My wife got off at 3:00 this morning, I picked her up and we came back home to put the kids in the car, them we headed out for Morgan Hill, CA to pick up my 1962 Buick Special station wagon. When we got there, I could hardly believe how nice the car is. The chrome looks like new, the interior (even the plastic dash pieces!!!) look like new, there is like uhm... NO rust, it starts and runs good, and as claimed in the EBay listing it does indeed drive like new.

I just picked up my first Buick, a Special DeLuxe 4100 series station wagon. It's also my first EBay buy so I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes. This looks to be a really cool little wagon. It has a 112" wheel base so it's in between the compact station wagons (Plymouth Valiant, Ford Falcon, etc) and full size wagons (i.e. Vista Cruiser, Chrysler Town and Country, etc). The wagon I bought was a 1 owner car since 1962 until this year when the original owner passed away.

I've never been a really big fan of Popular Hot Rodding magazine. They had an occasional good article, but overall the editorial content and quality didn't measure up to the standards of Car Craft or Hot Rod. Lately though I've changed my mind. I've been reading this magazine over the past few months and it's like a whole new magazine. In the current issue, I found this nugget of wisdom:

I'm breathing a huge sigh of relief right now. I finally found an engine core and made most of the final decisions on how it's going to be built. All I have left to do is pick out a cam shaft. Good machine shops are hard to find, so they're busy, but in about 5 weeks I should have one really sweet running..... 318 Mopar. Yep, after much thought and soul searching, I decided to go with a 318 instead of a stroked 360. This really isn't a change of heart though, it's more of a triumph of rational planning over "golly-gee-whiz-ism."

It looks like I'm going to get to keep my job for at least another year, so I'm going to move forward with the engine for my Barracuda. I talked it over with my wife this week, and despite her previous reservations, she's not going to make me get a crappy crate engine.

I had been fairly hopeful of keeping my job for at least another year starting in July. Yesterday, though, I got some bad news and could be unemployed as early as the end of this month. I should find out one way or the other next week.
If I do lose my job, then the 360 is definitely out. In fact, I don't even know if my wife will let me spend the money to get a 318 built for the Barracuda. It would put up huge obstacles to finishing the Barracuda if I lose my job.