Debutant

Yesterday was our local Cars & Coffee and the debut of “Johnny”on the local scene, but the promise of rain the night before made the outing look doubtful. Upon arising, the radar showed the massive blob of rain precariously positioned to strike from over parts of West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky the night before had somehow flattened and moved south of the NC/VA border. It was obvious it rained the night before, but the streets were by now mostly dry, so if figured why not?

I seem to be saying that a lot since we bought Johnny. At the time of his purchase I think I said or at least thought something similar, like; “Oh, there’s a 560SEC formally owned by Johnny Carson for sale on eBay. Maybe I should buy it… why not?” And thus the deed was done. Now no rational person would buy a 29-year-old car sight unseen over the Internet without at least some kind of PPI, or at least have a friend take a look. No fairly astute “car guy” would choose to ignore all the bad things that existed, which would automatically disqualify any other SEC from consideration. No rational human being would choose to believe all the accolades about the car from a guy three-thousand miles away whom you don’t know and never met, just because the car used to belong to the “King of Late Night.” No, no one would just say “Why Not?” and pull the trigger, but I did. But I digress.

We headed out to C&C and I really did not expect much of a turnout because of the weather and that proved to be the case. What also proved to be the case was the accuracy of the weather forecast. There were a few sprinkles on the way over and about 15 minutes after arriving it began a steady rain, which thankfully was very light and only lasted a few minutes. I parked in the Merc Section and there were a few ooh’s and aah’s along with a number of positive comments, but nothing over the top. Nothing like OMG! Johnny Carsons car??? WOW! Not that I expected that and I would have been rather embarrassed for anybody who reacted that way. In any event Johnny is not really ready for prime time, but it was nice to get him out and mingle a bit.

By the time C&C was over and got home I went to work removing some scratches that were bugging me on the left and right fenders. Fortunately, they were not too deep and came out pretty good. By then I was too tired to continue being as the day before was my birthday and much merriment took place, plus a had a boat load of chores to do around the house before departing on my trip early the next day. Instead of tackling another job on Johnny I decided instead to sit down and watch the 12 Hours of Sebring. Long story short, it was a good race for the home team as Mercedes AMG WeatherTech took home the GTD Class win and mostly dominated their class the entire race. After a few hours of that I switched over to Wheeler Dealers where Edd was working on a 560SL. Watching that along with the sun finally coming out and the temperature rising, was enough for me to get off my sorry butt and do another Johnny Job.

In my continuing quest to detail the engine I decided to tackle the air cleaner assembly. I contemplated a number of ways to do this. First I tried Brasso. In the olden days Brasso was good for anything, aluminum, stainless steel and even brass, but it was not the proper formula for this job. The assembly cover was a bit aged and was starting to develop some aluminum corrosion and resulting pitting, so I thought I’d try some Scotch Brite to take of the heavy black bits. Wrong answer! Fortunately, I only did it in a rather small and inconspicuous place so the light scratches it left behind are not noticeable. Finally, I resorted to Mother’s Aluminum and Mag polish, which worked a treat, however, it takes a lot of time and a lot of rubbing. My only fear is that it may be too shiny at the end of the day and the ends of my fingers will disappear along with the corrosion.

While hard at work on this endeavor, my neighbor Pat came over with a very nice present. Pat just came back from a business trip to Germany and bought me a very nice Mercedes-Benz baseball cap while he was there. I supposed he was returning the favor from when I brought him a case of Red Oak beer from Raleigh where I stopped off at the brewery on the last leg of Johnny’s 10-day journey to his new home a couple of weeks ago. So with that and seeing as my fingers were by now feeling like those of a novice guitar player, I decided to call it quits for the day and have a beer. Therefore, there are still many joyous hours to go on just the engine bay alone. One of these days I’ll get around to posting what has already been done and what more needs doing. Stay tuned.