Thursday Night Cruise-in at Cabelas

 About three weeks ago we got invited to a cruise-in that has been taking place regularly on Thursday evenings between five and seven at the local Cabelas parking lot . As it's only a couple miles from home I had to check it out .

 Been there three weeks in a row now and it has not been disappointing at all.

Met some cool old duffers like these two rough looking cats Dan with the 64 Impala and Mike with the 64 Galaxie convertible.

 

The event was started this spring by car geek and all around good kid Derick Rabida seen here in the "topless" shirt with the little purple Nissan truck.

Mostly a boy racer and tuner thing until us Gray-beards started showing up recently .

You never know what will turn up

Bear's mint 57

Or some fool in an old Volvo

A kid with a right hand drive Toyota with tuner V8 engine

. . . or a Japanese import Honda Kei-Car

Also right hand drive

With its Japanese inspection sticker

Dan's 64 Impala

An immaculate AMC 72? Javelin

A 71 Celica

With a monster clutch eating Lexus V8 engine crammed in it

A hard top sixty something Galaxie

A well preserved 89 Nissan 240SX

With a mint interior

To a 77 Oldsmobile with the choked down F heads and monstrous Holleys just for show

Or whatever this sled is

With a giant five liter Ford V8

With an interesting interior

My friend Scott's pristine 53 Customline Ford

A superbly restored candy red 66 Charger

That tempts even the most non-Mopar schlep like me . . .

. . .  with its classic sweeping lines

. . . and iconic interior

Modern cars don't have nothing on this

Sad to think already today these are just a nostalgic memory

A baby yellow sixty something . . .

Ford Fairlane

The "Ladies Man" pimp-mobile with purple under-lighting . . .

. . . decorated with drapes and crystal tumblers for his Courvoisier

And an 83? Celica Supra with a recent buff job

 

Even the Harley Drawn Hot-Dog cart was there to feed the hungry last night.

 

 

Digit Damage and an Oil Leak

 It's summer time so the little Hibachi I built eleven years ago gets a good workout .

Lamb Kabobs on this occasion .

After eleven years of hard use there is not much left to the old ashtray

Then I remembered I had the old stainless steel casing from a microwave that had crapped out a few years ago , so why not build a new one out of that material . Should outlast the old galvanized one .

Scheming things out . . .

Cutting and bending , fat , dumb and happy thinking this may just work out .

 When the thing jumped out and bit me , reminding me to not get to smug , as nothing happens without some blood sacrifice .

Seems a corner of the box sprung back while I was attempting to make a bend and stabbed me right on the top of the knuckle right down into the joint . It did not really hurt all that much but did start pouring blood quickly . After ripping off my gloves I realized this was going to take a bit more that a Band-Aid to patch up . I hosed it out with copious amounts of hydrogen peroxide and it was evident it really merited a couple stitches , but having gone through the routine several times before , the hassle of all the wasted time and insurance BS at the clinic convinced me to find my own solution . I applied some sulfa powder to stem the flow and some crazy glue to hold the split together and managed to carry on clumsily without an operating opposing thumb .

And actually finished making the ash tray before the pain set in .

And made use of the Hibachi after all 

After running the torch for about five minutes we have good hot coal and can remove the flue pipe

Give it another five minutes for the flames simmer down enough to cook on .

And managed to have a nice meal

After five days the thumb had improved enough to clean off the crust of sulfa powder and crazy glue , but not quite enough to be able to make enough force with it to hold a wrench .

 When the furnace service company sent over their junior mook to do the annual service on the furnace and he decided the flare fitting on the furnace oil line coming from the filter on the tank needed tightening . The next day I noticed it was dripping badly . Given that he had given me a bunch of BS about how my installation was not to code and I needed to install a new double walled five thousand dollar tank , I really did not feel like having him back for a repeat .

The drip was about a quarter cup in volume over twelve hours so I needed to do something more permanent than a catch can under it . Yet I did not have an operable opposing thumb to cut the line and remake a new flare .

When my good buddy Scott , a retired oil tanker chief engineer , came to the rescue .

With one of these hot-shit twenty eight dollar , oil tanker approved , stainless steel double ring compression fittings .

And had us back in operation in about twenty minutes flat .

Postmortem examination of the old flare fitting we cut off showed a copper bur had crushed the shoulder on the brass fitting enough to allow it to leak .