It began, as most of my automotive decisions do, with misplaced confidence. I had a 1968 Mustang Coupe. I had converted it, by hand, into Fastback. Cut it in half, welded a new roof on, spent six months under a party tent while hurricanes tried to relocate it to the next county. The whole thing cost roughly five thousand dollars, including the car itself, which should tell you everything you need to know about the condition it was in when I got it. And now I had a set of wheels. Beautiful, enormous, completely wrong wheels.

Nineteen inches. Ten and a half wide. Plus thirty-five offset. They looked magnificent sitting in the garage. They looked considerably less magnificent once I'd actually fitted them to the car, because the car could not move. At all. Not an inch. Not forwards, not backwards, not in any direction that might be considered useful. The wheels, the Shelby drop, and the prehistoric rear leaf springs had formed a kind of unholy alliance against motion itself.

And it got worse. Because I hadn't rolled the fenders. Of course I hadn't. So those gorgeous rims just sank lower and lower, chewing into the front fenders and slicing the tyres like something out of a low-budget horror film. I stood there, looking at the damage, and had one of those quiet moments where you wonder if you've made a terrible mistake. Not just with the wheels. With everything. With all of it.

So I did what any rational person would do. I went on Amazon. The fender roller I found had the kind of reviews that make you read them twice. Half the people said it was brilliant. The other half said it destroyed their car. It cost almost nothing, looked like it had been manufactured in someone's garden shed, and had a product name that was clearly run through Google Translate at least four times. I bought it immediately. Why I expect anything different from Amazon, I will never know.

And here's the thing. It worked. This cheap, questionable, vaguely alarming bit of metal actually rolled the fenders without incident. I followed it up with some no-name front coilovers (temporary, until the proper suspension goes in with the engine upgrade), new leaf springs from CJ Pony Parts, and a set of Eibach 35mm spacers. I dropped the car off the jacks, held my breath, and... it moved. The wheels didn't rub. It drove. And it handled, if I'm being honest, rather well. A bit light on the steering, but we'll get to that.

A potential disaster, turned into a minor victory, mostly thanks to a cheap bit of Amazon metal and some surprisingly good luck. I was sure my usual ineptitude would return soon enough. I was right.

Now. The steering wheel. Yes, I know. Completely unnecessary at this stage. The car could barely start, the rust was winning, and I had a list of real problems long enough to wallpaper a bathroom. But that Grant GT steering wheel, half-rusted and made of plastic so cheap a toddler would reject it, was driving me insane. And more importantly, I couldn't extract myself from those bucket seats without wiggling about like a greasy sausage. I looked like a beached whale trying to escape a bathtub. Something had to change.

I've always had a soft spot for MOMO. Their designs have a bit of character, unlike the bland rubbish most people bolt on. So I ordered an NRG 6-bolt quick release and a Mod 08 MOMO racing wheel. Two items. Simple transaction. What could possibly go wrong? The first wheel arrived with the centre mark off, like it had a severe case of the bends. I sent it back. The second one arrived in the same condition. I sent that back too. The third one, same story. At which point MOMO themselves stepped in, bless their cotton socks, and personally made sure I received one that wasn't trying to steer me into a ditch.

With the correct wheel finally in hand, I discovered I also needed a 3-bolt to 6-bolt adapter. Because of course I did. Ordered it, waited, removed the old wheel, and then very nearly set the car on fire. Horn cables, it turns out, are rather tightly attached to things that carry twelve volts. I had to hack away at the end of the steering column bolt because it was making contact with the live wires, and for about fifteen seconds the entire dash smelled like the beginning of an insurance claim. But it's done. It's on. It looks fantastic.

Which means, naturally, something else had to go wrong. The engine. Oh, the engine. There was a humming noise coming from the right side of the car. I replaced every bearing I could find, inner and outer, and it was still there. Persistent. Smug. Like a mosquito you can hear but never see. It turned out, eventually, to be the gearbox, which is exactly the kind of answer you don't want.

