Posted by Jonas on Thursday, June 21, 2001 at 11:50PM :
Well, I sat in front of my rig with a cold Rolling Rock and pondered what direction to take with the rebuild of it. As everyone does, I thought how nice it would be to have a pristene WDX without a single flaw in the paint, narry a dent or ding in the fenders and a transmission so clean you could serve creme' bruelee on the PTO cover. Then I thought what will I do with it then? Park it on a trailer to tow around and let everyone look at it, to ohh and ahh like all the other rigs that have had 10's of thousands of dollars pumped into them to restore them to "Original".
Or do I want my rig to reflect my own personality a little. A few dents and dings here and there, scars that are a testament to the good times and the bad. I look at some of the welds in the cab and come to the realization, hey, these trucks came from the factory a little flawed. I want to drive this old girl down the road, through the broken gate at the end and on up to the top of the mountian without having to worry about that odd rasberry bush or rock here and there scratching up the paint.
Another thing, my wife loves the truck the way it is (although se would like to see the color of the hood match the color of the cab!!). As many of you know having spousal support of you hobby makes life very nice!
I have a photo of Wendy (my wife) in my locker at work. Under it I put a caption that reads "Imperfect Beauty". I think that describes her and things that I bring into my life pretty well. She has made some pretty amazing accomplishments in her life, and done it with a birth defect. She was born with only 2 fingers and a thumb on her left hand. Despite that she has overcome many an adversity (and advisary) to be a world class athlete, personal trainer and massage therapist, a Professional Firefighter, and now a Mother of our new baby boy.
as far as my WDX goes, I think I'm going to leave the dents and dings where they are at. I'll take care of the rust and paint, go through the mechanical aspects and get everything running in tip top shape. You can only get so much power out of an old 230, but this is the way they were designed to be used. I wont be breaking any speed records but Things sometimes are a little simpler when you just leave them as thay were meant to be.
I just wish they had designed a better place for that darned gas pedal... My pant leg always gets hung up on the PTO lever. I guess I'm lucky to have such problems in my life though...