Well the wedding is over, the Chev is back home after staying at the reception centre for 2 nights on its own. Seems it had such a good time it did not want to come home in a hurry.
Into the garage it went, after all the make over was finished
You never really finish these things you know. There are always more jobs to be done. The next few years would see more improvements and repairs. Driving these further improvements was my belief that the older you get , the more fussy you get, the more attention to detail and in my case the more critical you become of the standard of work you did 30 odd years ago.
So its October 2007, I had just completed an 8 month restoration, and it was time to reflect on what I had achieved. It was hard work, a lot more than I thought it would be at the start. But I now had a much improved 1928 Chev compared to the one I started work on earlier in the year.
More important, hopefully it made the wedding day of Melanie and Justin just a little bit more special, and maybe the desire to achieve this was my driving passion throughout the project. Who knows.
I can not explain why, but I never had any doubt that the car would be finished in time for the wedding, but I must confess that 4am on the day of the wedding was just a bit too close.
I think you need to retain a positive attitude during restorations working to a deadline, otherwise it's too easy to make excuses and pull the pin. Sure there were times, and usually late at night, when I would have a reality check on how long the road ahead was, but you just keep going, baby steps.
Did I ever come close to pulling the pin. Cant really say as to me it was never an option once I started. But if there had been a trigger it could have easily been when I was stripping the rear end, and part after part was broken or worse. But a good nights sleep, and everything looked brighter in the morning. If the jobs started to back up and the days started to pass too quickly, I just increased the work rate, an extra hour here and there.
Would I do it again? No. I think you only have the ability and dedication to do this sort of job once. I would not take on an 8 month restoration involving so many tasks, especially after becoming aware of just what was involved. But a longer restoration, 12 months, 18 months or 2 years, well who knows?
In hindsight did I enjoy it? You bet I did, every minute.The Chev was back on the road, better than ever, and more important I was back The passion for playing around with an 80 year old car had returned, and is a strong as ever. (2011)
And my last comment of this 5 part posting is "a father made his little girl happy"
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