Introducing a Man Who Needs No Introduction (so I will, anyway.)
Many of you are probably wondering- - "Who is this RedZed guy, and why hasn`t el Ducko properly introduced him?" Well, ya see, it`s like this- - he's been around a long time already.
(See those little "age" and "joined" thingies on the left of his posts?) Besides, how many Datsun jokes have you heard lately?
(Hey! You! ...kid in the back. Whataya mean, " Mommy, what`s a Datsun? ")
Well, before you yank the kid out of his seat and go wash his mouth out with soap- - Yes, Virginia, there is, make that
was, a Datsun Motor Company, and it made a sporty model called the 220-Z. It later morphed into a 240-Z, then a 260-Z, then a 280-Z, then a 300-Z, then a... proving once and for all that the Japanese marketing system is really good at counting up by twenties. ...gained weight every time it morphed, kinda like that recent girlfriend of yours did, Bubbie. (Sorry about that.) Yeah, painful it was, Master Yoda. The force within it, strong was, but not so strong as to resist the dark side, beneath which rust was gathering. ...gathering was. Whatever.
But what does it matter, anyway? ...turns out that RedZed`s red "Z" was a Beemer, a BMW Z4. ...says he had bad luck with it, and got rid of it, but boy was it sexy-looking. ...and expensive to keep running, once the warranty ran out.
Yeah, I dated a few girls like that, too, but cars...? Beemers have lots of highly-engineered, high-German plastic parts which like to come apart, occasionally at high speed, mostly at inconvenient times. My son in law has had several. ...bought at auction, he installs several hundred dollars of plastic parts in `em and sells `em on Craig`s List.
Well, that Datsun 280-Z was as close to sexy-looking as I ever got. ...mid-life crisis, ya know. I bought one second-hand, a formerly green one which had, in its ten-year life, been painted red, possibly by a kindergarten finger-painting-class-gone-street-gang. That little sucker would get up and go!
It got up and went to the Datsun dealer once, for repairs. They shook their heads, said something in South Texas Japanese which translates to "So sorry. Datsun now Nissan. Hit road, Jack. Have nice day elsewhere." With no warranty, as RedZed found out too, you need your own mechanic and plenty of jack to keep it running. ...or like my friend who owned two Jaguars, you need a spare because the other one is always in the shop.
My red Z had two convenient compartments behind the two bucket seats, one just big enough for a set of jumper cables and the other just right for a nylon tow strap. It was fuel-injected, meaning that when gasoline started containing ethanol, the goo from the hoses clogged the injectors regularly. (Apparently the word neoprene had no Japanese equivalent, in those days.)
But I loved that car. Even though I am somewhat, make that much what, bigger than the average Japanese driver, each time I stepped down and wedged my rear into its driver`s seat, looked out past that long hood through the haze in the windshield safety laminate, and strapped myself in, I felt like I was doing a pre-flight check in a fighter plane.
Then, I would turn the ignition switch, watch the needles kick, and hope that there was enough battery charge left to get it going. Often there was, and I would crank and crank until the thing started with a throaty roar.
"Gotta get some cough drops for the poor thing," I would mutter, then slip it into gear. The first clutch was so far gone that you could slip it into gear without using the clutch, and you could run the RPM up and wait until the car itself caught up. Second clutch was stiffer, but I got a good price on it. Third clutch, a few months later, had a better spring in it, and didn`t split like the second one.
The polymer fiber in the car`s rugs had deteriorated from the sun`s ultraviolet rays, but I didn`t care. I would roll the windows down, feel the wind in my hair, and let the plastic particles blow out and fall where they may. This strategy worked well until I hefted something compact and heavy, I forget what, into the little area behind the passenger seat and it kept on going. ...not good. ...metal mites, a.k.a. rust, at work. I bought a set of cheap floor mats, but I knew that our days together were limited.
"Oh, what a wonderful car!" oldest daughter`s mother-in-law told me. "I had my first kiss in one. Later..." I don`t think you want to know what else she had done there. I sold it to her for $100. It lasted about a year. Daughter`s marriage lasted a bit longer, but not much.
...coincidence? I dunno. It wasn`t covered in the owners` manual, and the warranty had expired much earlier. All I can tell you is that our buddy, WD`s own RedZed, his former car not withstanding, is a whole lot more solid than... Uh... make that, in better repair than... uh... lower mileage than... uh...
Anyway, hallucinogenic mushroom hobby aside, you`ll like having RedZed as a moderator. He gives good, solid sausage advice, understands the Polish language, speaks a Canadian dialect of English too (quite an accomplishment, eh?), and has overcome many adversities in life. ...such as the frustrations of owning a red Z of any make. ...sorry- - make that a Red-Zed.
Duk
Please allow me to administer it! 
