the story of Merlin

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    Michael Pullen
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    @merlin

    My first glimpse of Merlin was inauspicious.  Driving up a dead-end road in a very up-scale neighborhood in Los Altos Hills, Ca., on my way to do a construction project for a rather disagreeable individual, I spotted what I believed to be an MGTD parked beneath a large pine tree, covered by a rotted canvas tarp and obviously long ignored; tufts of grass having sprouted from dirt filled folds in the tarp.  I was dismayed, even a little angered, by the sight of such a venerable old car languishing in this manner. “Look at that MG, that’s one soul-less rich M-F’er to let that car sit there and rot like that.” I said to my co-worker. “You’re right, that’s pretty sad. What a waste” he agreed.

    The job dragged on for a week. We saw the old red MG every day, coming and going. Upon returning to Modesto, I told my employer about the car, knowing him to be a sports car fanatic. “Salvageable?” he asked, in his thick Australian accent. “Anything is salvageable” I answered, “But it’s a real mess”

    Two weeks later, the old MG was parked in our warehouse. “How’d you do it”? I asked.

    “It was simple, mate, I just knocked on the door, chatted the bloke up for a few minutes, and he gave me the bloody car, papers and all. Glad to be rid of it, a damned eye sore it was, he said. My girlfriend and I just rolled it onto my trailer and towed it back here” How they did this on four rotted flat tires I never did find out.

    The “MG”, which I now knew to be a VW kit car, continued to languish, though now indoors in a dark otherwise unused corner of our warehouse. On days when I had time, I would poke around the old wreck. My only other exposure to kit cars had been twenty five years earlier, when I had watched a friend do some extensive body work on a Devon. 

    Later, when the business floundered and poor Wally was selling everything he owned and preparing to move to Las Vegas(and I was about to be unemployed), I gave him three hundred dollars, more or less to pay for his time and trouble towing the car, and he gave me the MG. I put four used tires on the rusted rims, rolled it onto a rented trailer, and towed it home; where it was to sit for another year. My older boy and I took a stab at working on it, spending a brutal day with a rented rotary hammer chipping about three cubic feet of concrete out of the front of the pan, where the original builder had dumped it on a burlap bag draped over the suspension. We pulled the motor, and found two cylinders full of water. The more we looked, the worse it got. Rust was everywhere; the pan was rusted through under the seats. Rodents had nested in the upholstery which reeked of their urine. The wooden dash was cracked and weathered. My son, being 16, soon decided that he could save the money to buy a car much faster (and cheaper) than he could fix this one, and bailed out of the project. He’s been driving his Acura for two years, and I’m still working on Merlin, so he was certainly right about that.

    The car, still unnamed, was by now stripped to the bare pan and sitting on four jack stands. In my first blush of enthusiasm, I had stripped the body off the pan, scrubbing, sanding and stacking the fiberglass body sections. I was still struggling, financially, and couldn’t afford to do much else. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to have it hauled off, though it seemed deteriorated beyond any reasonable hope of restoration. One day, my brother-in-law breathlessly informed me that he had just come from a garage sale where he had seen a lot of really hot VW parts “perfect for that car you’ve got parked out back.”

    An hour later, I had purchased a short block 1641 VW motor from a melancholy old guy whose deteriorating health was preventing him from continuing with his VW hobby. The motor, which wasn’t out with the other parts offered for sale but tucked away back in  his shop under a tarp was chock-full of Gene Berg parts; full flow oil, elephant foot rockers, balanced crank and clutch plate. He had a thick stack of Berg and Empi receipts for the motor, dating from the seventies, which he proudly showed me. I had been avidly reading Hot VW’s and VW Trends, so I knew enough to appreciate what he was showing me, and to converse half-way intelligently. This engine even had the long unavailable Empi aluminum finned “Big Bore” cylinders, which I had just read about in an old engine rebuilding book.  The sad old man had warmed up to my story about trailering home the kit car, and the tales of rusted pans and concrete and especially the ideas I was then developing about ventilating the engine bay. He really didn’t want to sell it, and I certainly  couldn’t afford it at the time, but I plunked down $800.00 and brought home this long stored, never run treasure of a motor along with a substantial quantity of other parts he threw into the deal, including a Monza exhaust and a new starter. His final words to me were “Just don’t burn up my motor, OK?.”

    Sitting on the floor of my shop collecting dust for six months, the motor was in no danger of burning up.

