My Leisurely Float Down A River In Egypt Comes To An Abrupt Halt

I'm telling anyone who is offended by extremely vulgar language to turn the fuck around and get your narrow ass out of here right, the fuck, now.

This is long and it is therapeutic venting. I could give a fuck if anyone reads it or not. I am venting at full throttle right now.

Proceed at your own risk, this is going to be ugly.

In case you are not aware, I have been the unfortunate owner of a 1964 Austin Healey Sprite for the past twenty five plus years.

This vehicle has caused more outbursts of expletives than I can count and now it has struck again.

This is of course my own fucking fault for not sending this miserable cocksucker straight to the crusher while I still only had about a thousand fucking dollars in it way back then.

Oh no, I ain't that fucking smart.

I have literally and I do mean literally, had every single nut, bolt, clip, spring, pin,fitting, screw, washer, cable and piece of electrical wiring out of this motherfucker at least once.
Some many times.

I haven't driven it in years because the sonofabitch has always got something broken on it and parts are so damn expensive it is prohibitive to get more than one or two at a time without spending way, way too much fucking money all at once.

For years I was a broke ass drunk bastard and didn't really give a shit about the little fucker but I always had visions of getting it halfway decent to spin around in during the summer. What a dumb fucking idiot I am.

Twenty years ago when I was trying to go back to school doing a two year stint in a Ford sponsored technical program and working part time at a dealership, I scraped and saved as much money as I could to rebuild an engine for the little bastard that I had stored at a friends place a couple of years earlier in San Jose California.
I lived in Portland Oregon.

That means I drove clear the fuck to San Jose and back just to get a fucking engine for this motherfucker and then tore it down to rebuild.

The fucking engine parts languished in a God Damn machine shop for three fucking months before I called and told them I was coming down there with a fucking baseball bat in three days if they didn't finish the motherfucking machine work they had promised me "wouldn't take too long".

Lying fucking bastards. I went down there and found my engine parts scattered all the fuck over that place,in buckets here and boxes there.

At that time, four little bitty fucking pistons for a tiny assed 1.3 liter engine were $250.

This was back in 1990.

I ground the valves myself at work and ordered the pistons, had the rods resized so I ordered bearings and then saved enough for a new camshaft, lifters and cam bearings too.

I spent WEEKS putting that motherfucker back together in my spare time.

I also yanked the entire fucking wire harness out of the cocksucker because it had melted in the trunk.

I spent DAYS on THAT motherfucking mess too. I had to use a razor and cut all the melted wires away from each other and then string new wires back in it and tape the motherfucker back up, then reinstall it in the car.

Long story shorter, after sitting around off and on, every fucking summer, I would drag the fucking thing out, spend a few hundred bucks fixing what the fuck ever was broken that fucking year and maybe, if I was lucky, drive it for a few weeks before SOME OTHER fucking thing would go tits up on the miserable fucking piece of shit. One year it was a thousand dollar transmission rebuild. I can pick the transmission up with one hand it is so small.

This went on and on and on.

I finally drug it out, stripped it down and my good friend did all the body work and painted it for me.

I then PUT THE FUCKER BACK TOGETHER AGAIN and it promptly broke down.

Needless to say I was less than impressed.

I said fuck you ya miserable cocksucking piece of shit and parked it outside of my RV trailer I was living in and forgot about it.
Pissed off doesn't even begin to describe it.

I had tarps over it but the wind would blow them off and I was too busy being a drunk fuck to care anymore.

Fast forward a couple of years and there it sits.
Covered in green moss, no top, no tarp and two inches of water in it.
Four flat brand new tires.

The new paint job?
Shot to rat shit by the moss. It ate clear through the fucking paint down to the primer in spots.


It looks like it got hit with a load of rock salt out of a twelve gauge.

Fast forward again a couple of years. Now I am married, finally sober, have a decent job and something I have really needed, a garage to work on it in.

The whole process starts again.

Pulled the engine because it was only running on three cylinders for some reason. The motherfucking engine has less than three thousand miles on it in TWENTY YEARS!

Sent the head out and got the valves ground by a professional and had the whole head gone through.

Cleaned and painted the engine compartment.
Did some customizing to upgrade the brake hydraulics.
Custom bent by hand new brake lines.
Made everything all pretty for when I put the engine back in.

Spent literally hundreds of dollars on stainless steel fasteners.

I have been working on this fucker for a couple months getting shit all fixed and ready before I even tried to fire the engine..


Today was the day.

I spent all fucking day today fixing more shit, topping off fluids, fixed a leak here and there, charged the battery, making sure everything is ready for that magical moment when the fucking thing fires up and comes to life.

Sure enough, it finally sputtered to life and immediately squashed my dreams, my ego and my pocket book.

The cocksucker is still only firing on three cylinders.

See, this is where that river in Egypt thing comes in.

I have been in denial that there was anything wrong with the rest of the engine except for some fucked up valves for number three cylinder.

As sure as the sun rises in the East, that fucking cylinder won't hit.

It's getting spark and its getting fuel. The valves are going up and down and the clearances are right but no fucking way Ace, it is fucked up.

I finally broke out of my denial and dug out my compression tester.
Sixty fucking pounds of compression on number three.

What does this mean?

Other than the fact that I was seconds away from stroking out,it means I get to pull that motherfucking motor, again.



I get to tear that motherfucking motor apart, again.

Depending on what I find inside, I could be looking at new pistons and rings , again.

The cylinder bore looked OK when I had the head off but something is obviously fucked up where I can't see it until I tear the whole motherfucker apart, again.

Even after I go to all this expense and misery, I still have to replace part of the passenger floor pan and spend a few thousand bucks getting the whole interior and seats redone, repaint the cocksucker, again and have a new top installed, again.

I would get rid of this fucking piece of shit but now I am so pissed off at this cunt motherfucker that I am NOT going to let the filthy fucking prick win.

I WILL win and I WILL drive this cocksucker again. I don't give a rats ass what it costs at this point.

By the time I am done with this thing, sometime in the next two years, it will be worth about half of what I will have into it, finally.
They are finally starting to appreciate in value.

Then maybe, it will be Hasta La Vista Motherfucker and I will go find me a decent mid sixties small Chevy and get rid of every damn spare part I have for this fucking thing on Ebay.

Some people are going to be very happy that day, including me.