At this point I was back from college and working full time.  Classic Mustangs were becoming a pretty hot item.  Jim Smart was collecting and publishing data on them.  Parts vendors and restoration shops that specialized in those cars were popping up all around the country.  Two of them local to me were Pony and Corral and Mustang Magic.  Neither of them are still in business, but I spent quite a bit of money at both of them on parts and repairs over the next few years.

So I chose to jump on the “restoration” bandwagon.  The body of this car was in pretty sad and rusted shape at this point.  The drive train and suspension were still in serviceable shape, so I concentrated on the body to start.  The first step was to have the rear quarter panels replaced as they were pretty badly rusted.  I shopped around and chose to have a company that specialized in Mustangs called Pony Car Specialists do the installation.  The “owner” of the company was a woman named Cindy.  Unfortunately a lot of the Mustang specialists were very much “fly by night” companies that had no business being in that line of work at all.  Unfortunately the company I chose was one of those.  Their prices for parts were just a little bit better than everybody else.  But their bodywork was about as bad as it gets.

I spoke with Cindy on the phone and drove my car over to her “shop”, which turned out to be her house.  She and her mechanic looked the car over and agreed to repair both rear quarter panels, one of the front fenders, and repair the rusted floors.  I left the car and was told it would be a few weeks.  I waited patiently and eventually got the call that the car was done.  I was given a different address to pick up the car, which was the first thing I thought was strange.  That address turned out to be the home address of the body mechanic. When I looked at my car I could see that the quarter panels and fender had been replaced.  The alignment on the quarter panels was beyond atrocious as they weren’t even close.  Where they had been tacked on was covered with about 1/2″ of body putty that hadn’t been sanded down.  The fender had emblem holes drilled in the wrong place, and for the wrong emblems.  The floor hadn’t even been touched.  I complained and refused to pay until the work was completed satisfactorily.  The mechanic agreed to make the repairs, but it would take additional time.  I agreed to give him the time he required.  I also complained to Cindy, but she wasn’t interested in getting involved, claiming that she only handled the parts and had nothing to do with the body work.  Shows what kind if business person she was.  Not even willing to stand behind her own company’s work.  That speaks volumes about her and her bogus company.

A few days later I get a call telling me my car was now ready.  I drove over to the mechanic’s house to inspect the work.  The front fender was untouched since the last time.  The putty on the rear quarter panels had been sanded down a bit, but weren’t looking much better and the alignment still wasn’t even close.  The floors had been sanded a little but I could still see through some pinholes where they were rusted out.  This time the mechanic wasn’t even there, so I spoke with his father.  Again I said the work wasn’t acceptable and I would not pay until it was completed.  The father tried to argue with me some but in the end they kept the car for a few more days to make another attempt at finishing the work.

A few days later I got another phone call that the car was ready again.  I drove over to take a look and see if my concerns had been addressed.  Once I arrived I looked the car over.  No change on the quarter panels or fender.  The floor had a metal plate welded over top of one of the rusted areas.  The rest of the floor was unchanged and covered with surface rust.  I was told that the car must have been in an accident in the past which caused the quarter panels to be out of alignment, so he was unable to align them properly.  I pointed out that the panels were aligned much better before he replaced them and that his job which I had hired him to do was to repair the damage.  I also noticed that the car had about 100 miles more on the odometer than when I dropped it off.  When I questioned him about this it seems he had been using the car for transportation while he was working on it.  We haggled for a while and finally agreed on a reduced price for the work since I was going to have to get it repaired again somewhere else.  I drove the car home and tried to move on.

Once I got home I found a few more problems with the work that had been done.  The next day the car wouldn’t start which surprised me since I had purchased a new battery just a month prior.  Upon opening the hood I found my battery with a big fiberglass patch on it and evidence of battery acid having been sprayed around the engine compartment.  I called the mechanic once again to ask what had happened to my new battery.  Seems he had managed to cause the battery to fall out of the battery tray and hit the fan while he was joy riding in my car.  So now i needed a new battery to replace my new battery.  We negotiated for him to refund some money to pay for that.

Other problems I found over time was that the bottom of the fender he had installed was welded on rather than being bolted on.  I discovered this the first time I tried to remove the fender.  When he replaced the rear quarters he had welded the rear valance on as well rather than bolting it on.  He had snapped off a couple of the bolts where the bumper brackets attached to the frame. which I had to drill out and replace.  And then to add insult to injury the 1/2″ thick body putty covering the seam where he had welded on the quarter panels started bubbling up and cracking as the quarter panels both came loose.

