Hey intertube surfers, we’re looking for a nice, cheap Vanagon for our next LeMons project. We thought we had one sourced, but yours truly forgot to do something very important, like pay the guy a deposit for the piece of junk. Seriously, how much deposit do you pay on a $200 shell?
Anyway, if anybody sees something, we’re looking for a beater Vanagon, a couple engines, and a working transmission.
Peace!
Caught this on the street in North Berkeley near the BART station. Yes, it runs and moves frequently. I think it’s a 356B based on the back grill and high headlights.
The management of Gordon Biersch in San Jose has indulged us with some gallery space in the mezzanine above the bar. We do our best to rotate the photos every couple of months, and I’ve just hung a set of photos taken around the shop. Now the collection of fine old automobiles at Magnolia Garage is gracing the walls of that fine old Brewery. Well, bits of them anyway.
Peter's VW Single Cab
The 8 prints hanging on the wall in SJ are presented in my gallery, but the beer is better if you see them in person.
We have a new addition to the stable, a 1964 Porsche 356C in fairly rough condition but the motor runs well and everything works on it. We need to replace the pans in the front, battery box, and redo the brakes, but overall it’s a pretty solid car. I’m looking forward to getting it out on the road as a driver.
New project Porsche
The Dead Smurf has departed with Brent and his family today, possibly off to another LeMons campaign, perhaps as Rattus Trackiferus, time will tell. Let us bid it farewell and move on to the next project! Long live the Fiat!
A bit of an adventure yesterday resulted in a 1979 Honda Civic showing up in our shop ($300) and a 1977 Fiat 124 arriving next weekend ($100). Acquiring the Honda was quite an adventure as it was out past Placerville near Somerset off a nice muddy dirt road and up a hill. And we didn’t have a tow bar installed. And it was raining. And my boys were running around. And there were 100 other dead cars staring at us in this field. And it was getting dark.
The Fiat was much easier as we visited Clint in Sacramento to check it out on the way and realized how cool it was for LeMons.
LeMons Fiat!
We made it back from Thunderhill last Sunday evening and unpacked everything on Monday. The weekend was great. In bullet-point format:
Totally a blast, thanks to everyone for a great time. See you at the races!
Ps
We’re all loaded up on the trailer and ready for Eduardo to scoot up to T-hill. I’ll follow him and we’ll meet up on Friday morning at the track to unload and get the pit set up. If the car were registered I would have thought seriously of driving up - maybe next race. I cut out a little bit of padding today to allow the hardtop to latch on the driver’s side and then duct-taped a plastic sheet over the rear to protect from rain (and snow?).
I just realized that we forgot to cover the positive post of the battery so I have to remember to bring that up. Also, Eduardo had a 10′x10′ tent with plastic sides so we’ll have a pit area to work on the car if needed, you know, to block out all that sun 
See you at the races!
Ok, we’re getting pretty close. All of the driving gear has arrived and yesterday we did a big push towards getting the car finished. We were able to get a door bar welded in, fit and bolt in the seat, extend the steering column back a few inches, drain the coolant, mount the fire extinguisher, and paint the numbers. Remaining items include finishing the electrical cut-off (need cables and wire to run iginition (blue) interrupt), a new battery, and getting supplies ready for transport up north. I also re-installed the windows so that we can run with the hardtop and heater on if we actually drive off-track for any reason.
Just got done using my cool new 90deg angle drill. It is super low-profile (I’ll get a picture next time I’m at the shop) and I can drill holes in hard-to-get-to areas. Specifically, the front and rear stays for the roll-cage were kind of hard to reach, but with the new drill it wasn’t so bad.
I also taped up the lights and mirrors. We still have a list of things to do, but it’s slowly getting knocked out. Race is coming up faster every day it seems (Dec 27th/28th).