that I pulled it apart, greased the bearing I could get to, reassembled and swapped in place of the failed one. Also, fortunately, the spare worked electrically so Ringo was roadworthy again that evening.

Last Saturday, I washed both Heidi's and Lucy's engine compartments. Somehow, unbeknownst to me, I managed to knock loose one the right side carb linkage from the throttle assembly, so when I took her out on the road that evening, she was significantly down on power. Fortunately, I was able to find the issue, locate the clip that had fallen off, and put everything right again.