Hello everyone!
I am not a garage monkey. I am a civil servant that works on the third floor of a non-descript building, reading technical information all day. Such is the life of an engineer. It pays the bills, but is low on practical challenge. Except for disappearing to Iraq every once in a while, it is really rather mundane.
So why am I telling you this? I needed a project that could exercise my technical skills as well as my mind. I have loved Javelin’s for many years. The muscle car that was in many ways superior to the stings and vets of that era (case and point – Alabama State Police used them as Interceptors in 71-72), and were made by what ended up being the last of what could be called a truly American car company.
When deployed to Iraq as Senior Liaison Engineer for South West Asia, it was my responsibility for developing and implementing non-standard repairs on the best rotorcraft aviation fighting force in the world. My very soul lives and breathes to fix things... that is what I have been trained to do. So what can I do to satisfy this need?
Restoring a Javelin, of course! After months of searching, I selected a 1971 AMC Javelin SST, 304 V8 automatic for the restoration project as seen above. And, it is not going to be easy for many reasons. There are few resources in the area, and a lack of quality parts if budget is a concern. My goal is not to throw money at problems along the way. Since I have a responsibility to my family that this is not a “money pit” project, I intend on leveraging resources and solutions that may be more labor intensive. Therefore, I am running this like I do any other project, with and open balance sheet, and full disclosure.
Lastly, I have used Google Sketchup to depict what I envision the final product will be. But no project can succeed without effective communication. As I mentioned elsewhere in this site, I plan on posting the results of each step along the way – good and bad. So I encourage everyone to weigh in on ideas and decisions made along the way. Be a part of the decisions and discussion!
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