None of this had gone the way I had hoped, and I had to have almost all the work I had paid for done over.  Chalk that one up to experience I guess.  I learned that anybody can call themselves a “specialist”, but that doesn’t make it true.  Next step was to start collecting some additional parts and prepare for a trip to the next body shop.  At least as soon as I could find one I could trust.

Now I had completed high school and was ready to move on to college.  And of course my trusty Mustang accompanied me.  I chose to go to school at a small college located in the western part of Maryland.  That part of Maryland gets a fair bit of snow during the winter.  Typically it starts sometime in October and snow remains on the ground until Spring.  So I added a pair of snow tires to the back of the car and survived several winters that way.  During this time I pretty much drove the car as is, only fixing any safety related issues that came up.  The car was subjected to plenty of snow, salt, and other chemicals they used to treat the roads.  Needless to say the car took quite a beating during those years.  Big block Mustangs probably aren’t most people’s first choice for a winter beater.  But it served me well during those years and I learned how to drive that car in the snow pretty well.

Every Spring after the snow started melting and the campus roads were clear, I used to see a Boss 429 Mustang driving along the main road through campus.  I didn’t see it very often as the owner only brought it out on nice sunny days.  After seeing that car several times over the next few years I eventually stumbled on where it was kept.  One day I was walking through the town and I saw the door open up on a small white one car garage.  I head a car start up inside the garage.  The exhaust note sounded pretty healthy so I kept watching.  A car slowly backed out of that garage.  It was the Boss 429 Mustang I had been watching over the past several years.  It sat in the driveway and idled as the owner allowed it to warm up while he closed the garage door.  The exhaust note sounded pretty amazing.  Those engines had a sound all their own and you didn’t get to hear one very often, even back then.  That was in the mid 1970s and was the only time I saw that particular car going in and out of that garage.  I sometimes wonder whether that garage is still there and still houses that particular Mustang or not.  One of these days I may make the trip (about 150 miles) to look and see.

I had now owned and driven this car for a little while, and became interested in enhancing its’ performance a bit.  My friend Jim had a copy of the Ford Muscle Parts book.  This book was published by Ford, and contained proven engine combinations using Ford factory performance parts.  The engine combinations had really cool names like Impressor, Controller, and Dominator.  I Xeroxed Jim’s copy and spent hours studying it so that I could come up with what I thought would be the perfect bolt on engine combination for my Mustang.  Eventually I developed a plan that involved a rebuild and internal modifications, with later bolt on modifications to follow.  I don’t know what happened to my copied pages after all of these years.  After searching the Internet I recently found a copy of the relevant pages on Woody G’s Fairlane site.  Things have advanced a bit since that book was published, but at the time I considered it the gospel.

I purchased a Ford windage tray to help control the oil in the oil pan and keep it off the spinning crankshaft.  That particular part is still in use on my current engine today.  The muscle parts book said I should replace my harmonic balancer with a more performance oriented part.  So I ordered a balancer and timing pointer. I also purchased a solid lifter camshaft from the 427 high performance motor along with the requisite rocker arms and pushrods.  There was a Ford dealer that still stocked the camshaft, but the rocker arms were more difficult to locate.  I ended up visiting several Ford dealers in my area and bought whatever remaining stock they had until I had enough rocker arms to make a complete set.  The switch to a solid lifter camshaft proved to be my undoing in this plan, but I wouldn’t learn that lesson until I started my newly rebuilt motor for the first time.

I received assistance from several of my friends during the rebuild process.  Some of it was even helpful.  Eventually I managed to collect all the parts, have the machine work done, assemble the engine, and get it installed back in the car.  The big moment when I fired up the engine had finally arrived.  Once it started it ran rough and made a loud tapping sound.  I pulled the valve covers back off and inspected the valvetrain.  It turns out that the engine had short valve covers that didn’t have sufficient clearance for the adjustment screws on the rocker arms.  The previous hydraulic camshaft didn’t have these adjustment screws.  So the adjustment screws were coming into contact with the underside and baffles on the valve covers.  The end results was a few bent pushrods and one pair of very badly dented valve covers.  I replaced the bent pushrods and began a search for a set of valve covers that would clear the rocker arms.  The first pair I ended up with cleared the rocker arms, but hit the master cylinder and power assist when the motor vibrated.  This ended up ruining my master cylinder.  Eventually I came up with a pair that cleared everything off of an old Mercury engine.  But the first pair of valve covers I bought in the interim had an interesting story to go with it.

