Chapter 12: I Tried Restoring a Police Car (2)
Chapter 12: I Tried Restoring a Police Car (2)
One of the most important factors in determining whether a car has been properly restored is the originality of its exterior components.
This is especially true for older vehicles. If all of the original exterior parts remain intact and in good condition, the car’s value can skyrocket.
The same principle applied to what I considered the most important part of restoring this Crown Victoria.
Normally, parts such as bumpers and fenders had to be painstakingly sourced by searching through local junkyards until a matching one could be found.
Ding!
[Order complete. The purchased items have been stored in the Inventory.]
Coins deducted: -330 (C)
Remaining coins: 11,055 (C)
I purchased the Crown Victoria’s front bumper, bumper beam, driver-side fender, hood, and headlight bracket from the Coin Market. I had already searched for them in advance.
11,055 coins. I still have quite a lot left.
Using the Coin Market wisely could significantly reduce expenses, which in turn dramatically increased profits.
That did not mean it would make sense to waste coins on ordinary consumables such as engine oil.
Coins should only be used to obtain essential restoration parts that offer a clear advantage.
I cleared away enough items from the warehouse floor to make some space, then selected [Withdraw] from the Inventory.
Thud, thud, thud, thud—
The bumper, fender, hood, and other parts I had ordered appeared one after another, instantly filling the previously empty section of the floor.
No matter how many times I saw it, watching automotive parts appear out of thin air was still difficult to believe.
Yet the moment I touched them, I could confirm that they were perfectly solid and real.
Their condition is... perfect, as expected.
The exterior parts were brand-new, without so much as a scratch, as though they had just come fresh from the factory.
All right. Shall I get started for real?
The moment I stood in front of the car, the manual I had already completely memorized automatically surfaced in my mind.
First, I carefully removed the bumper cover.
▶ Caution: Take care not to damage the bumper cover retaining clips.
The plastic retaining clips on older vehicles like this could break with only slightly excessive force.
Therefore, I needed to gently coax them out using a dedicated trim remover...
Or not.
Snap, snap—
I simply yanked them out with force.
I was going to replace all of these clips with new ones anyway. A bag of one hundred cost around ten dollars, which was more than enough.
Next came removing the bolts holding everything in place.
For this part, all I had to do was take my time, work through them one by one, and check carefully for deformation as I went.
Click, click, click—
The quiet sound of the metal ratchet echoed softly through the silent warehouse.
Once the bumper had been removed, I set it neatly to one side and began removing the thick steel bumper beam inside.
[13 mm and 15 mm sockets required. Use of an air impact wrench is recommended.]
Air impact wrench? I don’t have one.
An air impact wrench was a tool that used compressed air to generate rotational force, allowing bolts and similar fasteners to be loosened or tightened quickly.
Naturally, it required an air compressor to generate the necessary pressure.
I did not own one, and even if I did, the warehouse did not have the 240-volt electrical service needed to run the kind of compressor I wanted.
A simple rented storage warehouse like this barely provided ordinary household 120-volt electricity.
“Ughhhhh!”
Still, work at this level could be done perfectly well with hand tools.
The only downside was that after repeatedly loosening and tightening bolts, my hands began to throb.
There were also advantages to working by hand. Unlike when using an impact wrench, there was little risk of destroying threads or rounding off bolt heads through excessive torque.
In any case, aside from being somewhat slower, the work progressed smoothly without any major obstacles.
Maybe that was why...
This is really nothing special, so why is it so much fun?
In one sense, it was nothing more than manual labor, yet it felt like playing with Lego for adults.
The only difference was that the toys had gotten larger as I grew older.
I became so absorbed in alternating between the appropriate hand tools that, after a little over an hour, I had removed every damaged component.
“Disassembly complete!”
I gathered the debris scattered across the floor, moved it into a corner, and brought over the new parts.
“Assembly begins!”
I had not enjoyed myself like this in a long time, so I decided to keep going and finish the assembly as well.
Assembly is always the reverse of disassembly!
Since I had already taken everything apart once, knew where all the bolts went, and fully understood the structure, I assumed putting it back together would naturally be easier.
I was wrong.
During reassembly, precisely aligning the hood panel gaps turned out to be an unexpected obstacle.
Whenever I managed to align one side correctly, the gap on the opposite side widened. When I fixed that side, the original side shifted out of alignment again.
It was the same when I installed the engine last time. At moments like this, having just one assistant would make things so much easier.
