So, my first car was a '67 Mustang. Picked her up about 4 hours away from home for $1500, Dad and I drove her home with no issues. Paint was horrible, body was fairly terrible, but I fell in love with her fairly soon.
Drove her throughout high school until the rear-end started to crap out. Bought a '68 Mustang with a 302 that had been totaled when someone hit the front right. Was planning on rebuilding the 302 and swapping it in, but the hood was open and air cleaner was off, so water got down into the cylinders and locked one of them absolutely solid. So with the help of Dad and my friends I stripped everything I could off of it. Stripped it enough that we had to pay the junkyard to pick it up as there was nothing usable on there.
Got a lot of stuff from it, an 8" rear end with a locker was the best part. Wanted the front spindles to swap the whole car over to 5-lug, but the passenger was hit hard enough to warp it, so I eventually did the Granada swap. Went through the rear end with a friend of mine, then I joined the military before I could install it.
Spent a couple years in the military and decided I needed to get her. By now I had bought my truck, so I drove down from DC to Tallahassee to pick her up from Dad's place. Loaded up, grabbed most of the parts from the '68 and headed north. Got up to the base, got her off the trailer and went straight to bed. Woke up the next day to find out some shiny happy person cop on base had given me a ticket for having an unregistered car parked on base less than 4 hours after I had got her off the trailer. That was a huge clusterberkeley that I won't get into right now, I will say that it almost ended my career.
Almost immediately my friends and I started to change out the rear-end. Some retired field officer that was touring the states in his RV with his wife gave me all sorts of E36 M3 for doing that in a parking lot when there was an auto hobby shop on base to work on. I pointed out that the hobby shop wasn't open at 6PM on a sunday and he got all huffy. Got the rear end in with no issues.
Didn't have too many things to do for a while, so I futzed around with some appearance crap
In the middle of my Granada swap I was getting E36 M3 from the people on base for having an eyesore vehicle. When I wasn't driving my car there was a cover over it, and it was parked properly. Despite this I, and I alone kept getting E36 M3, kept getting told that my car would be towed off base, that it would be impounded, and on and on and on. There were cars there that had not moved in months (the owners were not deployed either), tires were flat, E36 M3 was broken on them, they leaked fluids, etc etc etc.
It got to the point where I expected to wake up one day, find my car gone, then see it one day being driven by some jackass that had bought it from an impound lot. I finally ended up visiting base legal to see if they had any leg to stand on. I submitted pics of these other decrepit cars, there was some back and forth, and finally they started to leave me alone.
Wouldn't you know it, midway through the install of the Granada brake swap and some suspension bits I ended up needing to take something to a machine shop as I had borked a set of bolts (cross-threaded them I believe). I knew I couldn't leave the car sitting there on jack stands as the dorm managers would flip. It was the weekend so I wouldn't have the parts back until sometime during the week. I thought I was SOL for a little bit, then I ended up thinking of a novel solution.
What they wouldn't know, wouldn't hurt them. I put the suspension on this jackstand, with some help from a buddy I lowered it down onto it, then finished everything up and cleaned up for the night. Midweek I got the parts back, finished it all up and was hunky dory, then never knew.
Couple months go by, I swap in a DuraSpark II system to great results. While I'm doing that I also swap the valve cover for the painted one I did above, I find the barest hint of coolant sitting below the rockers. I kept an eye on it and plan to address it in the future if need be. Drove to a friend's place to help setup for a halloween party and on the way back the temp gauge just rose and rose. Ended up blowing a head gasket. Ordered a new head and some shiny bits
Unfortunately before I could do something about it, I got deployed.
Kuwait wasn't bad at all. Made a decent amount of money, poured almost all of it into parts for the car and the truck. Stupid damned two-striper that I was. I did get a T5 swap out of it, though. Post office on base was not happy with me when I got back. I took up a quarter of their storage room cause I had ordered such large parts.
Moved off base after I got back, was able to swap the head. Was too lazy to find a shop for a full exhaust, so I wore earplugs when I drove her for a while.
Got out of the USAF, moved back home for about a year, decided I wanted back in so I got into the Reserves, ended up spending the next 8ish years in the Reserves, while there I actually spent more time on active duty orders than I had while actually in active duty. (there's a program called man-days, or an MPA tour. This is where they bring reservists onto active duty orders in order to fill slots where people have deployed.
I had fun during this time.
Strangely enough, while doing man-days, you still had to do your "one weekend a month and two weeks a year" that the Reserves require.