I had been religiously searching the classified ads for performance parts every week.  Eventually I found an ad with quite a bit of performance parts, including a set of valve covers and a set of headers that should fit my car.  I called the number in the ad and set a time to look over the parts.  The gentleman who had placed the ad was into performance cars.  His son also was into the hobby, and between the two of them they had quite a collection of parts stored in a garage behind their house.  He walked me back to the garage and opened it up.  There hanging on the wall was the rusty set of headers he had for sale.  I wasn’t very impressed with the condition they were in as I didn’t have a good way to clean them up.  He did have a pair of valve covers which I ended up buying.  They fit the motor and almost cleared the master cylinder.  A little bit of grinding on the valve covers got them closer, but still not quite right.  But then I looked around the garage and was amazed at what else I saw.

What I saw was a 1969 Mustang with a rather large hood scoop and some special markings on the front fenders.  What I was looking at was a genuine Boss 429 Mustang that this gentleman had sitting in his garage. For those who don’t know what a Boss 429 Mustang is I’ll try to explain.  In 1969 the major American car manufacturers were all involved with racing, based on the belief that cars that won races also sold well.  I believe the slogan was something like “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday”.  NASCAR racing was one of the most popular racing venues back then, as it still is today.The Chrysler corporation had a great engine known as the Hemi, named for its’ hemispherical combustion chamber head design, which made them a dominant force in most forms of racing at that time, including NASCAR and drag racing.  In fact, in top fuel and funny car drag racing those engines still dominate today.  That’s how successful that engine has been, and the name Hemi is still legendary with automotive enthusiasts today.  Ford attempted to counter with a new engine design known as the Boss 429.  NASCAR homologation rules stated that at least 500 cars fitted with this engine had to be sold to the general public in order to be legal for racing.  Ford could have installed this engine in one of their larger cars, but instead chose to install it in the Mustang body, which was no small feat as the engine was so wide and the Mustang engine compartment was not.  Ford contracted with a company called Kar Kraft to convert regular Mustangs off of the assembly line into Boss 429 Mustangs.  Fewer than 1500 of these cars were built and are pretty rare and very valuable today.

Here’s a picture of a Boss 429 Mustang

The car I was looking at had an unbelievably low number of miles on it.  I can’t remember exactly right now how many miles it was, but I want to say something like 600 miles.  All I can remember for sure is that it was practically brand new.  Except for one thing.  It had no engine in it.  However right next to the car was a brand new Boss 429 engine sitting on a stand.  When I asked the man about the car and engine he explained that he had purchased the car new.  The engine had failed while the car was still under warranty.  So he pulled the engine and returned it to Ford for post mortem analysis.  Ford supplied him with a new engine under warranty for him to install himself.  He further explained that Boss 429 Mustangs came with one of two versions of the Boss 429 engine.  There was an “S” version and a “T” version.  According to him, counter-intuitively, the “S” version was a track version and the “T” version was a street version.  He had originally had the “S” version, and the replacement from Ford was the “T” version.  So he was involved in a debate with Ford over whether he should get the same type of engine his car had come with originally, which was the “S” engine , or the current replacement “T” engine.  I don’t know how the discussion ever turned out.  I’ve also heard different versions of which engine was more desirable and why.  But this is the engine story as I recollect the gentleman explaining it to me.  All I know is that I drooled over car, and then paid for my valve covers and left.  But there could still be an exceptionally low mileage garaged Boss 429 Mustang with a brand new engine out there somewhere.

Here’s a picture of the Boss 429 engine that made that car so special.

I have another Boss 429 Mustang story I’m saving for later.  As far as the rebuilt engine turned out, I’m happy to say I did eventually get it running.  There was an issue with oil leaking, and I had to reinstall the intake manifold to fix a problem with coolant being sucked into the engine and blown out the exhaust.  I also had to pull both heads and have the valve guides replaced as the rebuilt engine was burning oil that leaked past the valve guides.  But this wasn’t the last engine I installed in this car.  But I got a whole lot of miles and enjoyment out of this one, as well as the satisfaction that I had rebuilt it myself.

