Gone in 60 Seconds!

“Go to the ant . . . consider its ways and be wise!” Proverbs 6:6

Last time on The Adventures of the GMW

I know, it’s been awhile. Life’s like that. In my previous post, “At Least Measure Once!” I shared my colossal failure to measure the available space in the engine bay to ensure my dream of putting a late model GM LNF motor (260 HP out of the box) into my 1975 BMW 2002 would actually work. That mistake set me back a few coins. But like all intrepid travelers, I owned it (“Sorry babe!”) and sounded the hot rod creed: “We press on!”

To refresh your memory, I pulled the 1975 BMW 2002 out of Colorado. No, I actually didn’t find it lost and lonely, baking in the Colorado sun, but on an online auction. We had it trailered to our little getaway in Arkansas, where I parked the BMW next to its two new best friends.

That was August 2023. A few months later, I sourced an engine from the great state of Alabama, had it shipped up to The Natural State, where it now sits rather majestically on the floor of my shop. It’s a solid engine, only 55,000 miles and came with all the bells and whistles, i.e. power steering, the AC, and of course the ECM (Electronic Control Module) which is going to need some serious tinkering to mate to a vehicle just shy of fifty years. Listen to that little ECOTEC hum. Add headers and Catback Exhaust and it is going to be A-MAZING!

Despite my grand description above, the engine is actually just plopped on a pallet. When it arrived, it made me think of Medusa; all the bundled electronic cables like the goddess’s tangled hair of snakes. It was huge. There was no way it would fit, but then I started removing the wiring and the engine started resembling . . . well, an engine. I still have a long way to go, but encouragement is beginning to rise in my heart like those beautiful Arkansas sunrises.

Another five months passed before I had the time and the impetus to move the BMW (someday to become a GMW) to my shop. Minus an engine and brakes, Shannan and I managed to push and pull and point the car toward its next stop on the restoration tour. The shop is a slight downhill run which made for quite a spectacle when I had to give a big enough push from the outside of the car, only to jump inside quick enough to pull up the emergency brake before gravity took me into the shop’s garage door.

There’s a Russian proverb which says, “He who chases two rabbits catches neither.” And despite two project vehicles in my shop, I am determined to catch both rabbits. The Green Machine (which is actually primer gray at the moment) is rust free after an extensive effort documented in The Green Machine Diaries. The GMW, however, came my way with large patches of un-primered metal as well as promises of new adventures of rust eradication. I had to get that car stripped down so I could “wipe it away” and protect the surface from more of the car cancer. But how? I had a busier summer than the previous twenty, was woefully behind on multiple fronts, and had no large blocks of time to give.

Work like an ant!

Years ago, I read Henry Cloud’s 9 Things You Must Simply Do to Succeed in Love and Life. Dr. Cloud references Solomon’s observation about the ant in Proverbs 6:6-11 NIV

6 Go to the ant, you sluggard;
    consider its ways and be wise!
7 It has no commander,
    no overseer or ruler,
8 yet it stores its provisions in summer
    and gathers its food at harvest.

9 How long will you lie there, you sluggard?
    When will you get up from your sleep?
10 A little sleep, a little slumber,
    a little folding of the hands to rest—
11 and poverty will come on you like a thief
    and scarcity like an armed man.

He writes, “All success is built and sustained just like a building is built, one brick at a time. But one brick seems too small and insignificant for all-or-nothing thinkers. They have to have it all, and one brick, one dollar, one pound, one new customer, is not enough for them. (Cloud, 9 Things You Simply Must Do, p. 129)

“Go to the ant, you sluggard, consider its ways and be wise!” The ant’s wisdom lies in its ability to recognize its limitations and do what it can do when it can do it. For the ant it might be one grain of sugar. For us, as Cloud notes, it’s “one brick, one dollar, one pound, one new customer . . . ” and for me it would be one part a day. If I couldn’t devote a full day — and I couldn’t — I was going to act like an ant. I gave myself permission (and a charge) to remove one part a day. Here’s what it looked like.

Lesson Learned: Work like an ant!

My friend Will Mancini said, “We overestimate what we can do in a year and we underestimate what we an do in ten years.” Isak Dinesen put it this way, “When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself” (cited in 9 Things You Simply Must Do, p. 117). They all take a cue from Solomon (and God), “Go to the ant . . . consider its way and be wise.” The ant gets A LOT accomplished by doing what he can, when he can, little by little.

So did I. I didn’t complete all I wanted, but I finished far more than I expected . . . working like an ant.