Last week, I took the Triumph up to Henderson where my new friend, Dave, has a garage. He specializes in Triumphs and is generally viewed as the specialist in central North Carolina. My goal was to have him spend a couple hours looking over the car to inspect it, identify any things that may need to be addressed, and help me build out a prioritized list of projects. I already have a running project list with about a dozen items on it, but I knew a skilled eye would likely find new ones.

I contacted Dave before we headed out for our fall vacation and was very excited when he got back to me. I already realize how important this step is in taking over the maintenance of the GT6 and understanding what needs to be done and where I should focus, especially given the difference in approach between my dad for the past 37 years (focused mostly on mechanical problems, keeping car running) and me (includes restoration, originality).

He explained to me that his customers tend to run a wide range of willingness to be involved with their own project cars — some want him to do all the work, whereas others want to learn and do as much of it as they can — we knew I was somewhere in the middle, and he said he likes to teach, so we started looking the car over together. It would be hard to explain how much I learned over the next two eight hours.