THE T BUILD IS STARTING BACK UP.

I had a great chat today with my wife about the roadster build. I told her I wanted to wait until we got back to Austin or at the very least have the roadster built in Austin rather than here in Denver. So although my parts pile has grown nicely in the time that I've been here, the roadster isn't going to be built anytime soon. The good news? Instead of initiating the build of the roadster, I'm going to start back up on the T. Instead of continuing to collect parts for the roadster, I'm going to have the chassis built for the T. A quick call to Mercury Charlie, and we set a plan in place. I'm going to be calling Pete and Jakes this week to check prices on their ladder bar type rear coil over suspension. Once I have that price, I can call John's Industries and get a price quote on a complete 9" rear end. Then with those parts ordered to be received at Mercury Charlie's, Charlie will start setting up the frame for my 425 nailhead/Turbo 400 combo. This is going to be fun.

A LONG OVERDUE UPDATE

Mercury Charlie's T. Nice, but not precious. The ultimate driver.

Lately, I've been thinking more about the T and how I will eventually build it. As I continue to acquire rare, traditional and period-correct parts for the '29, I"m realizing that I'm going to have a lot of parts leftover that I'm not using because they're A. used B. non-period correct, or C not aesthetically pleasing.

I going to use all those parts for the T. For instance, the slightly surface rusted Zoomie style exhaust will be wrapped in header tape to hide the imperfections. And the clunky ass steering box that was in the roadster and its crude steering column that came attached to it in the roadster? I'll be using that, too. The junkyard 12-bolt I yanked out of a 66 Riviera? Good enough. What I'm beginning to realize is this. Life's too short to be all precious about building a perfect car. At least not two in a row. My goal for the T coupe is simple. A clean body in suede paint. Dark eggplant in color is where I'm still leaning. The engine will be the 425 nailhead that came originally in my roadster with its Turbo 400. I want to sound deaden the living shit out of the car's interior and make sure the doors and windows seal a well as possible. Same goes for the roof. I want it to feel rock solid without tons of rattles. And I want it to have air conditioning, a hidden stereo and comfortable seats. Simply put, I want a real world driver that can go anywhere in all types of weather and be surprisingly comfy in the process. Not a rat. But definitely not a queen.

A VISIT WITH MERCURY CHARLIE

Had the chance to spend a couple hours with Mercury Charlie today at his shop in North Austin. We covered a lot of ground as Charlie and I always do. It started with the new Mercury Charlie Mercury shift knobs which we will be carrying on our HotRodshiftknob.com site. And before long, the conversation came around to T's. Charlie revealed that he's going to build another T for this year's Lone Star Round Up. He shared a few details and let's just say if he does half the stuff he talked about, it's going to be badass. He also talked about his intention to offer a line of custom-built perimeter frames specifically for T's using the stance of his old T as the starting point, which had a 13" kickup in back and a 3" Z at the firewall.  I'm strongly considering having Charlie build my T's frame since it was his T that started me down the path to owning one and Marty is not too keen on T's. We talked about rear suspension and Charlie's preference is to use traverse springs, as he found the coils on his old T to be less than ideal after trying several different shock/coil combos on his old car. I shared my plan to used my 425 nailhead, Turbo 400 and 12-bolt rear in my T and the only part Charlie questioned was using a 12-bolt, explaining that the Ford 9" is not only much stronger than a 12-bolt, but far easier and less expensive to repair in the unlikely event that it ever needs repair. His final point was that a 9" can be built to exact specs, as in width and gear ratio -- with all new parts-- for a relatively affordable price. And lastly, he mentioned that he can get good prices through his supplier, John's Industries. As usual, I enjoyed the hell out of our visit and Charlie's willingness to share his POV. A really good day, filled with good company and valuable information.

ANOTHER COLOR GETS THROWN INTO THE RING

My older son, Cameron, who could frankly give a rat's ass (IMHO) about the car projects in our garage walks up to the T and sees a group of color chips sitting in the car. He goes right to one of them and starts into an impassioned speech about how badass the color is. It's called Washington Square and basically it's a dark purple, bordering on eggplant. The chips are semi-gloss so it's a fair representation of suede. Now I must confess that given my well-documented love of Mercury Charlie's Tall T, going with this color would not require a lot of arm twisting. It would be like paying tribute to the inspiration, even though Charlie's car was technically  black with a cool set of purple Von Franco flames with lavendar pinstriping. My son then started lobbying for a pearl white interior. Wow. Maybe there's a gearhead trapped beneath all that teen angst after all. Time will tell. Washington Square. It's on the list. Close to the top. Interesting.