ANTIQUE CAR RADIO REPAIR

Meet Blowby, a 1988 Jeep Cherokee. I bought this thing for $500 years ago for no rational reason. I was bored and kept justifying it by saying "I'd be crazy not to!" as my friends shook their heads. It has a 5-speed manual transmission, high/low gears, and 4WD. I couldn't refuse. I nursed the thing home, fixed the brakes (sledgehammer, prybar), fixed the exhaust leaks (tig welder, cursing), and cleaned it up a whole lot (rain). In thousands of (unforgiving) miles, including oil changes, I've put about $250 into this thing for maintenance and repairs. This beast is glorious.

The paint is...not a factory job. Or even slightly professional. Blowby used to be blue, but the color was faded and falling off everywhere...It couldn't get any worse, so I figured I'd pay homage to the Willys Jeeps of olde with a custom paint job. I bought 8 cans of Krylon Olive Drab, taped everything up, and just sprayed. The stars are a geometric triumph--highschool math finally paid off--I sat there with some string, a pen, and a ruler, and somehow got everything lined up. The, ah, wheels are "custom" as well (one can of black Krylon). They were a gift from a local guy who didn't want to drag them all the way to the trash.

The motor is 2.5 liters of glory. When all four cylinders are firing, she purrs like a walrus. Blowby got its name from its valve guides...When the top end gets tired, oil can slip past and sputter up into the airbox--blowby. When I pulled the head off, I'm pretty sure a family of possum scampered out. I hit it with a full can of carb cleaner, painted it red (lipstick on the ol' pig), and threw it back on. The blowby problem was mostly solved with a few changes of clean, heavy oil, but I added that custom, ah, oil catcher just in case...You could put a bullet in this motor, and it wouldn't die. I've tried.

One time I left a wrench on the battery while I was monkeying around on the thing. When I began driving around, the wrench slipped down and got caught in the serpentine belt--shredded it to threads. When I pulled over and lifted the hood to see what all the smoke was fussing about, the wrench was melted and glowing...Took it to work the next day, grabbed a new belt on the way home. No prob.

I moved to NYC two years ago, and it just didn't seem like it was worth the hassle of selling. I held onto it, figuring it would die soon enough and I could just get rid of it, guilt-free...Since then it's been on Martha's Vinyard, all over the north east, Brooklyn for months, up near Canada...The damn thing won't die. Snow, rain, dirt, mud, jumps, running into things...No matter what I do, it just won't die. It currently lives in the woods of Connecticut--Nobody I know there will let me keep it where the neighbors might see! I mean, what's the problem?

The silver car is my father's mint-perfect 993. It's like you're looking at twins.

Meet Blowby, a 1988 Jeep Cherokee. I bought this thing for $500 years ago for no rational reason. I was bored and kept justifying it by saying "I'd be crazy not to!" as my friends shook their heads. It has a 5-speed manual transmission, high/low gears, and 4WD. I couldn't refuse. I nursed the thing home, fixed the brakes (sledgehammer, prybar), fixed the exhaust leaks (tig welder, cursing), and cleaned it up a whole lot (rain). In thousands of (unforgiving) miles, including oil changes, I've put about $250 into this thing for maintenance and repairs. This beast is glorious.

The paint is...not a factory job. Or even slightly professional. Blowby used to be blue, but the color was faded and falling off everywhere...It couldn't get any worse, so I figured I'd pay homage to the Willys Jeeps of olde with a custom paint job. I bought 8 cans of Krylon Olive Drab, taped everything up, and just sprayed. The stars are a geometric triumph--highschool math finally paid off--I sat there with some string, a pen, and a ruler, and somehow got everything lined up. The, ah, wheels are "custom" as well (one can of black Krylon). They were a gift from a local guy who didn't want to drag them all the way to the trash.

The motor is 2.5 liters of glory. When all four cylinders are firing, she purrs like a walrus. Blowby got its name from its valve guides...When the top end gets tired, oil can slip past and sputter up into the airbox--blowby. When I pulled the head off, I'm pretty sure a family of possum scampered out. I hit it with a full can of carb cleaner, painted it red (lipstick on the ol' pig), and threw it back on. The blowby problem was mostly solved with a few changes of clean, heavy oil, but I added that custom, ah, oil catcher just in case...You could put a bullet in this motor, and it wouldn't die. I've tried.

One time I left a wrench on the battery while I was monkeying around on the thing. When I began driving around, the wrench slipped down and got caught in the serpentine belt--shredded it to threads. When I pulled over and lifted the hood to see what all the smoke was fussing about, the wrench was melted and glowing...Took it to work the next day, grabbed a new belt on the way home. No prob.

I moved to NYC two years ago, and it just didn't seem like it was worth the hassle of selling. I held onto it, figuring it would die soon enough and I could just get rid of it, guilt-free...Since then it's been on Martha's Vinyard, all over the north east, Brooklyn for months, up near Canada...The damn thing won't die. Snow, rain, dirt, mud, jumps, running into things...No matter what I do, it just won't die. It currently lives in the woods of Connecticut--Nobody I know there will let me keep it where the neighbors might see! I mean, what's the problem?