The exterior parts would eventually have to be removed again for painting anyway, but since I was also using this as practice to build experience, I had no intention of doing a sloppy job.
“Whew. With this... assembly complete!”
In the end, fine-tuning the hood and fender alignment took nearly three hours, almost three times longer than disassembly.
“The theory looks simple, but actually doing it is completely different. Still, I think I’ll do much better next time.”
I felt as though my experience and confidence had both increased considerably.
When I straightened my body after spending so long bent over and concentrating on the work, my joints cracked all over.
Crack, crack—
At the same time—
Grrrrr—
My stomach began protesting loudly.
Come to think of it, I haven’t eaten anything proper today.
When I looked outside, the surroundings were already completely dark.
I had always been like this. Whenever I became absorbed in a single task, I lost all sense of time.
Is there anything I can eat for dinner?
It was already far too late to reasonably call it dinnertime.
Every restaurant was closed, and it was also an awkward hour to go to a bar.
At times like this, I could simply stop by a gas station and heat up some frozen food.
But now that I had finished the exterior work, I felt like eating something warm tonight.
“Oh, right. I have these.”
I rummaged through the duffel bag of provisions I kept in the truck and found several cans.
Canned tomatoes.
Canned chili beans.
Canned corned beef.
With those three ingredients, I could make a “dish” I rather liked.
I took out the portable burner and folding chair I always kept in the truck and set them up outside the warehouse.
The breeze had already become pleasantly cool, lightly brushing against my cheeks.
Arizona in June was brutally hot, but the desert cooled quickly at night.
Whoosh—
First, I placed a thick, heavy eight-inch cast-iron skillet over the flame.
Then I emptied in the canned corned beef and mashed it thoroughly with a spoon.
This would be perfect if I had an onion.
Since I did not, I added the canned tomatoes and chili beans, then adjusted the heat according to taste with paprika powder.
Instead of paprika powder, I used the finely ground Korean red pepper powder I had stocked up on from an Asian grocery store.
Sizzle—
Now all I had to do was simmer it for another ten minutes or so, until the tomatoes had thoroughly softened.
And with that—
My canned version of chili con carne was complete.
Americans usually shortened the name simply to “chili,” a spicy stew that warmed the body the moment you ate it.
Personally, I especially liked eating it with a few crackers crumbled over the top, but unfortunately, I seemed to have already eaten all of them.
At least I still had some beer.
It was not cold, and there was only one can left, but still.
Hiss—
Eating chili without beer would have been unthinkable.
I settled onto the creaking folding chair and took a spoonful.
The hot, spicy flavor spread throughout my mouth.
At that moment, without any delay, I followed it with a gulp of beer.
The combination of hot savoriness and cool refreshment blending together in my mouth was excellent.
“Whew...”
A long breath escaped me without my realizing it.
The air I exhaled was filled with the scent of spice, but I was alone out here anyway.
There was no one around whose opinion I needed to worry about.
Perhaps because there were no lights nearby, the sky was packed with stars as far as the eye could see.
There were too many stars in the desert night.
People seeing the sight for the first time were often overwhelmed by its beauty, but even a sky full of stars could not erase the silence of the desert.
I took another spoonful of chili, then washed it down with beer.
“Ah, this is enough.”
When the night became too cold, I ate a spoonful of chili.
When I felt too hot, I took a sip of beer.
There was nothing complicated about it.
You simply adapted and kept living.
Especially on days like today, after spending hours working with my body, I felt free whenever I ended the day with a beer while feeling the heat radiating from a hot pan.
There had once been a time when I had hated and feared that excessive freedom, the kind that left me tied to nowhere and nothing...
“Still, I guess living really is worth it.”
Carefully rationing the remaining chili, I slowly nursed that single can of lukewarm beer for as long as possible.
Over the next several days, the consumable parts I had ordered arrived one after another.
I replaced the oil pan gasket and changed the engine oil and coolant at the same time.
Basic maintenance like this no longer felt like much of a task.
However, for the final stage, painting the front end, I decided not to do the work myself.
Instead, I entrusted it to a nearby body shop specializing in bodywork and painting.
Unlike mechanical repairs, welding, bodywork, and painting were fields in which theoretical knowledge alone could never produce professional-quality results.
Painting in particular required considerable skill, from meticulous sanding and surface preparation to color matching, spraying, final buffing, and polishing.
It was work that depended heavily on a refined sense of touch.
