OK. This page is being used temporarily to show projects that need new homes. What we have first is a 928 Porsche from 1980. It was once owned by the Car Chasers TV show and we bought it at Leake Auctions in Dallas for 8 grand in Spring of 2015. The car ran great with cold AC, nice paint, interior, strong engine, no rust and so on. BUT the tranny needed a rebuild. (You can't test drive auction cars, so, how do you know till it's too late?) We double clutched her and drove her around for about a year. Then we dropped the rear suspension and pulled the tranny. This we sent to Cogscogs.com (which specializes in Porsche transmissions). Joe Cogbill went through the tranny for $3500 and sent it back to us. We reinstalled it over Christmas break 2016 and took her around the block. Guess what? The tranny shifted great but the engine was dripping oil from either the pan or rear main. We had replaced the pan gasket during the tranny overhaul because it was dripping before we took the car off the road. While we can't absolutely confirm that the problem is the rear main, that is now our assumption.

After consulting several beers, our conclusion is that Porsche systems are not our forte and we'd like to sell the car as is. It can be test driven, but it leaks steady and we don't want to foul the clutch. (Clutch is great right now.)

Below are pictures of the car (more pics on Ebay) and also two, rather amaturish, videos of shifting through the gears. All we are trying to show is that the car is good except for the leak. The car is being offered on ebay with no reserve and a starting bid of $4K. The auction ends on 4/16/17 at 6PM PST. If we can't get 4, we'll part the car out, make a dune buggy, or shoot it through the head with a 45. Dang Germans. Such a pretty car and it runs so great.......Ah, maybe we should just keep it, pull the motor and beat the Germans one more time. Help us make up our minds on this one.

Below are two unprofessional videos of the car running. We should have considered several takes. The driver had absolutely no experience with the car and was figuring it out from ground zero. My bad. I was handling the camera.

To contact us, use email: rex@smu.edu.

The rest of this page commemorates early projects. It doesn't relate to the 1980 Porsche we have up for adoption.

This page shows projects in reverse time order in the sense that I'm putting newer stuff at the top.

Here's something that was more of a challenge than an end desire. Jim had this Vespa down in Galveston when Ike hit. The bike went way under water and sort of froze up. Insurance didn't take the bike so I traded a pressure washer and a generater for it. My first step was to see if water got into the cylinder itself, figuring a 50% chance that both valves were closed. This turned out to be true, so I decided to replace the carb (which was way gunked up after three months of water sitting in it. Surprisingly, after freeing up the piston, which had stuck a bit in the cylinder, replacing the carb, draining all the water out of the exhaust, and generally oiling everything, the bike runs like a top. Now, after putting about 200 miles on her, I'm ready to trade it for something. Got any suggestions?

At one point we started adding a logo to everything. Here's a minibike with the ratchet and torch (patent pending). Someday I'd like to have the guts to get a tattoo of the ratchet and torch with the words "Ride Ready" inside. Maybe on my tombstone.

How about a fun 1970 Triumph. We brought this back to life and it ran really nice at the end. But my buddy Jim Carlson from high school killed himself on a bike last year (2007), so I decided to do most of my traveling on four or more wheels. Gas prices shot up after we got the bike running so we actually made money on this deal. Like Jenny Craig, I'd have to say that result is not typical.

Here's a cool ski boat we're resurrecting. The previous owner gave the boat to Dylan because it needed some serious TLC. The engine is a vintage direct drive "dock buster" 1959 78A Mercury. We rebuilt the leg (last pictures show what we had to drill out of the leg. Everything was frozen solid) and tuned up the power head. The boat itself is a 1955 Yellow Jacket in cold molded mahogony. We stripped it, stained the accents and varnished the hell out of it. We've got about 15 steps in the prep work so far. Our goal is to make opening day in April - the question is what year that will be.

It took us another year and a half to finally launch the boat (June 08). Other stuff just got in the way. But here she is in the water, with my copilot Lauralee. The "dock buster" ran surprisingly well and could run slowly enough to control prety well. We count as a success the fact that I pulled Dylan on a slolum ski behind her and then, he pulled me. So this loop is complete. Last shot is the day I gave the boat back to the guy who gave it to us - no room in the shop for keepsakes although we'll probably wish we had her again some time down the road.

Here's our forklift after the resurrection. We found her in the weeds but she needed a redo. Dylan's holding a piston that we cleaned up. Our goal was to take her down, fix what's wrong and get her running without buying any parts - only a six pack of permatex.  We splurged on a head gasket and mounted the old one as a trophy.

This is our tractor, Alice.

We picked her up for 300 bucks in West Texas and gave her to Dylan for his eighth birthday. Since her engine had been frozen for twenty years, it seemed like a fun project with little downside.

Took us a couple months to get her running. Several cylinders were solid with rust. Now, she runs pretty well with new tires and stuff. If she sits very long, hand cranking her is a nice workout too.

The first picture is the first time we got her running - had to pull her with the car for a while. The second picture is Dylan taking her for a spin down in Glen Rose. We've got more in the tires than the tractor itself. 

Dylan sittin' on Bob, our skid loader. Dylan does all the driving now because he still thinks it's fun and not work.