Transmission Received

All right, so, what's going on here....  A few weekends ago, I went up to Austin to look at a 1933 Chevy 5-window coupe that a guy was selling up there.  Do I need a 1933 Chevy 5-window coupe?  No.  But about a year ago, I was looking for one and couldn't find anything that looked suitable.  Then I stumbled on to this one on Craigslist, and it looked like a great starting point for a hot rod project, perfect for my purposes.  I thought the price looked fair, so I decided I should at least go look at it.

The guy hadn't given any contact information, other than e-mailing him through Craigslist's anonymous e-mail system.  So, I tried that, and got no response.

So I tried again the next day, got no response.  At this point I figured that he must have sold the car already, but been too lazy to take the ad down.  Still, I tried again the next day.

Still no response.  By now it was the weekend, and I gave up.  On Monday, I saw that the guy had re-listed the car, and knocked $500 off the price.  Now I'm thinking that apparently none of this guy's messages are getting through to him, and, man, how do I get a hold of this idiot and take advantage of him before someone else does?

I tried to e-mail Craigslist, explain the situation, and see if they could help put me in touch with the guy.  Predictably, I never heard back from them.  At the same time, my buddy John was in the UK on a business trip.  I told him by e-mail what was going on, and he decided to try and e-mail the guy through Craigslist, also.  Somehow, his message got through, the guy gave John his phone number, and John sent it to me.  So then I texted the guy, and decided to go up and look at the car after work on Friday.

By the time I finally got up there and saw the car, I had had a week to think about all the practical aspects of such an acquisition, and most of them were more towards the "impractical" end of the scale.  I didn't really have a good place to put it, and while several people offered to let me keep it in various places, I figured that it might take a couple years or more before I was ready to work on it, and I didn't want to leave it somewhere for that long, or have to move it around as I wore out my welcome at various locations.

But, I still went up there to look at it, anyway, because it just seemed like too good of an opportunity to pass up.  There was a lot of good stuff there, original frame, original engine, original trans, most of the original sheetmetal, except for the fenders and running boards, which I didn't want, anyway.  I also had no use for the engine and trans, as my plan was to get a 409 Chevy from a guy at work who knows someone who's trying to sell one, and maybe another Muncie M22Z for the transmission.

I stood there talking with the guy for a while, he turned out to be a very nice guy.  I was looking at the car, and trying to talk myself into or out of it, but I couldn't make my mind up either way.  He said that he had bought it in Iowa, took it to Montana, then brought it down to Texas as he moved around, but never had a chance to get started on it.  Now he and his wife were getting ready to start a home renovation project that would block in the back yard, so the Chevy had to be moved before the project started.  The project was supposed to start in a couple days, so if I didn't buy the Chevy, he was going to show the car to a couple other potential buyers on Saturday, and if they didn't buy it, then his dad was going to buy it from him, just to get it out of the way.

Well, I still couldn't decide if I wanted it, so I told him to text me on Saturday if the other guys didn't want it.  I was kind of hoping that someone else would buy it, and I wouldn't have to worry about it.  I got dinner with a friend in Austin, then headed back to San Antonio.  By the time I was driving home, I was really starting to think that I wanted that '33 after all....

Sure enough, Saturday afternoon I got a text from the guy in Austin, the other buyers had low-balled him and he had declined their offers.  Last chance to get the car.  I wandered around the house for an hour or so, trying to figure out where I could put the '33, whether or not I even wanted it, etc.  But, for whatever reason, I just couldn't get excited about it, and every time I tried to picture an exciting hot rod project in my head, I kept picturing 1937 Chevy coupes, instead of '33's.  In the end, I decided that I just didn't want it right now, so I told the guy, sorry, thanks, but no thanks.  I guess if all else fails, if I decide I should have bought it, I can always try to contact the guy and see if his dad still has it.

Since then, there's been a couple of relatively unproductive weekends.  The Corvair got an oil change somewhere along the line.  Last weekend, on Friday, my transmission was delivered.  So, the plan for this weekend is to do the powertrain test fit, and then the car will be just about ready to send off to the body shop.  At that point, I'll be able to get back to painting parts, and start building up the engine.  So that will be exciting.

Slowly moving along....