    For the previous year and a half, I had been trying to resurrect the business Wally had left behind, re-starting it as my own dealership with only marginal success. Finally giving up that dream left me listless and depressed.  I took a job as a “handyman” in order to pay the mortgage and put food on the table. I felt my life beginning to drift, as though I had only one oar in the water. I had always derived a lot of satisfaction from my work as a builder; satisfaction not afforded me by repairing sinks or putting in ceiling fans. At 52, I found that I was considered “a little old” for most hands-on construction jobs, especially at a time when the industry was experiencing one of its periodic “slumps.”

    I realized that I desperately needed a creative outlet of some kind; something to lift me out of the downward spiral I found myself edging into. I needed a challenge. The car was the obvious solution, but one which my limited financial resources seemed inadequate to address.  None the less, I resolved to at least start in earnest.

    A friend taught me to weld and loaned me some arc-welding equipment. I scraped and stripped, scrubbed and painted the pan and front beam until they were almost like new. I welded new pan sections in where needed. Over a four day weekend, I even cut the tunnel out of a friends scrapper VW and re-located the brake lever to between the seats where it should be. I picked up a very profitable side job for a few weekends and was able to purchase new drum and disc brakes, Empi 8 spoke wheels, and a sway away bar for the front end. I replaced the worn ball joints, threw in some chrome tie rods and a new steering box and my pan was done! It hadn’t cost that much, perhaps $1,500.00 all toge her and it had only taken a few months, working mostly on weekends. Most importantly, I had finally really started to do it.

    At about this time I was diagnosed with cancer; a very fast growing aggressive Prostate tumor. My PSA rose 5 points during the six weeks I had to wait for surgery.  There were some irregularities in a bone scan which might indicate bone cancer. It didn’t look very good at first and I found myself coming to terms with what I believed to be immanent death. Fortunately, I have a wonderful wife who walked with me every step, and after a few days I had made my peace with it; my only real regret in life being that I wouldn’t live long enough to finish my “hot rod.”  When I went under the anesthetic, I didn’t know if the surgeon would do the surgery or conclude that my condition was too far advanced for that.  I woke up six hours later, my wife whispering in my ear “Mikie, it’s OK. He got it. My friend in the lab ran the tests three times to make sure. It looks good.” I spent five days in the hospital, reading John Muir’s “Idiot Book” more or less cover to cover. How many people are lucky enough get to go back and have a second chance?

    That was two years ago. I finished the engine wearing a catheter and Foley bag, five weeks out of the hospital. My parents gave my the money I needed to do that (about $800.00 for parts such as carburetor, alternator, oil filter etc.) and my wife was working so I could take an extra couple of weeks off. I went back to the handyman job, but found that my energy level was quite a bit higher than before. I worked  every Saturday to pick up extra money for parts, and soon found myself taking on bigger projects on the side. With money I earned on weekend jobs,I bought a rebuilt transmission to complete my chassis, rebuilt the steering linkage to incorporate u-joints and completed myriad other little tasks required to fine tune the mechanical aspects of the project. I found that there were always tasks requiring more time than money for those times when funds were scarce.

    An old business associate called with the offer of a job, more or less ram-rodding his expansion into the remodeling business.  The offer came at the perfect time, and I jumped into it. We’ve been working together for about 1 1/2 years now, and the (vastly)increased income has allowed me to pursue this project, and life in general, more aggressively.  I have completed most of the body work, such as incorporating air intakes into the rear fenders and building a trunk floor with a spare tire well. I’ve added bucket seats after re-finishing the interior surfaces of the car with truck-bed liner and adding heater channels. Along the way, I’ve developed my skills with fiberglass to the extent that I’m now confident making molds, laying up complex shapes etc. I intend to do the dash and wiring over this winter (fabricating a dashboard from jet black Corian) and am studying and practicing automotive painting so I will be ready for the final phase of Merlin’s rebirth in the Spring of next year.

    Obviously, Merlin (named for my old dog, now buried in our yard) has been far more to me than a “project car.”  Every step in Merlin’s “re-birth” has been a step in my own. Developing the new skills needed for each step of the process has made me feel young again; once again facing fresh challenges and improvising solutions, just as I did thirty years ago when I was learning the various building trades. The aesthetic challenges have awakened a long dormant artistic sensibility; I’m even toying with the idea of using fiberglass to fabricate some objects which might be called “art” (a term I detest), or at least be of a less practical nature than a car. 

    In the end, life is about what we do with it.  A lot of it has to do with how we treat others; perhaps that’s most important.  I also think we owe ourselves a measure of satisfaction when it’s over; to know that we’ve used our talents well and developed our minds in some meaningful way. A car is a very a small thing in the world at large, but to me this particular car has been the means to a much greater end in terms of my own growth as a person.

    Michael

     

     

     

     

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