***UPDATE***
Mustang Monthly has published an article about a Boss 429 Mustang and the owner’s story matches what I remember almost exactly. The story is from 2009, but I didn’t see it until recently. Here’s the link to the story.

One thing that everybody noticed on this car is how little room there was between the engine and the shock towers.  The shock towers are a part of the body where the front suspension attaches.  It is an integral part of the body and isn’t something that is removable without performing major modifications to the front suspension to go along with the shock tower removal.  On Mustangs they are located in the engine compartment on either side of the engine.  They take up valuable space in the engine compartment, and in the case of a big block Mustang there is very little room to spare.  This lack of space interferes with the owner’s ability to reach the spark plugs for maintenance.  And for a 60’s muscle car routine maintenance needed to be performed much more frequently than for the cars of today.  Even today, anybody who looks at this car asks how in the world I change the spark plugs.  And nobody believes my answer that I can do it without much trouble.  Of course until I learned the proper technique and had acquired the proper tools it seemed to be almost impossible.

It was the first time to change my spark plugs and I knew I was in big trouble.  I had driven the car over to me friend Pete’s house to work on it in his driveway.  Pete was the younger brother of Charlie who had rebuilt the motor in my friend Jack’s Dodge Coronet RT I mentioned in an earlier post.  Charlie owned a Camaro with a 350 small block engine.  He had built pretty much everything on the car himself.  He even painted the car in his garage.  He seemed to be able to do just about anything automotive.  Too bad he wasn’t helping us with this job.

Pete and I proceeded to start working on removing the spark plugs.  A few of the plugs came out fairly easily.  Then I moved on to the more difficult to reach plugs.  Pete and I tried all sorts of extensions, swivels, and sockets.  I had a swivel tool my father had bought me that would fit on the plugs, but I couldn’t get them to turn.  Finally we managed to break a few insulators.  We were both getting frustrated and about ready to give up.  That’s when another neighbor, Fred came to our rescue.  This is a different Fred than the one who owned the 454 Nova I mentioned in a previous post.

Fred was a long time Ford mechanic.  He had motorcycles and tools in his garage.  He had sports cars parked in the yard along the street in front of his house.  He had a boat and trailer that he took out fishing on occasion.  And he also owned a Ford muscle car.  It was a 1966 Ford 7 Litre. You are probably thinking around now, just what is a Ford 7 Litre?  Here’s the definition per the web site 7litre.org.

In 1965 Ford Motor Car Division decided to introduce a new engine, using the FE block from the 352, 360 and 390 ci engines. This new powerplant would sport 428 ci, and would be a high torque, streetable big block. It was dubbed the “Thunderbird 7-Litre ” and was slotted to appear on some of the 1966 models. Fords executives decided that what better way to introduce the engine than to create a special marque to showcase it. Using a Galaxie 500, with an XL Interior, some added features and some custom badges, the FORD 7-Litre was born. It was available in either Hardtop or Convertible, in either automatic or 4 speed transmission. Marketed as the “Quietest Quick Car, or the Quickest Quiet Car”, the car offered a combination of comfort and muscle. It had available options like Power Steering, Air Conditioning, Power Windows, Power Seats Cruise Control and AM/FM Radio. Available one year only as a separate model, it was also available as an option package on the 1967 model. It is interesting to note that a 1966 XL could be ordered with the 428 for several hundred dollars less, making the 7-Litre that much more rare, as you were paying extra for the badges.

Fred’s car was a 1966 hardtop with a 4 speed.  It was black with a red interior.  I remember the bucket seats, wood grain steering wheel, and console.  Fred rarely drove the car and had it mainly to tow his boat.  It sat for months in his front yard.  When he was ready to take his boat out he would tinker with the car to get it running.  Next he would run it around the neighborhood a couple of times to blow out some smoke and make sure everything was working.  Finally he would hook up the trailer and take his boat out.  At the end of the day he would park the car back in his front yard until the next time he wanted to take the boat out.

