Howdy George,

We could have, and probably should have stayed for the rally. I was antsy to get home. We were home that night. If we had stayed I would have certainly bought that Weber setup that fellow was selling. Then I would have owned a carb setup that I would need to build an engine to justify. ;-) Do you know that man and did he sell that Weber setup? Not that I am interested, mind you, just curious...

Tyler told you about the spinning nut. Now for the rest of the story.

I was not able to tow the car home last night. After I cut the head off the offending bolt and nut combination on the driver's side, I moved to the passenger side. I encountered the same spinning of the lower bolt and nut. But, the hole where the nut once lived on the passenger side was heavily damaged by prior impact. The lower bolt and nut pulled free with just a tug on the bracket. The hole is mushroomed from the inside-out and is about the size of a half-dollar. It will have to be hit with a grinder and a nut welded to a washer will then have to be welded to the frame.

This is the second car (Frieda Nell being the first) that I have encountered with this kind of damage. Since welding will be necessary to repair the passenger side, I might as well repair the driver's side in a like manner.

That was just the icing on the cake of a day that started off poorly. When in Houston I stay at my sister's house and I park on the street so as to not drip fluids from my $500 mule onto the driveway. Thursday night when I got home from work I forgot to lock the car. Wouldn't you know, the opportunistic thieves were out and about that night. The only thing of value they took was a disk brake spreader tool I had rented for the brake pad replacement I had planned to do Friday morning. It was laying in plain sight on the back seat. $108 gone *poof*.

The thieves tried to take the radio (valued by me at about $20) but could not figure out how to unlock the DIN bracket. They broke the face off the ashtray in their thrashing about trying to learn the "secret" of how to get the radio out. The worst of it is that they took the faceplate, making the radio useless to me.

It was not as bad as it could have been. If they hadn't been so engaged in trying to get the radio out they might have looked in the back. Towbar, chains, tools, jack, jack stands, fluids -- all these were untouched.