One from the archives

Like the "Fun with brake cleaner" story I posted last year, here's another true story from a few years ago (St. Patrick's Day 2006, I believe): 

So I've been trying to sell my Firebird since Oct. '05. But ever since I changed the engine, the car hasn't felt right. I've run through everything I could think of and it only progressed so that it ran marginally better. Well it ran OK in that it drove fine and everything but it didn't feel faster than the (slightly) smaller engine I took out. 

 I was talking with Sam Strano about it yesterday, and he mentioned a "procedure" to set the timing, some procedure I had never heard about before in 4-1/2 years owning this car and something that wasn't in the Factory Service Manual (you people who don't know anything about cars can skip down a few paragraphs). 

 This morning, I followed this new procedure and set the timing. It was actually at something like -6 degrees when it should be at +6 degrees, so I of course adjusted it to the correct mark. Naturally, I took it for a test drive. I pulled out on Dorsey Road/170, which is a nice straight stretch of road the runs along the south end of BWI. There were some wet/icy patches on the road from last night, so I really couldn't open 'er up. 

I pulled up to a stoplight at the top of the first hill, and a black Dodge Intrepid pulled up next to me. The light turned green, and it was still kind of wet on the road ahead, so I just eased up to about 55 mph, 5 over the speed limit. 

About a half mile down the road, I stopped at another stoplight, and the same plain black Intrepid was next to me again. I didn't pay much attention to it as I was scanning for some dry road in my lane ahead. 

The light turned green, and I again eased away. At about 40mph, the road was dry and there was nobody in front of me. I put the ol' Firebird in 3rd gear and mashed the gas. Oh yeah, the car felt great! I ran it through the top of 3rd gear and let off, even tapping the brakes to slow down to about 60. Kinda happy that the car finally felt great! 

And then I saw the black Intrepid was right behind me. With red and blue lights flashing in the windshield. Fuck. The second-stealthiest unmarked police car I have ever seen (the stealthiest was the bright red late-80s Pontiac Grand Prix I saw last year on 295). 

I pulled over to the shoulder and pulled out my wallet for my driver's license, and pulled the registration out of the center console. The cop walked up to the driver's side door and the conversation went something like this: 

Cop: I guess you know why I pulled you over. 

Me: Yeah. (Handed over license and registration.) Honestly, I was just messing with the car, and I'm trying to sell it, and I just wanted to see if it ran OK. ... There wasn't anybody in front of me and the road was straight. 

Cop: But there is a speed limit along here. 

Me: I know. 

And the cop turned and walked back to his car. I sat there thinking about how much the ticket was going to cost me. He probably wouldn't pop me for the maximum speed I reached (probably couldn't have gotten radar on me fast enough and didn't have much time to pace me). $200? Would it be that much? Maybe $125 or so. Oh crap, maybe it will be $300+. Maybe he'll pull up my record and see I haven't had anything other than one "fix it" ticket in almost 10 years. Should I take it to court? No, just suck it up and face the music. You know, you're sitting there and everybody going past you is rubber knecking and you don't want to make eye contact but you just want to yell "What the fuck are you looking at? Pay attention to your own fucking driving!" 

More than five minutes later, he walked back to the car and handed me my registration. He said, "Well, you don't have any points. I'll let you go with a warning" and handed over the warning ticket and my license. I said "Thank you" and tried not to act as happy as I was. 

To top it all off, literally as I started typing all this, someone who had expressed interest in buying the Firebird called and made an offer. And I accepted! He said he can stop by tomorrow and get the car, and considering he's a friend of a friend, it's a 99% done deal.