Re: Quality work? Nah
Okay, to continue. Matt, the shop owner showed up and while I told him what was going on, the girl offered us home made cookies. It didn't hurt that she was cute and had a nice smile. We started sorting through 'shelf parts' including a low miles piston/cylinder big bore kit from a customer who wanted to go even bigger. Pretty soon we'd set aside a nice set of single port heads left over from a dual port head conversion, a nice crank, cam etc. You can likely guess where this is going. In a couple of late evenings, in which they cooked me dinner, I assembled a 1600, and with the vans' intake, ignition, fan shroud, new oil cooler and a used aftermarket muffler, I fired the engine up on the stand. After running it in bit, we left it for the next day and I showed the couple how to check and adjust the valves, adjust the timing, etc. We only charged them for a set of new bearings, gaskets, points, plugs, etc.
After we reinstalled the engine, with the two of them helping, they took a short drive. All seemed well and off they went. We had expected them to head back to Oregon, but then received a post card from L.A. Then from Tijuana, then Arizona, and then other parts of the country. One card had a note about how because of what we had taught them, they had fixed a bug at the side of the road with a closed set of points. Twice, a box of home made cookies arrived. I moved north, changed jobs and lost track of them. But, thinking back about it still makes me smile.
There are still shops out there where things like this happen.
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