The Cal-look Lounge

Hey dudes, I had some righteous good fortune this weekend. I've got an old DDS shifter I took out of my '67 back in '82. A couple years ago I pulled it out of my toolbox and cleaned it up. It's near mint. Perfect chrome on the base and shifter and no crack in the handle. Sweet huh? Unfortunately sometime over the last 20 years the shifter plate, unique to the DDS shifter, went missing.

So the search for another one began.

It's always been in the back of my mind, I've posted a few times about it both here and on the Samba, always check the classifieds, show swap meets, and an other place that might have one sleeping in a corner someplace. I even got a tutorial on how to make one from a fellow lounge member. Recently I bought a '69 that I'm gonna cal-look so my search has moved to priority status.

This weekend I attended a small event held by a new club outta Philly. Not much there, about 30 cars, and three swap vendors selling used parts. One guy had about a dozen red tubs with alot of rusty, greasy old parts. I was about to walk away when out of the corner of my eye, I spotted that distinctive handle. I walked over to it and picked it up. It was trash, handle was missing a big chunk, the shifter itself was rusty and pitted, and the chrome base was missing. Not much to look at, but zip tied to the base was that shifter plate. I about crapped my pants. So, with great restraint, I approached the guy, casually held it up, and asked the million dollar question [or maybe a $100 question]. How much?

He looked at it and said the words that I have waited so long to hear. $2.00

YAHTZEE!

I snapped that up in a nano-second

I'm am so happy I drove the three hour round trip to got to the event. It wasn't much, but it was it's first year, and was thrown together last minute. But I can tell you one thing, it was by far the best event I've attended this year.

-jeffrey

Nice! I love it when stuff like that happens.

What, you didn't try to work him on the price???   ;)  Just kidding, excellent score.

How was that event?  I was going to come check it out, but didn't have a chance to get the car out of storage in time.

that so doesn't happen anymore, you should knock a few copies up, this would help a few people out.

The feeling of christmas when you were young :)

....that´s a nice story! Reminds me of a story a few years ago: I browsed throgh an advertising magazine for Campers and stuff and in the middle of all those adverts there was a pic of a bug engine with twin carbs-looking very familiar to the "vintage speed" engines manufactured here in Germany. Well-I drove to the seller quicker than a nano-second and bought the complete engine for 150 (!!) Euros. It was a complete Okrasa TSV 1300 engine, even the whole paperworks (owners manual, spare parts list,...) came with it. Well-I sold it as in those days I had a Type 3 squareback and I took the money for "cal-looking" the squareback. Today I wish I would ´ve kept it...