Well… we’re here. Despite putting the ‘Mach 1’ decals on at 11:30 last night, we made it. We had a great day just relaxing and Frank actually won a Best In Class award – on his first time out!!

The best part was when the MSG Commander was walking by admiring Frank. He actually told me it’s a beautiful car, to which I replied, “Looks a lot different than the last time you saw it, eh?” “Excuse me?” he looked confused. I told him that this is that pile of project car that took up so much space in his Auto Hobby Shop while Jim and I was running it for him for the past 18 months on the weekends.” His demeanor changed as he said, “Oh. You must be Eric.” “Yes Sir, I am.” He kept staring at Frank, grinding his teeth, and finally said, “Nice car,” as he turned and stormed off.

Oh. My. Gawd. I felt SO good. I delivered a nice verbal equivalent of a kick in the nuts to the elitist asshole who’d caused Jim and I so much hassle. My day was complete at that point… until he had to hand over a Best In Class plaque later that day, that is. Best. Day. Ever.

Showing off the engine at the GAFB Car Show.

Got the tires slicked up and everything polished.

Even the trunk was in inspection order.

Interior’s pretty much all finished up, except for the seat belts and a couple more details.

Didn’t get the trunk stripe on yet – still gotta adjust the trunk lid… and pretty much just ran out of time last night.

No words… just a cool car and a cool guy – my pal Jim Eimer. 

My pal Jim and his Jeep after the show and everybody bailed. Just grabbin’ a couple pics and having a celebratory Guiness.

Here’s the spec sheet from the day.

And one of the new hardware.

Got some stuff done today: installed the quarter window adjusters, trimmed the package tray trim to fit better, tucked more wires in the dash and test-fitted the glove box insert, and my wife installed the front license plate bracket and this plate – all by herself! 

Unfortunately, I didn’t get any more pics of things going in – I was so busy trying to get things done, I didn’t make time for progress pics.

Wiring Nightmare! This is the result of all the extra wiring for all of the modern add-ons I’m installing: power windows, power locks, Classic Auto Air HVAC, Retrosound stereo, alarm, and a back-up camera. It’s all independent of the car’s original wiring harness that included zero power anything.

Rims & tires certainly make the car. This is after all the day’s fun and slapping on the new shoes. 245/60R15s on 15x8s up front, and 295/50R15s on 15x10s out back.

I love how mean these wheels make this car look – and it’s almost exactly how I was hoping it was gonna go.

Holy Cow that’s some rubber. Everything clears, and I hope the suspension is up to the task of keeping the tires off the sheet metal. I’d hate to have to go down to 275s on 15x8s. Still gotta align the damn trunk lid…

Here’s how the car [most likely] came from the factory. The Marti Report just said “wheel covers,” and since I happen to like these Sport Covers better than the Corporate “dog dishes,” I picked up a set.

Getting closer. Still need to finish up the interior and get a windshield installed.

Headliner and sail panels are in! It was a whole lot easier without any of the glass.

Looks like the passenger side forward coat hook cast a shadow from the flash. Still gotta cut-in and mount the sun visor brackets and all the plastic trim (after I paint it all, that is).

“Holy Auto-Focus Fail, Batman!” The Mustang has a ‘face’ again. Only took almost 4 years and 6 hours. Still hating crawling around on the garage floor, but at least it’s getting closer. Trudy Hansen actually turned a wrench or two today!

Since having Frank home, things have slowed down quite a bit. It’s sometimes hard getting motivated to go out and work in the heat as summer closes in, and getting used to doing car stuff in the garage has been hard, after having the run of a fully-equipped shop at my disposal. But, gotta get busy… I want to have this thing ready for the GAFB Car Show in October, after all.

Finally got the tail light panel installed, along with the tail lights, flip-open gas cap (cover), and rear marker lights. My wife slaved in the hot sun to clean up the tail lights before I put them back in – and she did an awesome job!

So here we are in front of the house, thanks to the Goodfellow Auto Hobby Shop closing. Very cool truck from Clark’s Auto Salvage… and the driver’s name is Rusty (a little bit of NASCAR irony there  ).

Drove it around through the alley to park in the driveway. Felt a little weird driving it on a ‘normal’ street (don’t tell SAPD, though  ).

All tucked in with about 3 feet all around – don’t want anything scratchin’ the new paint!

Yup. The Auto Hobby Shop is now closed for good.

