3,500 mile road trip and met a fabo member

moparmat2000 said
Hi Y'all,

Yesterday afternoon I just finished a 3,500 mile road trip with my 6 year old son in my 2007 Mustang GT to visit my folks in N.J. , then to N.C. to visit my brother. On the way from N J. to N.C. I met up with a fellow fabo member. Dan " IMFURYS " lives in Va. It was only a short 2 hour stop off so I could get to my brothers place in N.C. by 8:30pm, although I could have spent all day there visiting and talking cars. Dan had some 4x6 speaker enclosure kick panels and wasnt too happy with them, but had drilled holes in them so they weren't returnable. He was gonna pitch em, I told him I would take em. I have a set for my 67, and these would be nice for my son's 69.

Dan and I have been friends on here since about the time he joined up. We have been trading ideas, and parts, and keeping one another up to date on different sales going on about the internet. Anyhoo, awhile back I custom made him a nice dual 3.5" dash speaker bracket, and sent it and mounting hardware as a gift. He showed me the bracket I made, and the speakers fit perfectly on it even though I didnt have any to pattern it after to make it.

So my son and I get there, Dan was a gracious host. We had some ice cream, and talked cars. He showed me his fresh machined 340 block, all his NOS and repo parts, and custom Treblig exhaust manifold kit. The most awesome part was the pair of NOS 69 formula S grilles in MoPar boxes. Looking at those confirmed for me how the center egg crates needed the sides black and the front edge as bare metal.

Then Dan hands me the kick panels in a box, along with the 4x6 pioneer speakers that fit them. Said they were a gift since he is going w different kick panels that use the 4.5"round speakers and cant use em, also in the box was a pair 3.5" pioneer dash speakers. So I'm like, are you sure? He says, a gift. I am floored, then he hooks me up with a bunch of shirts 3 are Barracuda shirts. One is a small for my son, then a large for my son, and a 2xl for me, along with an Outer Banks OBX Tee shirt, and V neck from the naval shipyard. A coffee mug from where he works, some heated back patches, since I suffer from a bad back as well, and a cool mopar pen.

He hands my son Patrick a box and in it is a cool Wile E. Coyote picture frame, pen, stickers, and a M2 cuda barn find.

Dan, I think you over did it a bit LoL. However, thank you again for the gifts and visit. I hope I didn't leave anything out. I am going to put the kick panels and speakers on my sons parts shelf for his car since it will get done before mine will.

Heres pix. I have other pix of my trip I will post up later. Hopefully Dan will post up the gifts I gave him from our visit on this thread, though they probably pale by comparison.

Matt

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Matt,
Thank you for the gracious write up, I do appreciate it. The honor was mine, of course. It's rare to meet my mentor here on FABO. I don't know if you meant to apply for the job, or what you were in for with all of my questions, but you got stuck with it, lol. I am constantly amazed in your innovations and knowledge you've been passing along to me (and I'm not even at the ""build" part yet). I think one day you were ready to strangle me as I was trying to keep up with all the cars, years and parts needed to do the front disc brake upgrade. Add to the fact that around here, there are no "junkyards" anymore, there are only a couple of "auto-recyclers" for me to even find these parts. They're lucky if they have a car that is from the mid 90's-all new stuff in them. So then you introduced me to a couple other of FABO's finest for some used parts and pretty much stocked my Rock Auto cart and got the shipping down to the lowest possible. After you still communicated with me after that (sorry about the temporary hair loss, lol), I knew I had a FABO 'bro for life. (Oh, still wanna get those bolts from you next time we trade parts).

What Matt modestly didn't say, is besides his teaching me, hooking me up with the cool gifts like the .40 Caliber shell casings valve stem caps that you custom made and gave me during your visit, that speaker mount is awesome and the speakers fit perfectly, is that he takes time from his busy life to just talk and be a friend. I hope everybody on this kick-@$$ site makes friendships or at least people you know to make deals with, ask or give advice, etc. If you have already worked deals or talked with Matt, then you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't had the chance, hopefully something will come up and you can. BTW, Matt's work, whether it's a restore on parts or some of the custom things he builds, is professional quality or if selling used, he accurately describes it's condition.

Anyway, as Matt said, I think we could have talked for hours or days, but I knew you had a schedule. This visit, you got to see my full 1:1 scale "model kit" parts, hopefully next visit, we'll actually get to see the elusive 69 340 S FB and my 48,500 original mile 72 Fury III. I did spend quite a bit of time Sunday, combining some boxes, labeling and putting them back up until I pull the "let's get is started trigger", lol. If things go well, I'll have my garage built to make things a little easier.

Can't wrap up without a shout-out to Matt's son, Patrick. Some of you may have seen pics Matt has posted in his build thread of Patrick working on his 69 notch, and I do mean working. He's already a chip off the old block. So it was cool to meet him as well. He's a great kid and hopefully will continue to carry the Mopar flag down the road.

With great respect to "Sensai Matt"

"Grasshopper" Dan.