New Owner, old list member - long

["Jeff Phillips" <jeff.phillips@xxxx>]

Hey all, I just wanted to announce that I'm the proud new owner of 
#10544. I bought it over the weekend in Indiana and drove it home 
(nearly w/o incident) to St Louis. A brief history of the car goes 
as follows. Unsure of the original owner and I pick up the trail 2 
owners prior to me. Owner A bought the car and planned on putting a 
small block Chevy engine in it (obviously not a list member) and 
after disassembling the car and haveing an adapter plate made learned 
that the engine was too big. Immediately he put all the parts neatly 
into boxes and left the car in the garage, deciding instead to buy a 
<gag> Corvette instead. He then sold the car sometime later to his 
brother who shipped it to Indiana and began the long process of 
reassemblying the car 5 years ago. He did a fairly good job and the 
car looks great with new headliners, binnical, stereo, and 
reassemblyed engine. The tranny was completely rebuit as well as the 
clutch. The worst part of the car seems to be the frame with a few 
good size holes in places.
So I picked it up and drove it to St Louis, the longest trip the 
car had been on in 10 years. The only two problems I had were 
outside of Kokomo the shifter linkage bolt came loose at the 
centermounter pivot and the linkage popped off of the stud. Causeing 
ofcourse, me to be sitting at a stop light, infront of a long line of 
cars, looking extreemly good but not going anywhere. A quick 
reference in the parts manual, a trip to the hardware store, and one 
8M nut later I was back on the road. It was uneventful from then 
until St Louis with the exception of a few people travelling at 
unsafe speeds towing uhauls just trying to catch up and snap a few 
pictures, and a short caravan with a Dodge Viper travelling in the 
same direction as me (we looked good driving together). Not until I 
exited the highway in my neighborhood did the second problem occur. 
Yep overheating. Parked the car, checked the fluid and saw it was 
low. Added more fluid, bled off some air, and all is fine again. 
Occassionally I have to add coolant and the car is fine. Will be 
performing a pressure test soon to check the cooling system. It 
seems to lose coolant even before the engine hits 220. Perhaps me 
radiator cap is not functioning properly. Anyways, I'm sure that 
I'll be on the list some more as I begin to take care of the car. I 
used to follow the list several years ago but now I've got the needed 
motivation to keep up with it. thanks to all for the great advise 
I've seen on the list already.

Jeff Phillips
#10544
St Louis.\