Milsteads Garage
04-18-2026, 06:23 PM
Okay so just a little rant about the couple days I had. I like days when it?s just me, Sarah and 1157. But Friday I jump in the trusty Ram2500 and go off to work at the airport. For those of you who don?t know I am a GSE mechanic for the airlines. This means I fix all the equipment that scurries about in Sky harbor airport Phoenix Az. But back to the truck. Friday, it didn?t want to start because both the batteries conked out in it. Both were 2 years old and no longer under warranty. So recently I have been doing maintenance on 1157. I?ve done so many things to get it roadworthy. I think I?m into it 25 grand. But since the truck wouldn?t start it was a dead 8000lb paperweight blocking in our other truck. So that leaves me back to the Mark II. I was getting ready to do some exhaust work patching some rusty areas since an entire exhaust system would have been 1000 dollars plus and 3-4 weeks out. But I had to cut out the resonators located under the rear seat area. I did that plus repaired the area under the front fender where the header pipe meets the main pipe that goes from front to back. The first repair was less than lackluster. My home welding machine is officially a pile of junk. So regardless it was good enough to drive the car to work. Luckily my schedule since I showed up late meant fixing 2 pushbacks is all I had to do. But after work I got a great welder and welded all of it back together. Welding to rusted pipe is a chore but appropriate welding heat and just enough spot welds had it fixed in a couple hours. So today I drive the Mark II to get my batteries and get my dead truck out of the driveway. I had to drive to Costco to do that since they offer a good warranty on batteries. This is one thing I definitely have not used the Mark II for, errands. Funny, I park it, get my batteries and come back out to find a c8 corvette and some sort of Subaru took up residence in the spots surrounding me. Ride home was uneventful. One thing I can say I love how my car stops. That dual master cylinder I got from speedway motors works excellent in city gridlock.