Happy New Year!

Hello and welcome to 2008! It's been a while since I logged in - that's because there hasn't been much going on here. Barney the Lark hasn't been touched since the day the engine went back in, for a couple of reasons. First is a little home improvement project that took first priority over everything else, and second is the advent of winter and the rainy season. (I usually work on my car after work or on weekends; hard to do when sunset is at at 4:30 and it rains every Saturday.)

But my wife did give me a lovely gift for Christmas: a beautiful new set of reproduction 1963 taillight lenses from Chuck Collins of Studebakerparts.com !

These are really great reproductions, commissioned and sold by Chuck himself. They are injection molded the same way the originals were, of two-part clear and red high-impact plastic, with the separate "spider webs" that were unique to 1963 Larks ('62s had a simple chromed plastic ring in the middle). Although my old lenses were in good shape, they had lost their "spider webs" as most originals have - being separate castings, they tend to detach and fall off the car at speed. Chuck's repros are perfect, right down to the casting numbers located on the inside of the lens.

So the one thing I have accomplished was to change out the lenses, and they look gorgeous! Here's a "before" shot with the old lenses:

And here's the car with the new shinies:

Nice, eh? Now it looks like it ought to!

Soon as I get a dry weekend, I have to get under and hook up all the drivetrain stuff, so I can fire the engine. I'm gettin' antsy to get it running!