Some Good News and Some Bad News

Well, we shipped the Pickle off to Greenway Auto. It is a small neighborhood repair shop down the street. We drove by it one day and saw numerous old cars in the front bays. So we went in and were initially taken back by the hundreds of photographs of hot rod and customs they had worked on over the years. We knew we were in the right place.

So they looked the engine over, got the stuck rear break hub off, machined a new one to fit, wired the brakes and a host of other things we had neither the tools nor the know-how to complete.

They called a few weeks later and said they had some good news and bad news. They were able to get the inline 6 to run but the compression was crap. I guess that shouldn't have been surprising since the Oklahoma license plate that was on the vehicle was from 1978.

It needed to be rebuilt. And after it was rebuilt, there was no telling in what condition was the transmission going to be. So we were forced to make the decision to put a newer engine in it or keep the old one. The cheaper and more logical choice was the newer engine. So that is what we are going to go with.

It saddens me to lose that stock engine, but the I think the real issue is the ability to reliably drive the car. So, the decision was made.

Below are some photos of the Pickle before it went off to the mechanic. And the video was the brief time we had to drive it as it limped home from Greenway Auto.