Does It Work? Yes. Am I Happy? No.

By David Clarke

highspeedhijinks

It sucks when perfectionism denies you any sense of accomplishment in a project. I’ve tried pretty hard to make my cars as perfect as they can realistically be. My Caprice, however, has other ideas. Some of you may be familiar with the complications I’ve endured just trying to get a set of headers onto my this car–it was one of those deals where whatever could go wrong, did. First came modifying multiple accessory brackets to bolt the headers on. Then came a car that refused to go into gear, requiring a custom shift linkage to clear the headers. Then came the saga of the crossmember–the later-model Caprice one that everyone said would fit but didn’t, the botched fab-shop butchery of my original crossmember, the cutting into the header that that in turn necessitated. In the end, the exhaust guy did wind up doing a good job except for one pipe that I feel could have been better. But then, as the icing on the cake, on the way home from the exhaust shop my throttle linkage broke at the carburator. All in all, this project was a nightmare, but the important thing is that it’s done. So am I happy? No. Does it work? Yes. Does it sound good? It sounds great. So really other than getting my perfectionism subjected to an extreme trial, everything did work out in the end. So I guess I should be happy–or should I? More pictures after the jump.