Monday morning

Erick showed up at 10AM sharp. It was a rainy coolish day, we decided to plan our strategy. The garage is like a small old barn, with a dirt floor, we previously planned to check under the car why there wasn't any brakes. I explained to Erick that the pedal right to the floor means a loss of brake fluid, a rotten or ruptured pipe, a leaky brake cylinder, or a dead master cylinder. We aggreed that the brakes were the first item to fix, a running car that can't stop is useless. Erick mentionned the hand brake, I started tto mention we couldn't drive a car usisng the hand brake. He replied he knew that but the handbrake has to be functionnal too, so we needed to check it too. He looked at me and asked if we knew what we were doing. I said no but google is our friend. It didn't take long to find a collector's club and forum for that exact car. I entered the proper info to become a member and within minutes we received the automated e-mail telling us to go ahead and post. We made a first post about the barn find, what so far we found wrong with it, posted and then waited. Erick was expecting an immediate reply, but finally understood, meanwhile we kept looking for all sort of information. It took over 4 hours before we get a reply form a member. His reply was short, he suggested we opened an account at a free pictures site and take pics of the car, then make a new post with a link to the pics. Erick asked if he could take (drive) the car out of the garage, I didn't object, he didn't manage too well with the clutch but after the third try, he rolled out, then tried the hand brake, amazingly, it worked. We took 20 pictures on all angles, inside, engine, trunk and went back in to post them. Then as we made it back to the collector's club, we had another reply. A link to an online mail order specialised auto part. Erick decided we'd go look it out, it had averything, plugs, gasket sets, tune-up kits, mag wheels, lens, brake accessories, belts, you could actually built the whole car from scratch, with an add to the cart function. Within minutes, Erick started to shop, the bill went sky-rocket to over 2000$. I told him we'd have to be careful and only order the necessary items. We backed out and cancelled all of it. When we returned to the collector's site, we had another reply, with another link, a complete restore rebuilt shop manual. Erick took the car back in the garage and we printed the sections that we needed. It was already supper time, Erick left to go home, but kept calling me every time there was a new reply to my posts. Erick freaked out when one poster evaluated the amount of work to be done, according to what we posted and the pictures. His estimate was 5 to 6 K$ to run it and double that amount to make it a show car. Over the phone with Erick I could even feel his anxiaty, thinking I'd scrap the project, I told him we kept going, but it would take longer then expected, money being the main problem. Then he added, so do I still go meet you tomorrow? Yes Erick SB