Does a tune up have to take three years of your life, ruin relationships and finish off with a paint job for 4000$? These questions led to Mission 47. The mission was to fix rust, lower the suspension and also to paint it fresh, all in 47 hours. No professionals got to participate and the cost was not to exceed 1200$. By Lars Krantz. Translation Ellen Kay Krantz.
Friday night and the clock start ticking. The deal is working around the clock until Sunday afternoon.
Friday. 5:01 PM Per (right) does an Anja Pärson on the concrete floor and sets a high bar directly from the get go in the chase for seconds. Samuel immediately hits the rust.
Picture never before published. Check out that look. Samuel Strand, complete car man, has seen the rust underneath and knows it’s his responsibility.
In the previous issue of Worldkustom the mission was presented in detail as well as the five that was crazy enough to go through with it. Now they were gathered and standing ready. The team, where several of them hadn’t seen each other before, had already hit their first crisis. They collectively meant that Krantz’ intellect was comparable with the dumbest fish in the sea.
Polite as they were this was never said out loud but that was definitely the underlying meaning in what they had expressed was not hard to miss
– Only and idiot thinks you can switch out quarter panels and fix the doors in this short period of time. It had been resolved previous to this mission and they have had right. The body shop had needed a week to fix it all. For example, the posts weren’t even welded to the floor.
The webcam was hanging from the roof, thousands of viewers had tuned in, the guys opened up their toolboxes, the port was rolled up and the Buick rolled in. It was 5:01PM Friday the 14th of March in 2008, the year of mercy.
Click on images to enhance them to sumo-wrestler size. It’s kind of a rule of thumb in Worldkustom.
Norrland and West coast working together. Bert-Ove and Dennis are the dynamic duo that earlier did some crazy stuff with Krantz. The only thing you have to do to get them to join new adventures is to pick up the phone.
Per has been under, then in the front, now in the back. Bert-Ove searches for problems to solve. – The list doesn’t seem to remove without taking off the side windows. Samuel is in weld-mode. Look at Rabbe’s soda cart! They brought their own favorite items.
Peeeedal to the metal for real.
The car hadn’t stopped rolling on the floor before the center player in this Härnösand-five, Per Johanssson was belly down fitting the crane arms under the car. At the same time the back gigant from Umeå Samuel Strand and the left forward from the same town Björn “Rabbe” Gustavsson both slid under the car to get a grip on the rust damages. 19 inches of inside of the spark box extension toward the rear wheel house was completely missing on both sides. In addition to that, a part of the floor was missing on one side.
– You said 12 inches, Samuel said, staring me down as he ran to the body shop.
Without roller board, straight down in the melting water Samuel and Rabbe do inventory. New sheet needs to get in place and that’s ASAP otherwise we are screwed – 12 inches of the rear fender was the deal ??? This is twice as much rust plus the floor is way past its best before date.
Per the flash had already extracted the headlights and was now in top gear with the bolt machine on the front fender while the back-hero Bert-Ove Lundgren from Härnösand hadn’t reached the ice yet. He had bought a new tool set and brought it with him and as he opened it all 6228 parts went flying all over the floor.
– That’s far out Norrland, was heard on the broadest southwest dialect from inside the car where the last team member and the right forward in this five Dennis Sepp already had torn out the backseat.
Don’t know each other. Works like a team like they never done anything else. Samuel and Per.
Focused surgeons.
The Country music floating under the ceiling, the sun going down outside and the darkness entering the shop and it was officially weekend in Härnösand. In here the team machine was in good team spirit and in high working mode as every second counts. Double mig-welders were in full sparkle and when they silenced the monotone sound from three sanders was heard. They had stopped talking now. Only short, low murmurs of commands could be heard.
-”Can you hold this for a bit” or ”Could you press here for me” or “Wait, I’m going around” and “Thanks, I can take it from here”.
Rabbe and Dennis
Short nods, a second of eye contact behind breathing masks. Like surgeons they worked quietly and effective and I shivered out of respect for these team members who just now had entered unknown territory knowing they had two sleepless nights in front of them.
Left side welding done. The foot is going up and down on Rabbe, Samuel has been working rust in 90 miles/hour for the last six hours. Dennis has cleaned out all interior and windows in the back and now he’s copying Rabbe.
More rust.
The problems are coming in threes and Bert-Ove dives, as predicted, right into the trickiest situations.
The calm one had gotten ha hold of the ice. The side windows in the back have to be extracted to get a hold of the rubber strip and there a new chain of problems arrive.
4000 viewers have now tapped into the live feed from the garage. Comments are posted on usabil.nu and I write in the comment feed 12:28 AM
”The time is half past twelve and the rust underneath has been corrected. Unfortunately we have run into a problem. The rubber strip underneath the rear window has never been extracted. The original paint is still there, plus dirt and moist. The sheet is paper thin with bubbles and holes. We need to do a lot more welding than we estimated. This can be too much to handle.”
Rabbe. New acquaintance from Umeå. An ex heavy weight lifter. Extreme capacity. Asked if he could bring a bed into the garage. He would, from this point, be sanding for ten hours through the entire night.
Härnösand sleeps. The guys from Umeå Rabbe and Samuel discovers an original dent in the sheet after Buick’s pressing tools – I had the exact same one on my Buick from 1950, Rabbe says.
Per has found rust holes in the rear fender. Grounds with his left hand, welds with his right.
Night in Härnösand. Rabbe’s follower. Gottfrid Krantz 12 years in borrowed shoes from the garage and about his newfound friend: – Dad, he looks scary dangerous but he’s really nice.
Three sanders
The foot is working like crazy on Rabbe. I don’t know what he’s listening to in his headphones but he has been working that sand machine nine hours straight by now – and the foot as well. Dennis has never sanded before. He copies Rabbe. Another one copying Rabbe, 12 year old Gottfrid Krantz had never before finished:
– Daddy, I don’t want to miss a single minute. He looks like bug standing there in his big mask, working on the hood.
The hour of horrible jokes. Coffee break 02:08 AM. – I would like an ice cream that smells like filler, Rabbe says. – Aha, you mean a filler flavored ice cream in a puddingcone, says Per.
Per to Samuel. – Hey, this puller to the steering wheel that you bought on Pomona doesn’t work. A minute later a low pitched bang is heard coming from the garage. Per has gone fishing for the universal tool – the sledge hammer and is sitting with a loose wheel in his lap. Is he quick or what…
Welding, sanding and painting simultaneously.
Another problem. The felt channels for the rear windows had to be thrown out as they were taken off and we don’t have any new ones. I send a cry for help in the night in the comment feed. I’m sitting in front of the computer. The tiredness is overwhelming.
This team has been awake for the past 23 hours and has been working like crazy for ten hours. The one part-goal releases the next. It’s three in the morning. No one is uttering a word about giving up. I have never seen anything like it.
The dawn is breaking outside, we are short on parts and with the newfound rust not one part-goal is finished. On top of that, Per just found a new hole in the rear fender that he is struggling with. This is never goanna work! That’s when we hear a new noise in the shop. The brush. Samuel is laying a ground coat on the other side. I take a look at my watch. Five past four..
04:05 AM it’s getting bright outside. We hear a new noise in the shop. Samuel is laying the ground coat. Look at them. They know they know they’re going to be back at the shop in less than five hours for another 20 hour shift. They know they will sleep less than four hours.
To be continued . . .
med balansering av diagonalerna (bästa däcket behövde 140 gram) samt en rundsmörgning så blev det en trevlig bekantskap under 2 års fodervärdskap!! Kanske det bör en part 2