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Comment by Jim Stoltz on October 15, 2014 at 1:37pm

I like to think so.

It was sitting behind a building that I had driven by hundreds of times. The building had intrigued me because it was obviously an old gas station. Had a big overhang with ornate pillars and stuff. I was thinking 1930s or 40s. I wasn't sure what sort of business operated out of there these days but it was clearly automotive. The property sloped down really steep behind the building so you couldn't see what was back there. When I answered the Craigslist ad, the guy had me meet him somewhere else, and them follow him to that building. It seemed sketchy at the time. It turns out that a big-rig towing company was storing stuff back there.

It was in a sad state of affairs. All the air had leaked out of the bags and it was sitting on the ground. Inspection sticker expired in 2008. Since they're 2-year stickers I figured it had to have been sitting there for anywhere between 6-7 years. The guy couldn't even remember how long it had been there. I brought that generator in the pic to make sure everything worked.

Someone had started tearing the engine down but gave up on it. Despite the neglect, I could tell that whoever owned it before took really good care of it. The guy selling it, the son-in-law of the owner of the tow yard, made me promise not to part it out - apparently he had some obligation to the previous owner that it would be back on the road at some point.

I struck the deal and when I went to pick it up the guy took me to yet another old building to pick up the engine parts that he had stored up in an attic. It's owned by the "Dead Metal Punk Rodz" car club where they fabricate hot rods. They had all sorts of interesting iron in all different states of modification in there. It was dirty and chaotic in there, but you could tell they loved what they did. They had no time for the old Allegro.

I paid the guy, threw the parts in my truck, and hoped they would stick to their promise to tow the RV to my house a couple of hours later. They did, and the rest is history as they say.

I kept the "Dead Metal Punk Rodz" decal on the front window.

Comment by Jim Stoltz on October 14, 2014 at 10:43pm

When I found it in December of last year. I've made some improvements since then.