Hello George, hope this Indy day finds you well.

Certainly this is a day to recognize that freedom includes personal taste. I have a stable full of old enthusiast cars (or some such term) that I love. I'd be damned upset if anyone told me that I HAD to get rid of them. I don't drive them often enough to affect national fuel usage, and I feel I should be allowed to keep 'em (and I regularly contribute to mail campaigns here in California to make sure I can).

My daily drivers have been 240s for many years, and as long as you guys keep the wells going (at least someplace, if not in OK) then I'll keep doing so. I would like to point out a rather different twist on the "junk it" philosophy though: This week I found myself in need of a transmission. Not a common occurrence with a 240, but it does happen. I opted for an AW71 and went searching at my local yard. Denizens of the self serve auto parts recycling emporiums will share my tack on this sort of thing. How does one decide which automatic to pull? If the car is wrecked, chances are the engine and trans were running. If the car shows no damage, maybe it's in the yard because the trans is gone! I found a 1990 740t with only 108k miles on the clock. Car was exceptionally clean. Some of the interior had been removed, but no sign of vandalism, collision, nothing. The head and turbo were gone. My decision to pull the trans was based on one thing: In the glovebox I found the manuals, some maintenance paperwork, and a pad of note paper with much scribbling on it that accompanied a failed smog test report. To make a long story short, the car failed smog, and the owner sold it to the Governator. In fact, I think this may account for what I see as an increase in very intact cars showing up in the yards of late. I just hope Arnold doesn't show up on TV with a mechanical arm shaped like a scrap metal magnet saying "I'm heah for yawr cah, ya?"

DS

P.S. Trans is perfect and came with what appear to be new seals and a new OD solenoid too. Score!