None of us realized how rare these cars were at the time.  According to the 7 Litre web site in 1966 there were approximately 1717 of these cars built as a hardtop with 4 speed transmission.  Automatic transmissions were far more popular in those cars.  I remember when Fred finally decided to sell the car.  I would have been interested if I had known, but another neighbor, John, jumped on the chance.  He said he wanted to get the car before I did.  Unfortunately John failed to take into account the fact that after you purchased a car you needed money for things like tags, registration, gas, and upkeep.  I think he thought the car would run by itself or on the beer he purchased.  So he never actually registered the car or had a legal set of tags on it.  Being a clever sort of guy, he would save up enough money for some gas or collect donations from friends for beer and a joy ride.  He would then “borrow” a set of tags from another car in the neighborhood, put them on his car, and take it for a ride.  At the end of the night he would put back the tags so nobody would be the wiser, or so he thought.  The flaw in his plan was that he would get pulled over by the police and the tags wouldn’t belong to his car.  He usually borrowed the tags from Dave’s car and Dave found out when the police contacted him.  Dave took out his revenge by using a pellet gun and shooting the windshield and body of the car full of holes.  Eventually John sold the car for beer money to another friend whose name I can’t remember.  This guy went around buying old Ford Galaxies and had a collection of them in a barn.  I don’t know whatever happened to the Galaxie collection or to this particular car.  I would love to find out and see the car again.  If anybody finds a Ford 7 Litre that matches the description above and has what looks like bullet holes in the side of the car you found the one I’m talking about.

Here’s a picture of a 1966 Ford 7 Litre hardtop.

But back to the spark plugs.  Fred saw us working on my Mustang and came over to take a look.  I think he liked the car, especially when he saw it had a big block engine, the little brother to his 7 Litre.  He also saw the distress Pete and I were in.  He said “I know the secret to getting the plugs out on that car.  Wait here a minute”.  He went home and grabbed a few tools out of his tool box.  He came back with a 1/2″ drive ratchet, a spark plug socket, and his secret weapon, a 1″ extension.  He said with the 1″ extension we should have no problem removing and reinstalling the plugs.  And we were amazed when we tried it and he was right.  The next day I ran over to Sears and purchased my very own 1″ extension.  I still have it today and I could never change the spark plugs on that car without it.  Fred, if you are out there reading this, I owe you a huge thanks for that tip.  You were a life saver to this dumb rookie kid who had very little clue as to what he was doing.

Now I had the car, and it was legal to drive.  It was registered with the state, and I had my license plates installed.  Everybody I knew wanted to check out my new ride.  My friends Jim and Randy came by and immediately started finding faults for me.  Isn’t that what friends are for?  The performance wasn’t quite what they expected.  Randy’s first observation was that the fuel filter was most likely clogged, and that the metal fuel line ran too close to the motor, which would cause the fuel to boil in the fuel line.  His recommendation was to replace the metal fuel line with neoprene and add a larger fuel filter in that line.  Replacing the fuel filter was probably not a bad idea, but in hindsight the metal fuel line was not really a problem and also safer as well.  But based on the sage wisdom of those older and wiser than me I made the change as Randy had recommended.  I don’t think it made a difference from a performance standpoint, but everybody was happy I had made the change.

The next thing Randy did was grab hold of the fan blades and started wiggling them.  When he did so the front bearing on the water pump started leaking.  Randy told me “Yup, you need a new water pump.  Bad bearing”.  With my limited knowledge at the time I wasn’t sure if the water pump had been bad or if Randy’s action had damaged it.  But the bearing was now bad and I needed a new water pump.  Repair number two was performed in short order.  This car ownership thing was going to be expensive.  I just wanted to be able to drive, not spend my time fixing stuff.  But I hadn’t seen anything yet.  This was small stuff compared to some of the fixes coming up next.

My friend Jim had been bragging about my car to some of his friends.  Unbeknownst to me, he had challenged some of them to a race.  We went out driving, and Jim asked if he could drive my car.  Next thing I knew we were at his place of work and he was ready to race in my car against a couple of his friends.  I wasn’t completely pleased with the situation, but Jim was known for being able to squeeze every last bit of performance out of a car, and I was curious to see how my new car would fare against these other vehicles.  So off we went.