But that wasn't the real problem. The real problem was power delivery. Below 2,000 RPM, this V8, this eight-cylinder monument to American muscle, drove like it was running on one cylinder. The tachometer told the whole story: fine at high revs, pathetic at low ones. Moving off the line in drive or reverse was an exercise in humiliation. The revs would drop, the engine would stall, and the whole car would throw a tantrum like a toddler who's been told no. In neutral, it purred like a kitten. Ask it to actually go somewhere, and it fell apart. Then, one Sunday, it decided it didn't want to start at all.

I had a checklist. I'm calling it The Checklist of Despair. New coils. New spark plugs. New fuel filter. Check the fuel pump (a Carter M4009, apparently, because it has a 289 block, which seems to be some kind of mystical qualification that I am not going to pretend I fully understand). Inspect the carburetor. Check the transmission fluid. The battery was new, the starter turned the engine over fine. It just wouldn't fire. Because that would have been too straightforward.

Saturday came. I had big plans. I was going to wrestle this mechanical disaster into submission. Then, because this is Florida, the 3pm storms rolled in like a particularly vindictive army, and everything got rained out. The weather here has a personal vendetta against my automotive adventures. Sunday morning. Unusually cooperative skies, which in my experience is always suspicious. But I wasn't going to question it. I popped the hood, removed the air filter, and was greeted by a carburetor that looked like it had been living at the bottom of a coal mine. Completely black inside. I grabbed a can of carburetor cleaner from AutoZone, because where else would one go, sprayed it a few times, performed some dashboard manoeuvres that I cannot scientifically explain, and... it started.

It actually started. I stood there, half expecting the sky to fall. There were misfires at first, the tachometer needle jumping about like a startled rabbit, but it was running. Actually running. Then I noticed a vacuum hose had popped off. Just sitting there, disconnected, doing nothing. I reattached it. And suddenly the car drove in both drive and reverse without stalling.

One loose hose. That's what it was. One loose hose and a filthy carburetor. I'd replaced bearings, ordered parts, lost sleep, and the answer was a two-dollar can of cleaner and a rubber tube that had fallen off. The car, I suspect, was laughing at me.

Meanwhile, the rust. Because there's always rust. Coupe had it everywhere. Around the panels, under the panels, in places where panels shouldn't have rust but did anyway. I went at it with a grinder and sandpaper, because why do things the easy way. A coat of wax and grease remover, which sounds more like a spa treatment than car repair. Then self-etching primer. Then 2K sealer, because if I'm going to be paranoid about rust, I might as well be properly paranoid. The result? The car looked like it had survived a nuclear event. Not my finest hour, aesthetically. But underneath that apocalyptic exterior, the metal was clean and sealed. And that's all I needed, because Fastback conversion parts were waiting.

Waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Because a few of them were backordered. Naturally. The car sat there in its almost-complete state, surrounded by boxes of parts that were just enough to remind me how close I was and how far I still had to go. Like a kid on Christmas Eve staring at a wrapped present, knowing someone forgot the batteries. And this is where I learned something important about CJ Pony Parts. When they don't have a part in stock, they won't charge you. Sounds reasonable, right? Except they also won't tell you. If you miss it, that's your problem. So now I manage their business process for them. I order early, I follow up, and I assume nothing will arrive on time. It helps them get their money faster. It helps me avoid losing my mind. Barely.

So here we are. The wheels fit. The steering wheel works. The engine runs, mostly. The rust is handled, for now. Fastback conversion parts are almost all here. The humming is still there, still annoying, still the gearbox. And I've got new cables and spark plugs to deal with whatever's left of that low-RPM problem. The car is far from finished. It's far from right. But it moves, it steers, and it starts, and a week ago none of those things were true. Next time: the missing bolts, the CJ disaster continues, and Fastback conversion begins in earnest. Wish me luck. That's all I'll say. Just wish me luck.