umm, hi

Yeah, yeah. "Blogs are supposed to be updated," meow meow meow. You think this is infrequently updated? See my dressage blog.

The orange '73 Stang down the road is gone, and is not at any of the locations where this dealer sometimes puts sale cars. Somebody either bought it, or the owner took it back. ::sigh:: I would have liked it, couldn't realistically swing it. There's a cute, shiny little red-with-white shortnosed Mustang fastback for sale near the Forty Wire Road intersection in Mays Landing, too ... which I also can't afford, and certainly not now that the economy is tanking. (In the people's yard, though not with a for-sale sign, was even a Maverick! Holy fucking shit. It was Thanksgiving, I was headed to work, stopped to check out the sales car and voila.)

So it's back to my wee Shelby homage project car.

The vinyl detailing guy said $150 for wide stripes. It may cost more than that, because I want to extend them down to the bottom of the rear bumper. I'd like to do it even without the expensive bits being done. After the bumper-grill-foglamps are done, I can redo those stripes, and redo the hood after the scoop is made. But I haven't had a spare $150 anyway. Have you heard? It's a recession, officially. I knew that when it started costing me $40 to fill Ellie's tiny Civic gas tank. Jackasses.

Back during the summer, the friendly fiberglass shop owner said, IIRC, that he was on vacation and to call back in a week.

Then they were closing for some kind of fire marshal's inspection, call back in a couple weeks.

Then they were changing locations, call back in a couple weeks.

I haven't called back. Just ... sure, fine, whatevs.

In the spring, I'll get Ellie detailed, bugs and tar scrubbed off, then get the stripes. I'm thinking about a clear urethane layer on all of the car's leading edges and surfaces afterward, too.

In the meantime, my brother and nephew have been working a little on the Frankenstang, adding a Corvette suspension and wheels. He customized the wheels, they look lovely.

I suspect this winter's part of the Ellie Project will be hunting up various foams and clays to sculpt the plug for Ellie's scoop. Or maybe even scoops, if I can figure out where the side ones would go. That I can do in my own garage without a lot of fuss, or even any toxic chemicals. Maybe Bro and Nephew will even want to play.

And as an aside: The new 2010 Mustang? Bleagh. Why taper the nose and squinch up the taillights?

in which the horrifying idea is conceived and named, much like in Mrs. Leeds' case

So. Hello. Welcome. And please don't chase me with pitchforks and torches.


Here's the car that inspired this whole unholy mess:




Here's the car I wish I could afford:




Here's the car I'd buy if I hit the multistate lottery:




But here's the car I have:




I visited an orange '73 Mustang at the used car lot down the street, and considered buying and playing with it. It had a nice little rumbly 302, and was in fair shape ... but the restoration would take more money and know-how than I've got. And besides, it was a coupe, not a fastback. Not my favorite model year for coupes, bleagh.

Then I started thinking, these guys did an Eleanor mod to ... a SmartCar:






Sweet mother of Mary. If somebody can do that, and if people are modding their Mustang coupes of any and all years into Eleanors, then surely I can manage a wee mod of my wee Civic. Hell, it's already the right color gray, even! So now she's officially named Ellie. She's too little to be called Eleanor.

Somebody knows somebody who knows somebody who does the vinyl striping for the auto dealerships down the shore. Great! I got a nice low estimate for the wide black stripes, and have figured out what the side stripes will say. (They won't say GT50%, as witty as that is for the SmartCar. I'm not going to tell what they will say - come back in a year or two when the Ellie Project is concluded, and the photos will show it. Mua ha ha et c.)

But online searches reveal diddly for premade scoops and spoilers, and squat for bumpers - at least ones that would be reasonable facsimiles of the Eleanor items but still the right proportions for a Civic.

The solution? Lay my own fiberglass, of course!

I understand the basic idea - item to plug to mold to new item. And I understand they sell little fiberglass kits at the hardware store. But WTF do you use to sculpt the plug? And WTF is a gelcoat? And WTF is ... well, my bottom lip was starting to hurt from all the F sounds that preceded every new question I had.

The solution? Learn to lay fiberglass, of course!

The vo-techs and county colleges had nothing in the way of classes. And nobody knew anybody who ran a body shop.

Fine, I'm on my own, then. But how hard can it be? I can lay out and sculpt, I just need to know what materials to use, and get used to handling them.YouTube even has a bunch of how-to vids. OK, YouTube instruction may be worth exactly what you pay for it, but still, you get to see what the process looks like. Oh look, here in the Yellow Pages - there's a fiberglass and composite supply! I bet they're just like an art supply. Go in, find the section you need, fondle items helplessly until the salesperson notices you need help, confess your novicehood and the salesperson recommends appropriate items for learning on. Right?

Right?

The nice, nice lady on the phone at the composite supply - when I called for directions and she asked what I was looking to buy - reacted to a similar summary with several seconds of silence.

Then: We sell materials in 50-gallon drums, ma'am.

Oh. So a composite supply is not at all like an art supply.

No ma'am. But you know what? You should talk to our guy, he can help you.

She sent me on to a voicemail, and the man at the other end of that voicemail eventually said what I needed was a friendly fiberglass shop that wouldn't mind teaching me, and as long as I'm a hobbyist and not a professional making competition for them. And don't you know, he knows somebody not too far away! I'm to call after July 17, and we'll see how it goes from there.

I don't know why the first thing everybody says is,"You sure you want to do fiberglass?" Apparently it's sticky, stinky, filthy work. Which makes it different from horses ... how, again?