Howdy, Y'all - After a several year hiatus I have returned from afar with a hankerin to get back to building a hot rod. Since I left, I have a new career, a new wife, a new home, two beautiful daughters and a lot of new grey hairs. This Covid demon has forced me out of work with mandatory state shutdowns. While I quarantine with my family it has allowed me to refocus some efforts and get things organized and offered me the opportunity to ask myself which project I really wanted to accomplish. I purchased a Model A coupe body in Seattle 5 or 6 years ago and parked it in my mother's garage. A few years ago I talked her into moving back to the East Coast to be closer to her grandchildren and I towed the coupe home behind a U-Haul full of her belongings. I stashed the coupe in a temporary tarp garage and there it sat, always tickling the back of my mind. Last week the weatherman called for a brutal windstorm and I had this awful queasy feeling watching a couple big leaning oaks with dead branches as big around as my thigh swaying over my tin. I cobbled together a cart out of scrap steel and plywood and in the growing darkness and howling wind, I wheeled the Model A into the relative safety of the garage. And there we were, face to face again after all these years. And I can't imagine why now is not the right time to get started building. And so every night since then, after the girls have been put to bed and my wife as well, I head out to the garage and get to work. And it feels wonderful. It's a 31 that was hot rodded at some point in the past. I don't know much about it. Someone did an okay job filling the roof and cut a big hole in the rear floor to sit down over the rear cross-member. It needs all kinds of patch panels and some reverse engineering to make things straight again, but I'm in love. Being out of work and burning through my savings mean things are on a tight budget for a while and will likely reign in my more elaborate and expensive build plans, but I figure I've got plenty of busy work to do just getting the body straight before I have to make any big decisions about engine and wheels etc. - I've got lots of ideas though. Anyhow, if you've bothered to read this far, I felt it important to say Hey to the room again before I started posting in the forums again. It's nice to see the HAMB again. Missed you guys. Here's a pic for the curious:
The Jalopy Journal
