Happiness this year is found in the garage, ain’t it? Yeah…this is where you learn if you are a car builder or just would rather watch one on television. I’m finding that I’m enjoying building something, so long as it isn’t a sketchy piece of early 1980s radical overkill that’s fighting me on every possible turn. I’m also finding that thanks to the typical western Kentucky summertime heat indices, that I’ve got enough swamp ass to be a standing duplicate of the state of Louisiana. Yuck. Such is the way it goes though…either suffer for your craft or give up, get in the air conditioning and get back to your video subscription.

Scotty’s certainly understanding that sentiment with the Valiant wagon that he’s dragging back from the dead. For all intents and purposes a Dodge Dart station wagon that we never got over in the States, it’s a cool ride that deserves to be saved, for sure. But like any neglected and abused A-body Mopar, there’s rot. And we aren’t talking about a little hole or two in the quarters. We’re talking subframe patches from where the RHD steering box was ripping itself out of the rail. Now, if you’re getting ready to line up a comment about how the steering box on a Dart is mounted to the K-frame and not the subframe rail, you’re right…but you are wrong. Aussie cars mounted the box to the subframe, and even though they did a little bit of work to strengthen the area, fifty years of flexing takes a toll eventually.