Birth of the Blue Missile

Guys
Here is the part that brings us to Texas and the next part will bring us up to date I hope you enjoyed this journey.
Andrrew


During one of these late afternoon test rides, while going down the alley, a guy in a brand new emerald green Thunderbird with the sticker still on the window, ran a stop sign and broad sided me. Now understand when I would pull the Duster out of the shop you could hear it for blocks and a large number of the workers in the surrounding business would go hang out on the corners of the cross streets to watch it go by. After the accident I walked back to the shop I told the owner what had happened and he said “don’t call the police that guys the mob.” Of course my response was I don’t care and the police were called and all the witnesses convinced them that he had indeed ran the stop sign. The frame again was trashed, hey but at least there was less to take off the car this time. I pulled and boxed up everything put it all in the back storeroom. One other thing during the crash, because I had solid motor mounts installed, one of the drivers side motor mount tangs was cracked. After a couple of years I got all the stuff that was left, strangely some things had grown legs and walked off, out of the shop and brought it to the house. Through the years I gave up the rear axle and springs, I sold the two M-50s and rims to lighten the load. But I held onto the motor/tranny and all the boxed parts. I started to put together a plan to rebuild the car and started to build a number of electronic systems including digital gauges, and an electronically controlled anti-dry start system. I designed the circuits and actually etched the boards. Most of the boards used simple transistors and early integrated circuits. In 1983 I got heavily involved with windsurfing and ramped up my involvement with music. So the work on the car basically came to a stop. My obsession with windsurfing gave birth to my composites business and took up every spare minute I was not working and the sun was up. Music was every waking hour after dark. I spent the time either in practice or in the studio, or building studios.
While I continued to live in Miami I lubricated and turned the engine, on the dolly I made for it, every couple of months or so. I got married in ’86 and continued the affair with windsurfing and music. When we moved to Texas I brought all of those items with me. That was in 1998.