July 16, 2009 - Painting the Family Car, with a Brush

With all of the planned construction and gardening projects for the summer/fall, Linc realized we probably wouldn't get around to rebuilding the engine on the Veggie Jetta this year. We have a pickup truck, but it's getting old and doesn't get the best gas mileage. The 1983 Tercel wagon has been a great car, but with 280,000 miles, had developed several mechanical problems (brakes not working, throttle sticking and steering binding up, a really bad combination). Plus the body was beginning to rust badly, and our last paint job (done in 2004 with paintbrushes and some old house paint) had faded from a nice glossy red to a dull pink. It was a dangerous and embarrassing vehicle to drive. Having more time than money, Linc decided to try and restore it again. He found an online 4WD Tercel group and got some assistance with troubleshooting some of the mechanical issues, and found that, except for the brakes, the fixes were very cheap. An afternoon with a grinder on the drill and another morning with long-strand fiberglass bondo and a sanding wheel on the drill repaired the rust. Jeanne helped mask the car for painting. We'd opted to change the color to white since the AC has never worked, and painted over the pink paint with white primer, then three coats of gloss white paint. We tried to find the paint we wanted at the local Habitat for Humanity Re-store, but ended up having to buy the paint new. For a $50 paint job, it's great. For all of you simple-living folks out there driving old rust buckets, get out those paint brushes!

From twenty feet away, it looks like a new car. We even had someone in a $30,000 brand new pickup hit us up for gas money when Linc stopped on the road recently to fix that still-sticking throttle cable. The newly painted car is shown there pulling our other trailer (not the Agway warrior), with another rainwater collection tank that we found cheap on Craigs list when visiting Linc's sister and mother in Flagstaff, AZ.

The latest rainwater tank will eventually be part of Linc's idea for installing gravity-flow sub-mulch drip irrigation on an automatic timer to water the garden beds when we need to be away for a few days. A neighbor watered for us last time, but there was some misunderstanding that resulted in his picking our only harvestable crop so far this year, the peas, so we're going with robot garden watering from now on! All right, we've got to work on the community side of sustainable living a little more...