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Rear license light mounted and wired, front bumper reinstalled, vent hoses all installed in the engine bay, grille area reassembled after my fruitless troubleshooting and hood latch adjusted. The Ghost is ready for its ND DOT vehicle inspection on Monday, the next step in getting a new title issued. Oddly enough the DOT has no record of the original title (mother-in-law couldn't find it in the farm archives) but I had to submit the official form and pay them to tell me that, so that I have that record for the title application. Then assuming we are successful getting the title, we can get it registered for the first time since 1963 and licensed.

All of this in hopes of being able to take it to Cruise Night on Sept 17, the last one of the summer. Wish me luck!

I enjoy the watching the trails and tribulations of the progress. Where did you get the windshield? you said they had two and you bought one. the green Solex is the one i need

PM-ed you with details

Well the car passed the inspection (not much of an inspection really), the guy was mildly amazed that everything on the car works. I guess the cosmetics are a pretty good camoflage. Next we find out if we have all the forms filled out to the liking of the gals at the ND DOT office, I give myself a 50/50 shot.

Tonight I mocked up seatbelt installations for the front and back, I have locations all set for attach points. The rear seat is going to get lap belts only, without adding some structure there isn't any good place to mount the upper pivot for a shoulder belt.

Hot dang! My forms passed the evil eyes of the DOT gals, so we now have a ND title, registration, and license plates! I'm legal to leave the airport and drive on actual roads and streets, for the first time in 52 years. I was 2 years old when this car was last legal to travel.

ND has a license category called "antique", and the best part is it costs $10 to license it in that category and that is for the life of the car. So the whole title, registration, and licensing deal this morning cost me $28.50. That will be the cheapest part of this car, no question. And I get cool plates that say "Pioneer" on them, just like the covered wagons that everyone thinks are how we travel around here anyway.

While I was cutting bushings to the proper length for the seat belt install, I grabbed the trunk lid handle and shined it up, then painted the letters to make them pop a bit. The paint inside the emblem has all flaked away, I'll have to study how to fix that up. For now it'll just have to look vintage, not hard to get back apart to do correctly later.

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Congratulations on being legal. I envy the $28. That would just about cover the county and district fees the air resources board has imposed for the local air pollution basin out here. Other minor things like registration, tax, license are on top of those fees and we get to look forward to paying it every year. We have the historic vehicle category here but it doesn't appear to be any cheaper. There are also driving restrictions imposed so you can't license it as historic and use it for a daily driver.

On painting the emblem I do wish you luck and please post a brand or type of paint if you find something that works. I have tried just about everything we can get at retail here and it all comes out very dull looking when painted on the back side of the plastic. I honestly wonder if they use paint or some sort of colored metallic foil that is heat stamped in during mfg.

Howard, have you tried anything that worked to polish the plastic back to clear before painting the emblem? Mine is pretty hazy and like you say I don't think any color would show through well.

I tried ordinary plastic polish but that didn't seem to help.

One paint I just thought of and recently ran across is a model paint for RC cars that is applied to the back side of transparent lexan or other polycarbonates. Didn't try that and not sure it was around when I was playing with the emblems. No idea what the emblems are made of or if the paint is compatible.

Directions say it is lightly sprayed on the clear plastic from the inside of the model but as far as I know, haven't seen any finished to know what it looks like. Tamiya is the mfg.

Today was a fun day. I put about 40 miles on the car today, it is running great. Nothing leaking, temp went to about 2/3 scale and stayed there, no overflow from the radiator. The speedo quit bouncing around quite so much, and it seems within a couple mph of our gps speed on a phone. Drove across town and gave my wife a ride at our house.

I enlisted one of my pilots to help me finish the front seatbelt installation, since I couldn't tighten the middle two bolts by myself. We also aligned the front wheels, adjusting the caster, camber, and toe. I had to pop the steering wheel off and reset it after we got things set, the car drives nice and straight. The seat belts fit well, and seem to work OK - didn't test them to the ultimate though.

After a few miles the noisy lifter quieted down too, which made me pretty happy. I had added a quart of ATF to the oil in hopes that it would clean out, and that seems to have worked. So now I'll change the oil and skip the solvent this go-round.

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