I got an e-mail saying it was closed 2 Wednesdays ago, and have been scrambling to get it ready to come home. Still gotta get my boxes of parts tomorrow, but after that just gotta help Jim Eimer get his stuff out of there. Then – Done.

The worst thing about it, it that Jim and I were treated like pond scum despite the fact that we were literally running the shop for them over the weekends for almost 2 years after the low-life they hired to replace Jim after re-directing him to Transportation basically stole from the USG to support his meth habit. When they finally fired him after AFOSI found AHS property in local pawn shops, the whining little maggot of a Flight Chief (who’d given us nothing but crap about our cars taking up so much space while we worked on them) came to us hat in hand asking us to run it for them until they could find someone to hire. No problem, but we’re not paying stall fees and we’d like to not get hassled about how long our projects are taking as a result of running your shop. He agreed, and having sold our souls, so began our torment.

When they decided to shut it down – just 18 months later after never actually getting around to hiring someone to replace the meth-head, they didn’t even come talk to us like men who’d saved their bacon after firing the meth-head (despite taking advantage of us). We received e-mails saying to get out, and when we showed up to begin that process, they’d changed the locks – effectively, seizing our property, and told us we’d need to be escorted while we were there. WT Actual F?! We ran the shop for 18 months… gratis… helped turn a small profit and grow patronage, and now we can’t be trusted?!

They’ll eventually open it back up, but at a GREATLY diminished capacity – there will NEVER be the level of greatness experienced at the Goodfellow Auto Hobby Shop ever again, as from the early ’90s when I arrived and started using it, through the Don Myers years, and when Jim Eimer took the reigns as manager in the early 2000s through the early 20-teens when it was shut-down because of some elitist asshole MSG Commander’s disdain for such commonplace things.

Too bad as well – all it’s doing is screwing the military out of yet even more of the meager ‘benefits’ they have. I was hoping someday (after I retire from my Day Job) to become one of “those old farts working at the Hobby Shop who can fix just about anything” that I’ve come to respect and admire over the years. I guess those dreams will be fading from existence now.

If I ever run into that POS MSG Commander, I’ve a good mind to punch him in the face… but, since I value my job too much, he’ll never know just how lucky he really is.

So, the Mission Support Group Commander (Colonel Bernardi) has made a VERY unpopular decision to shut down the Auto Hobby Shop for a handful of reasons, but the most apparent being that he’s an upper-crust elitest asshole that could give two sh!ts less about the rest of us peons he lords over (“Why can’t they just go to Midas or someplace to get their oil changed?” he was heard uttering). Well, not everybody can afford $400 oil changes on our Porsches like you, dickhead. His ‘official’ rationale is that there’s a big inspection coming and that AHS is basically an eyesore because it’s got car stuff all over the place. Well No Shit, Sherlock – it’s an automotive shop, after all.

This plays out a bit later in this story, but for now, Jim and I are on notice that we need to “Get our Shit and Git!”

I’m in a good place – I can take my stuff home any time and finish up there, but Jim’s kind of struggling with his Galaxie and not exactly pushing hard to get it ready to go. This turns out to be the last weekend we can actually work on our cars with the shop open and other folks being able to use it.

With some adjustment of the holes in all affected sheet metal, I was able to get the front valance installed. Had to be extra careful because it’s a painted piece – but… no scratches! Whew!!

With some adjustment to the driver side quarter panel, in the way of a new mounting hole, I was able to get the rear valance installed, along with the bumper, and get the exhaust pipes located in the cut-outs. Still gotta adjust the quarter end caps and line up the trunk lid, but that can wait for another day.

After picking Frank up from the painter, and paying a bit more than we’d agreed one (despite my having to do the custom striping that saved his hood f00k-up), I had Clark’s Auto Salvage get him back to the Auto Hobby Shop. Little did I know his days there were numbered.

So first thing today, I located and installed the hood locks and the NACA ducts back into the hood. Gonna take some adjustment on the hood locks, but they look great!

Here’s my ratty old original driver seat. Between the vinyl being ripped up, the foam all but flattened and dried out, and the seat frame feeling less than sturdy, this one’s done.

TMI Products Sport Seat upholstery and seat foam. Everything on these seats is new except for the frames themselves. Gotta stick ’em in the sun to relax the new skins for awhile.

Compared to the ratty old driver seat, these seats should be awesome! What a PITA to recover though – I have a whole new respect for anyone that does upholstery.