My memory is a bit hazy about the other two cars Jim was racing.  I believe one as an early to mid 60’s Chevelle.  I do remember that car had a built up 283, 4 speed, and some very steep gears, like 5.38 or so.  That car jumped out ahead, and I could see the driver shifting furiously through the gears about as fast as he could move.  It was almost comical as the car only spent a few seconds in each gear before he had to shift again.  He made it through all 4 gears in the same time that Jim got through first and was just shifting to second.  At that point the other car ran out of steam and we passed him by.  But for the time it lasted that car was really moving.  If I can remember correctly I believe the other car was a Nova with a small block and 4 speed.  We stayed together fairly even with him just a nose ahead.  Eventually he ran out of gear as well and we passed him too.  As we turned around for another pass Jim started to panic.  He said the steering was getting looser as he drove and that we needed to get home right away.  He wouldn’t even let us switch drivers back so I could see what the issue was.

By the time we got back home there was quite a bit of play in the steering.  Now I knew why the car had come with a spare steering box in the trunk.  The previous owner must have known there was a problem with excessive play in the steering.  He had apparently cranked down on the adjuster on the steering box to take up any play temporarily, but the maladjustment caused the gears in the steering box to wear excessively.  More evidence that this car had been through some calamity during its’ past life.

Replacing a steering box was beyond my ability at the time, although it really wasn’t a difficult job.  In fact I later replaced one myself.  But at the time that was way more than I wanted to handle.  I probably wouldn’t even know what a steering box looked like or where to find it on the car.  I found a local business called Jim’s Mustang Service that I chose to replace the steering box.  After all, he advertised that he specialized in Mustangs.  I think that after I started coming to him on a regular basis he was probably considering changing the name of his business.  I brought the car to him.  He inspected the replacement steering box I had and said he could install it.  He made short work of the job and I was back on the road the next day.

The next incident requiring a repair involved my friends Jim and Randy once again.  While Jim had gotten to ride in, and even drive the car, Randy wanted to see just how fast it was.  So we all climbed aboard and I took them both for a demonstration ride.  Jim had bragged about the car to Randy, but Randy wasn’t very impressed with the performance.  He decided it must be my driving that was the issue.  He may have been right, I don’t know.  But I wasn’t keen on letting either of them drive my car.

Randy pressed the issue, and Jim joined him.  They both kept insisting that Jim drive the car.  A lot of finger pointing and name calling ensued.  I continued to refuse.  Some more insults were exchanged.  I was really boiling mad at that point.  I told them “Fine, go ahead”.  I was so angry that I agreed just to get them off my back. It wasn’t that Jim was a bad driver or that I didn’t trust him.  Jim was a very good driver and a lot more experienced than I was.  He used to be a driver’s education aid at our local high school.  He had taught most of my friends how to drive.  I just didn’t want to give up control of my own car.  That and they had both made me so angry I couldn’t take it anymore.

So now Jim was driving my prized possession again.  He took off and banged a quick shift into second gear.  Unfortunately there was a loud clunk from under the dashboard at that point, and the clutch pedal didn’t come back up the way it was supposed to.  Jim had to put his foot under the clutch pedal and push it back up.  He had to perform this action every time he shifted gears.  He limped the car back to his house and parked on the street in front.

I was even angrier at this point and I let Jim and Randy have both barrels.  I was convinced that Jim was responsible, and I hadn’t even wanted to let him drive.  I said I was holding them both responsible for repairing the damage.  I left in a huff and walked home.  Jim and Randy were apologetic and said they would look into repairing the car.  Randy was more of the mechanic of the group at that time so he looked the car over and ordered the repair parts.  The failed part turned out to be the clutch pedal support under the dash.  The bushings had worn out and metal to metal contact caused the support bracket to break.

What I didn’t know then and do know now is that this was a fairly common occurrence in older Mustangs.  The bushing must have failed long before I ever purchased the car.  The breakage occurring while Jim was driving was nothing more than a coincidence, and was destined to fail regardless of who was driving.  Randy was able to locate a replacement part at a local Ford dealer.  The aftermarket has now developed replacement bushings that are much better than the originals and do not fail so easily.  But at the time original parts were all that was available.  I ended up apologizing and assisting Randy with the installation.When Jim and Randy returned the repaired car it would barely move.  Seems the friction material on the clutch disc was entirely worn down to where nothing was left but the hub.  So I ended up having the car towed away and replacing the clutch disc, pressure plate, and throwout bearing.  Randy said it served me right.  He may have been correct with that assertion.  In the end we moved on and remained friends.