Originally Posted by varunan123
"So guys, I am not the average girl - I love to shop when I get the time, do have a shoe fetish (like most women I know), but I tend to blow my shoe budget on car stuff instead ! "<br />
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"Glad to know you could actually make some sense of my somewhat scrambled memory...and that I can still "WOW" a guy every now and then !<br />
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Cheers,<br />
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Lisa "<br />
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" I am not usually rude and inattentive.... <br />
Sorry guys ,<br />
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I have been on overload for the past couple of weeks; took up an offer of a "nice day a week, out of the home office, get to know the locals a bit job". As it's a financially based role that has been somewhat neglected for four months before I took it up and the end of our financial year is next Monday my so-called 1 day a week cruisy position has been 50 hours a week squeezed in and around everything else (18 hours yesterday; I am in zombie-land this morning and need a pleasant break from it; so here I am ).<br />
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Thank you for all the positive comments and the great pics (Tom I owe you a pm ). Sad and sorry fact is that I have been able to look over and under the BMW for the grand sum of about 10 minutes since she has been home - not happy . Mike OTOH gets to do something on her almost every day as the car is in the shop and every spare moment he has he is putting into the project.<br />
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The car is a gem - only a couple of very small bits of rust to contend with in quite accessible places. This car shows none of the horror structural rust; strut tops are great, floors are great, sills are great, even under the wheel arches x 3 are great. One has a 10 cent sized bit of rust which is an easy repair. He and a willing local car club volunteer have stripped just about all the underseal off in the knowledge it could be hiding some sins - car is pretty much sin free .<br />
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Mike has spent some time testing all the electrical and accessory stuff - all the electric window motors work, the air-cond fan works on all speeds etc etc.<br />
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I think he planning to tackle the engine next as it supposedly has a blown head gasket after the previous owner had the head rebuilt and then forgot to torque it down. I am sceptical - it would not surprise me if the head is warped as BMW heads are notorious for this. That's OK - it if it warped then I guess we will have an excuse to do some nice mods without going silly (valves are on the small side for instance ).<br />
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I am hoping to create some time to tackle the very grubby headlining. Being in a farm shed with a rear window removed from the car hasn't helped keep it clean. The lining is in great nic, just dirty and dusty so I guess it's a girl's job (lots of patience and gentle cleaning, not scrubbing needed ).<br />
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By tonight I must have the first chapter of the car's story down "on paper" for the Gippsland Car Club newsletter "Valve Bounce" (I kinda promised and it goes to print this weekend). Anybody know where to buy a 48 hour day? I need one!<br />
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Cheers,<br />
<br />
Lisa"<br />
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"Ooh - really important! I have done enough private and customer resto's to know the FIRST thing to check before getting carried away is the wheel base measurement. Car is square! Less than 2.5mm difference right to left. Worn bushes will acount for that (and believe me they are worn!). Just keeps getting better and better.... "<br />
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"what a difference a week makes... <br />
Firstly I like to say a big thankyou to everyone who has emailed to see we are OK...we are fine, the house is fine, the workshop is fine (cars are fine )...but our hearts are broken and our beautiful part of the world is scarred and beaten.<br />
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Last Saturday the conditions here were ripe for "the perfect firestorm". The experts are branding these fires as "superfires" and with very good reason. I have been through other bushfires - January 1983 and the infamous Ash Wednesday fires in the same year; but like everyone I have NEVER seen anything like what we witnessed last Saturday.<br />
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It is almost as though the weather conditions we had for several days before were building to this one massive "event"...locally we were duly warned on Friday of the very real risk of a fire jumping out of the Bunyip State Forest early Saturday. We all knew it could be bad - but NOTHING prepared us for this holocaust.<br />
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Early Saturday morning I checked the Country Fire Authority website. Customarily they report all incidents that have occurred within the last five hours in Victoria. At 7.00am there were 12 incidents...within a couple of hours the list was on its way to 100 entries and by lunchtime there were a couple of hundred entries at least and every time I refreshed the page there were more....so many in fact that the site was actually over an hour behind in updates .<br />
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We were going to a swap meet; but I refused to go as I knew the highway would be cut if the fire jumped out of the forest and I knew that our area was going to be ravaged if this happened. We are in a town of over 12,000 people surrounded by farming land (cleared pretty much)...and there we were enacting a fire plan and under ember attack by early afternoon. It was nearly 48 degrees celcius and less than 4% humidity and the northwesterly wind was gusting over 100kmh. At times I could have reached out to touch "Elvis" the water bombing superchopper as it was flying so low around us. We have lost nothing, had a few burnt bits land in the garden etc...but our school community have suffered with at least 10 families losing everything, several others losing farm sheds, hay, silage, fences, livestock etc...and then we know of casualities in the "next fire along" about 30kms from us...too many lives, too much sadness .<br />
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So many towns I know so well have ceased to exist; so many lives have been lost...I have no idea how we can truly rebuild these beautiful hamlets of such historic significance...but in true Aussie spirit it will be done; I am certain of that. "<br />
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Infectious,infectious-the spirit speaks in volumes about the person.A car nut thru and thru.<br />
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raj^M