Greg Saves Universe

Wanna own it?  MAKE ME AN OFFER.I started with a ‘nothing special’ El Camino, that was a factory a/c, ps car.  As you can see from the pictures, I took some design liberties with the tail end, added flames, two tone paint and Weld wheel with Goodyear tires. The flames shift through 4 or 5 colors from purple to bronze.

My goal was a drivable truck, and if you’re not afraid to drive your cars, that what this is.

(View pictures in another window for full size.)

Includes: air; R134a w/new compressor, tilt, Dakota Digital Dash, cruise, B&M shifter, pw, pmirrors, ps, pdb, in dash CD stereo w/custom sub box and kick panel speakers, alarm, 3- point seat belts w/center passenger lap belt, Edelbrock Weber EFI, 290 hp Goodwrench 350, Flowmaster American Thunder exhaust system, 700R4, 3.31 (open), tinted windows, and auto dimmer rear view mirror with compass, temperature and map lights. The Gaylord cap is custom fit and the bed is sprayed with liner.   The rear bumper is molded in and the tailgate is functional.

The tail lights are from a ‘68 Chevelle 300 Deluxe.

The car runs great and has been getting around 18 mpg.  I expect more out of it, but it’s not made it to the shop for dyno tuning yet.  The EFI needs some tweaking for best performance, but the tranny is working great and the a/c is cold!

It needs the door panel installation finished.  They’re on, but need tweaking, and other minor items such as the ash tray, glove box insert, etc.

Neon signs are cool.

I can be reached on my cell phone at 314-799-2599.  Give me a call between 9am and 9pm with your questions.

This past weekend, Friday 12/12 and Saturday 12/13, I had the pleasure of being a Steward and a Novice Judge at the St. Louis Brews “Happy Holiday Home Brew Competition”. Brother Chris, when told replied, “Sounds like a hard job!”

In the days before the event, I had overheard other Judges talk about being, “Beer’d Out” after the competition. Frankly, it was an absurd term to me since they said they only had to ’sample’ 12-18 beers. I too originally thought this would be a walk in the park. Hell, that’s why I signed up. It was a day of FREE BEER! But wait… you have to keep in mind that you are expected to render an objective criticism of the beer. You have to THINK!

By golly, I’ve drank a lot of beer in my days, but rarely was THINKING the objective. In fact, nearly every single example of me drinking beer all day would include something happening that would lead you to believe I wasn’t THINKING at all. This is harder than it sounds.

I’m halfway kidding about the THINKING, but to objectionably consider the characteristics of a half dozen examples of a single style of beers is not easy. After 2 or 3 Dobbel Bocks or Russian Imperial Stouts, one of which should have been served in a shot glass, your pie-hole is pretty well saturated with the thick malt flavors. And with the buzz going, they’re all good! (Until the buzz wears off. Now, I don’t know if I’ll ever drink a dark beer again. Ok, yes I will.) Being new to the hobby it was hard to offer valuable criticism since I lack the depth of knowledge that they’d be looking for, but being able to judge a beer against a standard was fun. Checking color and tasting for specific characteristics was all I could do, but remarkably, compared to my partnered judge, who was an experienced judge, our scoring came our remarkably close. Our goal was to always be within 5 points of each other, and after a total of 18 beers sampled and judged, only 2 or 3 times did our opinions of the beer differ more than the 5 points.

When I left for the day, I was Beer’d Out.

This is a recipe off the ‘Brew Your Own’ website (http://byo.com/recipe/1618.html) called “Simple Simon Sorghum Beer“. I’ve made minor adjustments for my own ingredients. If you are wondering why anyone would care to brew from sorghum, it is because sorghum is a gluten free grain that those suffering from Celiac’s Disease can enjoy, as opposed to barley.

For a 5 gallon batch:
7 lbs BriesSweet White Sorghum Syrup (low boil, 60 minutes)
2 oz SAAZ 3.5% AA Hop Plug 60 min
12 oz honey (at end of boil)
Nottingham Ale Yeast (1 pack)
3/4 cup corn sugar for priming
Primary fermentation: 5 days at 68F
Secondary fermentation: 2 weeks at 45F
Age in bottles 4 weeks

The finish is an amber beer with light carbonation and head.

