What’s this year’s mantra? Easy: “Hopefully they’re still doing/having/running (INSERT AUTOMOTIVE-RELATED EVENT HERE) when they scheduled it this year!” That’s the phrase that everyone seems to mutter when discussing upcoming events and I’m not immune, I’ve been doing it too. It’s tooth-grindingly frustrating to play the guessing game but if you believe that the event will happen, then it’s all the reason you need to keep busting your hump in the shop. It’s working at BangShift Mid-West and it’s working further north in the Vice Grip Garage shop, where Derek has been working on the 1972 Chevelle known as “Independence”. After patching up enough ragged, rotted metal in just about every possible section of all of the hard points of the car that needed to be patched up, we are now onto the assembly portion of the program. With his eyes set on whatever burnout pad that he will be able to get the Chevelle onto, it’s time to start tackling the front suspension. All of it. And we mean “all”, because a fella is starting from scratch. No control arms, no springs, no nothing…and that’s better than what the car showed up with.

It’s a bit of inspiration for how I’m going to be spending the day today, as I work on the Great Pumpkin Mustang’s front-end assembly. Check out the work as good parts get put onto a car that’s slowly returning back to the land of the living: