Rufus takes a trip.

(04/something/2010)  Back around February of 2010, my friend, Doc Freud kinda fell in love with Rufus the moment he saw photos of him.  I can understand that.  Same thing happened to me when I saw the pictures in the ad.  He asked if it would be ok if he finished up some of the work and then drive it for a while.  No problem.  Well...except that Doc lives in Washington state.  So our mutual friend, Marlo Treit, made some arrangements.



Rufus is all packed up for the trip.



He had a friend (Glen Robinson) who was heading back to Oregon (where Marlo lives) from Utah with an empty trailer.  Here Glen is driving Rufus onto the trailer.



It was pretty hard seein him leave.  But I needed the garage space for the race car project.



Fast forward to June, 2010.  Rufus is in front of Doc Freud's house.  Doc doesn't know this is about to happen.



Ray's pointing to the lettering that says...



"Special thanx to Ray the Rat.".



Uh-oh.  Now Doc knows what's happened.  He doesn't seem to be absolutely overjoyed.



Marlo is trying to tell him that it'll all buff out.  :)  Seriously, Doc wasn't expecting to see Rufus arrive on his doorstep and he was sorta overcome with emotion..



(06/20/2011)  Another Fast Forward...to June, 2011.  Doc and his friend, John O'Toole are gonna try to install a new steering box sold by an outfit called EZ Steer.



This is the box.  Claims to be a much slower turning ratio and almost like power steering.



John is twisting the wrenches..



Looks pretty nice in there, right?  It would have been much better if it had worked...even a little bit.  But it didn't.



Here's why.  Seems that the worm gear and the sector gear are about 90 degrees out of phase...and won't move.  Further investigation on the HAMB showed that there had been a huge amount of bad experiences reported about that product.

It came back out an another solution is being sought.  Major bummer.

More to come.