Until we got The Clam right up to the rear door Jacob manned the camera. I think he's getting pretty good with the automotive camera angles.
Saturday before last, when Jacob went with me to take The '57 to Kentucky, we were sad to see that Garrett's Grocery had closed. Though this is not the same grocery, this is the same name of the grocery store that my grandfather, Jacob's great grandfather, had owned and operated in the 50's and 60's. We planned to eat lunch here but later found out that the old lady had died and the store was closed. Not to be beaten we continued on and found another locally owned meat-and-three diner where "Granny" actually did the cooking. Last Saturday we were glad to see that the country store near where we picked up The Clam was still open, so that's where we had lunch.
Since I wasn't able to drop The Clam off at the exhaust shop on Saturday because it needed to be pushed out of the trailer and onto the rack by an army of men, it stayed in the trailer until today when I took it down to the muffler shop to have the exhaust pipes and mufflers installed.
I have crawled under the car, but this is the first time I have been able to stand under it and really get a good look. I was amazed at how solid and rust free the underside of this car really is. I had the shop install an X-pipe. They also made everything in front of the mufflers able to be unbolted to facilitate the installation of an overdrive transmission in the future. It is my goal to try, just as personal goal, to see how many miles per gallon I can get from a 455 cubic inch, 4 barrel Pontiac engine.
I know the owner of the shop and they always do great work. Because of the layout in the rear of the car, with the tailgate storage and the spare tire well, there is little room to run a dual exhaust setup. Some people run both pipes out the driver's side, while some run them out both sides with one under the spare tire well, which makes one lower than the other and I personally think looks bad. Another option I don't care for is running them out the back. He came up with a great idea that looks awesome. Because I plan to eventually tow things with the car, as well as the aesthetic reason, I didn't want pipes out the rear, so he ran them out the back on both sides, but cut them off and turned them down before the pipe would go under the tire well. This way the pipes are not visibly sticking out of the sides of the car and they are tucked up nicely underneath. These cars came with the pipes run under the axle housings, which is somewhat of a strange set up. The guy welding the pipes said it's the first one he has ever seen this way.
For a brief while, The Clam shared the stalls with a fellow Poncho, a GTO. I think I caught her looking jealously at The Goat's Rally II wheels. I told her that though they looked the same, she has the big 5x5 bolt pattern and The Goats had the smaller 4.75 bolt pattern.
When the guys at the shop pushed the car, with me in it, back into the trailer there was absolutely no room for me to get out. I had to borrow a pair of vise-grips and manually roll up the back window to crawl out. When I got home I stopped by Jacob's house to see if he would ride his 4-wheeler over to my place and help me pull The Clam up next to my garage.
It was a tight fit.
Jacob's 4-wheeler doesn't have a hitch on the rear so that meant I had to chain it high up on the rear of the rack. The meant that when we started to pull The Clam up the driveway the forces exerted tried to pull the back of the 4-wheeler down, lifting up on the front. I was on the 4-wheeler and Jacob was steering the car. Our first two attempts up the driveway didn't work because the 4-wheeler would spin its tires and then try to flip over backwards.
On the third attempt we rolled back across the street and got a running start. I had to lean forward on the front of the 4-wheeler to try to keep the front end down. The tires were off the ground and I couldn't steer, but I didn't let up off the throttle until The Clam was fully up next to the garage. Unfortunately, that meant I had to disregard a few bricks and bushes.
All the outsourced mechanical work is finally finished so now I can begin reassembling The Clam.
