There was quite a bit more to be done. The first owner had fitted this 1800 with a "front only" ipd swaybar, and I'm not a fan of that set-up. Some vintage 1800 racers prefer not to use a rear bar at PIR, but they're running much stiffer, lower springs and a whole lot more horsepower that we've got -- when really pushed, I was sure our car would understeer like a pig without one. Buying a new rear bar was out of the question, but our friend Shayne Green came to the rescue. Seems one of his parts cars had one, and he could be persuaded to part with it for cheap.

That particular 122 had been found sitting without wheels in a field, somewhat submerged in the topsoil. Shayne, Cameron and Teague had somehow winched it up onto a trailer and deposited it onto blocks at Shayne's place, where most of the good stuff had been stripped off it. I was just lucky that nobody else had needed a rear swaybar.

Cameron and I came prepared to cut the bar off the car, but to our surprise and gratification, it came loose in seconds. The bar itself was just fine, but the mounting hardware was nothing one would want to re-use. I took the bar home, gave it a good scrubbing, sprayed it black and hung it in the garage door to dry overnight.

Monday morning, I was at ipd buying a new mounting kit for the bar -- not cheap by any means, but the only viable alternative. I really couldn't have pieced together anything less expensive. By the way, whatever had happened to my K&N air cleaners? Still backordered? Oh well.

The day was turning into a real scorcher -- the bar hanging in the garage door in full sunlight was bone dry and almost too hot to touch. I took it down to cool while setting up my electric drill and stringing extension cords to reach the garage. The sun and wasps were still hours away, but it was so hot out that excitable yellow jackets were taking refuge in the shade inside the building. In fact, they particularly preferred being in the car.

Nevertheless, I soon had the floor reinforcing plates located under the rear seat and had their bolt holes drilled. At this point in the project, mere nasty insects were not going to deter me from making it to the track, no matter how mad they got trying to buzz through the windshield instead of flying out through the wide-open doors of the car.

On our 122, which is a 4-door, it was possible (not easy, but possible) to get one wrench on top of the the reinforcing plate bolts and another on the self-locking nuts under the car without a helper. On a coupe, it's a different matter. I rigged up some improbable affair using socket extensions, a breaker bar and vice-grips, but it was slow going -- if I was lucky, I'd get about one turn out of the nut before something slipped. Marsha finally came home in the middle of the afternoon and I put her in charge of the breaker bar ("Never mind the yellow jackets, dear, they're just buzzing 'cause they're happy"), after which the installation proceeded smoothly.

I spent what was left of the afternoon setting up the new carbs, adjusting valves and making the motor run as decently as I could with the car on stands. Setting ignition timing with a light, I noticed a high-RPM waver of several degrees -- not optimum for performance. I had the body of another distributor packed away in the basement. As the wasps arrived and chased the yellow jackets out, I went and found it, gave it a good scrubbing and oiled it. I'd get back to that if there was time.

The RPR brake calipers arrived as advertised first thing Tuesday morning, and they were beauties. I couldn't tell them from brand new, and they came complete with new hardware and pads. I wasted no time admiring them -- they were on the car and the brakes bled down in short order. For the first time, the brake pedal felt really firm.

By mid-afternoon, the car was sitting on its tires again. I took a short drive to the gas station and put $10-worth of 92-octane into the almost-empty tank, filling it about halfway. As expected, the front end alignment was completely out of whack, so I just came back home and went looking in the phone book for a shop that would do a custom alignment. I found a likely one just blocks from the house, and drove the 122 over to reconnoiter.

The shop and the owner felt just right to me. Obviously, they felt that way to a lot of other people, too -- tomorrow? No way. Thursday morning? If I could leave the car, they'd try to fit it in, but no promises. Well, maybe next time, then.

I called a few other places and finally got a booking for Thursday, 9:00 AM. I put the car back up on stands and pre-loaded the alignment by pulling the front cross-member shims before calling it a day (see David Hueppchen's alignment article).

I E-mailed David that evening to give him a progress report and see if he had some final tuning tips for me. He was pretty insistent that I should be running Metalmaster brake pads at the track. I've learned that when David offers up advice like that, it's best to listen -- he spends a lot more time on the far side of 100 MPH than most mortals. This really would be the last budget-busting party guest, I was sure.

Wednesday morning was spent establishing that no such brake pads in Repco 83 size existed in Vancouver, but they could be had overnight from Seattle. Done deal.

I did a dozen small things to the car that afternoon, getting the valves just so (and making an unscheduled trip to ipd for a new valve cover gasket in the process), putting the steering wheel back on straight, tweaking on the carbs... speaking of which, where were my high-zoot air cleaners? Not in ipd's possession, let alone mine. I did some measuring with calipers, and really couldn't see any reason not to use the original three-bolt filters (except with only two bolts, of course). Another trip to the hardware store to get bolts the right length... stuff like that. The car was finally coming together.

Thursday morning at the alignment shop (less than 24 hours to go before arriving at the track): Yes, I really do want these alignment settings. No, I don't care how you think that'll make the car handle, this is what I need today. Yes, I'll waive the tire wear warranty. No, I'm not leaving the car, the appointment is for right now, isn't it?

Having completed that obligatory ritual, the guy did a really precise job, got really interested in the car and didn't charge me for as much time as he spent on it. I left happy and gave it a short run on one of the few stretches of twisties in the area. I came home even happier with the way the car cornered, but there was still a pronounced shake in the steering wheel that had to be due to tire imbalance. Maybe I could live with this. No, I hadn't come this far to put up with any problems, now that the car was so close to driving perfectly.

After noon, I picked up the Metalmaster pads, put the car back up on stands yet another time, removed all four wheels and ran them down to the alignment place for balancing. Back home to put in the pads, back out to pick up the wheels, back home to put them on, put the car back on the ground, recheck all nuts and bolts in the suspension and steering, verify the fluid were staying in...

The clutch master cylinder was down quite a bit. In spite of it being new a year ago, I'd been having to top it up once in a while lately; now it had gone down alarmingly. In fact, there was finally a visible drip to be seen by the slave cylinder. This proved to be nothing more than a flex hose that had unsnugged itself; easily fixed.

14 hours until The Track -- I was finally ready for a real test drive. Off I went, looking for some curvy back roads. There aren't many near our house, and those were full of rush-hour commuters. I ranged further afield -- before I knew it, I was lost. Well, not really lost in the sense of not knowing where I was, but of not knowing how the roads connected to each other. I bore generally west, knowing I'd come upon I-5 sooner or later. As it turned out, it was later, but I recognized where I was at last and knew the back roads home from there. I finally found a few curves, proved to myself that the car would throttle steer predictably and arrived home well satisfied as dusk descended.

I eyeballed the spark plugs under a flashlight, liked what I saw, put them back in and put the cover over the car. That's as good as it was gonna get -- and it was a whole lot better than it had been.

I wrote up the next section as a stand-alone piece for our print edition. Please pardon any redundancies to what you've already read. --Phil