In my opinion, the overall taste is too sweet and it is a bit like cider. It needs more hops. I’ll increase the recipe to 3-4 oz total. I’m also planning on using 1 lb of malted buckwheat to add an earthier, nuttier flavor to offset the sweetness and improve head retention.

But first, I’m going to try a dark, porter/stout beer from sorghum molasses.

Two Mexicans are stuck in the desert, wandering
aimlessly and close to death. They are close to
just lying down and waiting for the inevitable,
when all of a sudden…….

‘Hey Jose, do you smell what I smell. Ees bacon
I is sure of eet.’

‘Si, Luis eet smells like bacon to meee.’

So, with renewed strength, they struggle up the
next sand dune, and there, in the distance, is a
tree loaded with bacon.

There’s raw bacon, dripping with moisture,
there’s fried bacon, back bacon, double smoked
bacon… every imaginable kind of cured pig
meat.

‘Jose, Jose, we is saved. ‘Eees a bacon tree.’

‘Luis, are you sure ees not a meerage? We ees in
the Desert don’t forget.’

‘Jose when deed you ever hear of a meerage that
smell like bacon… ees no meerage, ees a bacon
tree’.

And with that… Luis Races towards the tree. He
gets to within 5 metres, Jose following closely
behind, when all of a sudden, a machine gun
opens up,and Luis is cut down in his tracks. It
is clear he is mortally wounded but, a true
friend that he is, he manages to warn Jose with
his dying breath.

‘Jose… go back man,you was right ees not a
bacon tree.’

‘Luis Luis mi amigo… what ees it?

‘Jose… ees not a bacon tree…

Ees

Ees
Eees a Ham Bush.

When Donny Downs bought his ‘68 Malibu with his paper route money, unknowingly, I bought my first Chevelle too. At the time, I was only 6, but the impact the styling had on me sold me my first car. Unfortunately, I didn’t take delivery on it until some 25 years later.

I had occasionally shopped for a ‘68 Chevelle after getting married. But nothing ever was worth the money being asked. After all, at this time, the car was nearing 30 years old, it was not transportation, it was recreational. And I only had a few thousand I could part with. At that time, I could afford to be picky, being this was before the skyrocketing prices of the late nineties.

Then, in the spring of ‘97, of all people, Donny’s younger brother, Jeff, told me about a ‘68 Chevelle SS396 in the paper that he’d looked at. He couldn’t afford it, and neither could I. But I went to look anyway. I left with a new conviction to find the car I had always wanted. I continued to shop.

That fall, while test driving the ugliest Chevelle I’ve ever driven, it was dark brown with glitter in the paint! But it ran like a bat out of hell, the owner, a used car lot owner who’d picked it up to flip it, patiently waited to negotiate the sale while I told him the story of the ‘One that got away’. The Island Teal Metallic car that I’d looked at that spring had become the objects of my desire and I’d let it slip away. Then the lot owner told me about his friend, Ralph, that was just there as I pulled up, he owned a Island Teal ‘68 Chevelle SS396 that he’d been trying to sell and it was still available. I handed him the keys to the ugly brown Chevelle and told him I was going to call Ralph again. So I did.

Ralph, who had moved and no longer cared to store the car, had adjusted his asking price, much to my luck. And a deal was struck.

My Chevelle is non-numbers matching 396 with the original Muncie 4 speed and rear end. Everything has been rebuilt to stock, or nearly stock appearance. It has dyno’d at 285 hp at the rear wheels and it gets me 15 mpg on the highway. My personal best on the drag strip in this car is 13.80 in the 1/4 mile on street tires and pump gas. It is a driver that has seen 8000-12,000 miles a year for the last 10 years. I’ve had it up to Maryland, down to Florida, out to Kansas and Oklahoma and many points in between.

I suspect I’ll own this car the day I die, even if I can’t buy gasoline to put in it.