Of course, my special ability dramatically improved the process of building practical proficiency, so if I repeatedly practiced through trial and error, I might become competent more quickly than an ordinary person.
The problem is my sense of color.
I had been hopeless at anything involving art since childhood, so honestly, I had very little confidence in myself.
Furthermore, once I factored in the various tools required for color mixing, painting, drying, and polishing, as well as a dedicated paint booth, even the most conservative estimate would require an investment of tens of thousands of dollars.
I wonder whether I’ll ever have facilities like this myself.
I was wandering around the body shop, curiously examining everything like a child visiting an amusement park, when the time finally came to pay the price of outsourcing labor in a country where wages were painfully expensive.
“Mr. Kwon, as I explained before, the estimate is three hundred fifty dollars for the front bumper and two hundred fifty for the fender. The hood is four hundred fifty, and the full-body polishing to even out the finish is four hundred. That comes to a total of one thousand four hundred fifty dollars. Will you be paying by card?”
I more or less expected this, but...
My hand still trembled when I actually saw the price.
“I’ll pay cash.”
Even that price was relatively low because the car was painted ordinary black rather than metallic pearl or another specialized finish.
From now on, I need to evaluate paint costs much more carefully.
Fortunately, I had bought this car extremely well at auction.
Otherwise, I could easily end up doing all the work only to make a pathetic profit.
“Then come take a look at the car.”
However, once I actually saw the finished vehicle, it looked so impressive that I temporarily stopped thinking about the money.
“Wow... Is this really the same car as that wreck from before?”
After passing through professional hands, the dull and lifeless appearance from before was completely gone.
The Crown Victoria now wore a gleaming new coat.
Because I had sent the entire car to the shop rather than delivering only the detached parts, there was no visible mismatch between the existing paint and the newly painted sections.
A car isn’t only about power and performance. Its appearance is incredibly important, too.
Who would believe that this was the same $2,150 car that had been sitting crumpled in an auction storage yard?
Under the law, police vehicles transferred into civilian ownership had to have their emergency lights and police markings removed.
Even so, the alternating black-and-white paint scheme combined with the push bar on the front made the car’s “former profession” obvious enough.
And it was not merely cosmetic.
The engine, gear ratios, cooling system, and all the other components remained in their original police-specification configuration.
I carefully examined the body from every angle, checking for paint defects or unfinished areas, then opened the door.
At last, it was time for my favorite moment in any automobile restoration.
The test drive.
Clunk!
The door shut with a metallic sound.
I inserted the unmistakably old-fashioned key into the ignition cylinder and turned it.
Vroom! Rumble, rumble, rumble—
The engine started immediately without the slightest hesitation.
“The idle feels good. This thing is still completely ready for active duty.”
Hidden beneath the appearance of an unassuming sedan was a 4.6-liter V8 engine.
The deep exhaust note it produced was extremely appealing.
I slowly pressed the accelerator.
The heavy body began moving forward with relaxed smoothness.
Despite its large displacement, the car felt more smooth and composed than wild or aggressive.
Even the exhaust produced only a low, steady burble rather than an irritating roar.
This feels much more like a comfortable sedan than I expected.
But once I reached the open road and pressed the accelerator a little deeper—
Vroooooom—
My body sank lightly into the seat as the car surged forward with powerful acceleration.
“Wow!”
Maybe it was because of the push bar mounted on the front, but whenever I saw someone irritating ahead of me, I almost felt the urge to say—
Get out of my way.
—and shove everything aside.
Ironically, instead of feeling like a police officer, I felt more like a villain.
“So this is what a police package feels like.”
Some people might have experienced riding in the back seat of a police car, but unless they actually worked as police officers, very few people would ever have driven one themselves.
“I can see why this model has its own enthusiast community.”
I knew there were several P71 clubs not only around the country but in Arizona as well.
After driving the car, I could fully understand why those people loved this particular model.
I drove several more easy laps to confirm the car’s condition, then returned to the warehouse.
Ding!
—————
[Restoration Complete]
Vehicle: 2011 Ford Crown Victoria P71
Restoration Value: C+
Difficulty: D
Contribution: 20%
Basic Vehicle Appraisal Skill Enhanced.
Auction House Rookie
(You can now judge a vehicle’s market value more accurately during auctions. Accuracy range: within ±10% of the optimal winning bid.)
Coins earned: 220
Total coins held: 11,275
—————
The restoration completion reward I had been eagerly awaiting finally arrived.
[Chili con Carne]