Poseiden's treasure

Poseiden has looked favorably upon the Pearl. The list of Craig has given up another treasure from the depths.

After many false starts, emails, phone calls and hours of waiting, I found myself standing in Fred's driveway early Saturday morning. A driveway of someone that clearly  has a similar affliction, however lacking the city ordinance restraints of my zip code.

The half completed sixty eight Mustang fastback on jack stands and the pile of scrap metal next to the early seventies Firebird sitting at the fence line made it clear that my gamble could just pay off.

Craig and his list are always that, a gamble. Sometimes you eat the bar, sometimes the bar eats you.

On this occasion I didn't bicker on the price, he had been patient with my some what eclectic schedule and it looked to be in as advertised condition. So I carefully loaded my treasure into the back of the household Presidents car and raced home.

After a few minutes of cleaning off the dust from sitting and flushing it out. I dug out the original radiator for comparison.

And low and behold, like finding a barnacle covered chest at the bottom of the sea that's filled with Spanish gold, this chest is filled with tubes, late model contemporary, highly efficient vertical tubes.

This gentleman had just unwittingly sold me a completely updated radiator for pennies on the dollar. No more then a month prior had I just received a quote at five hundred and fifty dollars for the very same thing to be done to my current radiator.

So after lunch and possibly after a short nap I set forth to put wind back in the Pearl's sails. Like a broke in leather jacket the Pearl slipped the radiator on with relative ease.

After somemore sleeping and breakfast I pushed it out of dry dock and proceeded to top the fluids and fire it off. Unfortunately out time in dock had rendered the fuel system dry and being that I run a Holley I didn't want to pour gas down its througt for fear of the ever carb rebuilding nightmare of a backfire.

Several minutes later after priming the pump the old girl barked to life. no leaks were apparent other then hoses not completely tightened.

It's always surprising how viseral and organic a healthily built carbureted engine feels. You feel it through the floor, the wheel, your ears truly feel it as the butterflies snap open when you hit the throttle.

Soon we'll be able to hoist our flag once more.