Tara and I have been going to the local Summit Racing (McDonough, GA) every Monday for their weekly show-n-shine just to park up and open the Wagon trunk and shamelessly promote a couple of our pedal cars - namely the red fire truck pedal car and the orange Champion fifties-style pedal car.

We're getting a great reaction from people who seem to globally love these and hate the plastic pedal cars you can buy in the toy stores. But no sales as yet. :(

Still, you get to see a little bump in the web traffic on Monday night & Tuesday, so people are at least looking. If you see us there, drop by and say hello. If we're not with the car, pick up a card and call us and we'll come running!

A few more little things done on the wagon this weekend.

First was removing the wheels and painting the centers of the drums silver - it was a quick and dirty fix to the problem of having no room to fit the cones.

Then I scrounged up enough of the old trim fastenings to fit the trim...to one side of the wagon! I'll have to order some more, but at least Tara will see the trim  when she gets in the car.

Getting the indicators to ground to the bumper is still an issue, can't get one of them to work still. I suspect I'll have to buy a new housing.

A couple of weekends ago Tara decided to jump in and upholster her Tiki Wagon!

Although the vinyl seats were in pretty good shape, they were a bit tired and a boring dark red color and Tara wanted to "spice things up" a bit. Well, I think we found the right material for that, that's for sure.

We bought a roll of pink, furry leopard-like print material that I joke is so nice to sit on it that everyone should drive in it naked. Tara made me promise not to though.

Amazingly to me, Tara made these truly fitted covers over the weekend, took the seats apart and fitted them to the seats properly. Not just elasticated slip-ons, but really fitted. It makes a world of difference.

Love them or hate them (and every woman who sees them, loves them) they certainly liven up the interior. Door panels will come soon, Tara is already planning how to replace the flat sheets and re-use the top fiberglass panel.

We got the wagon back today. Our friend Alex had it for a while to check it out and fix brakes, transmission and a bunch of leaks.

Now it drives much better. Tara got the groceries in it and dropped off Molly at a sleepover, so it looks like it's finally settling in as a daily driver!

Just in time, because tomorrow is our first Royal Tiki sales event - the local elementary school Fall Festival where we're selling our Skateboard Racks.

How do I cover up the ugly centers of my wheels?

I can't fit the cones that came with the wheels - there's no room.

I thought spider caps but couldn't find any 5x5 when I took a quick look. Any ideas?

Tara and I had a good day working on the wagon together. The front bumper got polished and the side trim got sorted, polished and trial fitted while I added seat belts to the middle row and bolted in all the seats.

The seats and belts were quite tricky with all the levers attached to tilt the seat backs forward, but it was good to get it done.

I also finished off the brake drums, sprayed them black, replaced the lugs and fitted the new wheels all round. Scrubbing the whitewalls was nice to get rid of the blue they came covered in.

To celebrate we went out to dinner, kids in the back seat facing backwards which they love!

Wow, I put the back bumper on the wagon today - not as easy as I'd hoped!

I'd bought this bumper from the Internet and although it was a 64 Catalina I discovered that the bolt holes are in the wrong place. Looking at the Catalina convertible, the holes are a different place on the wagon. Just two inches further outboard.

I decided to move the brackets out rather than drill new holes, but they aren't easy to get at with the gas tank installed. But after much cussing I got them off, added some longer bolts and some 1 3/6 tube used as a spacer and got them back on. The bumper now fits perfectly, albeit a little bent. Still, $500 for chroming isn't on the cards right now, and it already looks a whole lot better. Especially with the ONE4MOM plate!

Yesterday we drove the 90 minutes back to James' shop to get the Tiki Wagon for the last time.

It looks much better now, with bigger flake on the roof and virtually no paint blemishes (ok, there are a few, but have you ever looked really closely at your car? all mine have some flaws)

I'm very pleased, the color is certainly bright and girly!

The new hubs are on their way apparently, so they can go on and then it'll be off to Alex's for some engine TLC..

James called at lunchtime to say that the rainbow flake we wanted for the wagon is on backorder - with no date specified. So, since I wanted mega-flake - or as James calls it, "bass boat flake" - we're left with a choice of silver, gold or black basecoat with big flake on top.

After a brief talk with Tara, silver it was.

Now, fast forward 5 hours until dinner time and Tara admits that she doesn't like silver! A quick call to james and we're back on track with the ivory/white roof with minimal silver flake. Who knew getting a car painted could be so stressful?

Tara and I drove the wagon back to James for fixing the paint today. He said that he can quite easily fix it by sanding with 1000 grit and rubbing out with compound again. The roof will probably be resprayed, so we're gonna take advantage of that and change the paint a little.

This time we're going for rainbow flake which is a lot more noticeable than the silver flake we used before. Trouble is, silver flake over white doesn't show up very well - and we wanted the "bass boat style " metalflake! James is also going to add more pink pearl to try and give the roof more pink tint.

He's going to stripe the wagon too, so should look nice.