Yep, I'd rather just take my car to a shop nowadays mate, like you I'm sick of crawling around underneath cars.
Having said that, I wouldn't mind converting my automatic 1995 Subaru Liberty (Legacy in the US) to a manual gearbox, which would be way too expensive to have a shop do.
I've only done it once before, changing out a C4 auto behind a 302 Cleveland for a single rail box, and it was a full weekend's work, crawling around a baking hot concrete driveway, either under the dash or under the car with my brother in laws big scary looking dog crawling under the car and dropping his slobbery ball (rubber ball, not big hairy balls) on my chest so I'd throw it and he'd chase after it, and if I didn't want to play, he'd show me his teeth and growl at me until I wanted to play again, the big evil baastard. Geez, I think I just talked myself out of it!
Anyway, it was on the weekend, that I hopped on the train to Bairnsdale for the first time since 1980. The train trip was uneventful as the train was almost empty, but I had to wear a mask regardless, and the fcuking mask I had was such a tight fit that I'm sure I was breathing my own carbon dioxide, so by the time I got to Bairnsdale I'd had the fcuker on for 5.5 hours, and all I wanted to do was throw it away.
The reason for the trip was to collect my old Subaru. Some young d1ckhead crashed his Ford into my Mitsubishi outlander 2 weeks ago and it was written off by the insurance company, so I was gonna buy another used "Daily Driver" when my Ma (93 in August) told me that she'd been looking for an excuse to give the Subaru back to me, as she wasn't driving it and it was just collecting rust (well almost) sitting out the front of her place.
I gave the car to Ma in 2015 when I leased my shiny new Ford (my "Sunday Driver" car) so I was happy to have it back as it's still registered and insured in my name, and I was a tad worried about Ma driving, even though she's still got most of her marbles. I intended to fill it with fresh fuel but it was almost full with "God knows how old" fuel, it needed a litre of oil and the radiator topping up, but it was running fine. I drove it back to Melbourne the next morning, and enjoyed it's super low go kart style ride.
Of course after 6 years of sitting parked under trees, it was filthy, and as Ma had been taking her two dogs for drives in the countryside, the interior was filthy inside too, and smelt like wet dog. I took it to the car wash on Sunday but being a sunny day the wait for a wash bay was too long, so I went back on Monday, and had the whole carwash to myself. I scrubbed the crap off the car and especially under the boot (trunk) lid and bonnet (hood) blew the mud that had accumulated under both out, and was happy there were no rust holes. Gotta love Japanese cars, they're not rust buckets like Aussie cars of the era.
I used the big coin operated vacuum cleaner to suck up all the crap, dog hair, leaves, gravel etc out of the interior, and it started to look more like a daily driver, and less like an abandoned wreck. It still needs another 2 or 3 washes and a polish, and all the glass inside cleaned. Well it took 6 years to make it so bad, so I suppose I've got plenty of time to get it back to somewhere that I'll be happy with it.
Bairnsdale Weekend 19-20 Jun 2021 2 by
Terry Prendergast, on Flickr
