milliways_bar | (no subject)

Current Mood: happy

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Bonnie came in from outdoors, this time bearing a grease rag which takes off the excess but doesn't do anything for the general condition. She tucks it into the pocket of her overalls. So far, so good - V8s are her specialty. Along with turbines, but then, she can't ask for everything.

"Bar, something icy, cold, and caffeinated."

Overalls, boots, and ponytail. Par usual. A tall soda appears and Bonnie tackles it happily.

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Ray emerged from the men's room, shaking his hands off. "Hey, Bonnie," he called at the familiar sight. "How's it going out there? I'd've been out sooner, but I've been playing with the dinosaurs."

Grease spots on her forehead, swipes against her arm where she'd tried to wipe it off. But really, there was no happier sight than this woman half grease-coated and slightly sweat, ready to work on cars. "I've been having a blast, Ray. I've upgraded all your fuel lines and the pump, been working on installing the injectors - I've had to lengthen the stroke and the cylinders to make room, but all that'll mean is adding a little bit of a cowl to the hood - I can do that in just a few hours."

"Beautiful!" Ray exclaims. He's used to people being smudged and blobbed with sticky stuff at the end of a hard day's work- heck, he keeps a bottle of undiluted Dr. Bronner's in the Firehouse bathroom to get ectoplasm and engine grease out of his hair. "Will you be needing any help with that? Extra tools, a spare pair of hands, anything?"

"Kitt's been helping me with the fiddly calibrations. Nobody better to help with a car than a car, you know?" Bonnie laughed. "But when it comes to time to add the cowls and stuff, oh yeah. I'll be needing plenty of help then. I'll have to pull up the generator and my air compressor and bring in some gas for my blowtorch."

Something to be said for a woman who keeps her own blowtorch.

"I'll need to upgrade the radiator, though. To keep all this under temp limits? Having a car like Kitt or Karr is like owning your own nuclear reactor with all the coolants you have to pump through."

"Hey, not a problem. I don't have to tow around the proton pack all day for nothing, you know. And the radiator's fine- I might be able to suggest a few options with that, given that the proton packs are man-portable nuclear accelerators and we do have to keep them cool if we want to avoid losing little things like our clothes or our kidneys."

(OOC: Ten thousand apologies for slow response, but the bedamned LJ has been failing woefully to give me most of my email notifications for the past 2-3 days now. feh.)

((No problem - I know how it goes.))

"...I hadn't even thought of that," Bonnie said with a blink. "Fantastic! Between the two of us, we'll be able to work out something great. I know how much heat can come off Kitt's engine on a low-function day, and... you could have a steak well-done off his hood if it weren't for those coolant systems. I can... kind of adapt them, but without installing a turbine in Ecto, it wouldn't work the same. I'm going to have to completely overhaul the EGR system, though. For emissions."

"No arguments here," Ray says. "If it works, and if I know how to maintain it once I get the old girl home, that's the important part. Not like she's exactly a candidate for antique or historical-value license plates in New York, anyway. Modify all you want- I just don't want it to be an imposition on you, that's all."

Bonnie grinned. "A bottle of STP fuel injector cleaner every now and then, gas treatment, regular oil changes, and you'll be fine. If you want to come out, I'll show you what I've done so far..."

She suggested it with a grin that most people would call flirtatious. To her, it was pride in her job.

Ray smiled back with a smile that everyone in the world would call blissfully oblivious. Ray wouldn't generally recognize flirtatious until it actively hit him over the head, and then he'd go all horribly embarrassed. Or something. "Okay," he said, with all the glee of a twelve-year-old boy asked if he wanted to see the innards of his uncle's Corvette.

That got a laugh and, soda and all, she dropped from her stool to head out. "I don't know if you'd be up for lowering her a little," she explained as she walked. "Like I said, it'd help center of gravity, but I've heard about New York potholes."

"Given that we're located in a part of Tribeca where a lot of the streets are still cobblestones, it's really not something that we can do," Ray says regretfully. "Believe me, I've considered it. Between the cobbles, the potholes, and the fact that the city still hasn't finished their repair work on the FDR Drive after a good ten years of hammering away, it's just not worth taking that chance."

"Well then. The only other thing I can suggest... It's barely been instituted in Kitt, I don't know if Karr has it... all wheel drive with ECMM-controlled air shocks?"

Bonnie had Ecto's hood actually removed, propped to the side for even more room. The tent was up, crystals waiting to be placed for an antistatic environment, but as it was, there was just Ecto and plenty of tools.

The engine was gleaming. Looked like Bonnie had ended up with the majority of the grease.

"All right... I had to lengthen the bore by just over two inches to accomodate the injectors and new plugs..."

"Huh. Wouldn't that be a significantly more major overhaul than you were originally planning on? I don't intend for this to be an imposition, you realize."

He leaned over to get a good look at the changes that'd been made. "Fair enough... wow, you don't do things by half measures, do you."

[OOC: 1 AM. Work inna morning. Sob, weep, etc. Shall we assume they just geek at each other and resume work on the car?]

"A few more wires, a few more lines of code..." Bonnie chuckled. "Ray, I could probably build a whole new car in just under two weeks with the right equipment. I'm going slower here because I don't have the semi or the lab, but... Really, I can manage. The end choice is yours - how far do you want to go? This is relaxation, to me."

Bonnie looked proud of herself. Then again, this was what she'd spent so much of her life working toward.

((That's peachy keen. *nodnod* God knows Bonnie's got her teeth sunk into this job.))

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