Cars

 The 1976 Dodge Aspen was sold last week. I'm glad I was able to find a home for it rather than send it to the crusher. It served me well for 15 years and 160,000 miles . Here she is up at my camp in the driveway and out & about in Northern New York. This car never let me down.

Back in 2017 I drove her out to Michigan to go to a motorcycle event at the Gilmore Car Museum  to connect with a friend there and pick up this sweet little  1965 Yamaha 55 cc motorcycle. I had one of these when I was 16 , my first bike . I bought it new the day I got my license .It was this same exact motorcycle. Now it sits in my shop waiting on me to restore it. Here it is pictured with my friend Dan after we strapped it on to the rear bumper of that old Aspen for the 900 mile ride home .

 Lots of good memories from this ride.She will be missed but now that she's gone I'm focused on my wagon again. Yesterday I brought her back to life.Put in a new battery ,some fresh gas ,air in the tires ,gave it the once over and off I went.She started right up and ran like she was used an hour earlier. I have had this car laid up for most of the past two years.I did manage to get it going last summer after the problems I had with the transmission shifter and clutch.Even was able to get her inspected then so now I'm on the road again with my favorite car.

So ,today I'm going to take her down to my friend Steve's house and start to get set to do the body work on it. It's long over due . There is rust in all the fenders and quarter panels. I have all good replacement sheet metal that I had bought and took off parts cars I had years ago and saved for this job.I always knew this was the keeper car out of all my cars.It's just too cool to let it get away . The plan is to work the replacement parts off the car on the bench now in winter so when the spring rolls around we are ready to actually hang this stuff on the car ,grind the welds down and do all the filler work. If all go's well we'll have her in primer by the summer. A new chapter begins in the story of this wagon ! Meanwhile my wife's old 2002 Honda with the bad transmission is now on Craigslist as a parts car for 800 bucks .I'll be a happy camper when that thing is gone from my work space . Then there is motorcycle work . This is retirement and I'm loving it !