Sean Patrick Flanery , star of "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles" ABC-TV series, made a pit stop to visit his 1973 BMW 2002 at the Korman Autoworks in Greensboro, N.C., where the sports car is getting a $30,000 overhaul. The 26-year-old actor grinned Monday at the sight of his beloved car. "Oh," he sighed walking under the lift. "Look at those shocks." Now that Flanery is making piles of money, he can afford fixing up his first car, purchased for $2,600 when he was a student at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. A longtime car enthusiast, Flanery raced and attended race driving schools when he wasn't acting in Houston theater productions.

"Young Indy' star says series is "excitement of a lifetime'

Young Indiana Jones heads home to Houston this weekend, his TV adventures on hold and his future in the hands of ABC.

For Sean Patrick Flanery , the hometown hero of George Lucas' "Young Indiana Jones Chronicles," this past year has been "the excitement of a lifetime." He's landed back in Los Angeles, but he was still up there somewhere on Cloud Nine when he phoned home.

"Eleven different countries, cultures I didn't even know existed, and working with some of the greatest directors and actors in the world!" he exclaimed. "I had a ball. . . I learned from everybody. I'd never dreamed I'd be acting alongside Vanessa Redgrave."

Tonight, he'll see his show on TV for the very first time. And it could be the last time.

At 8 p.m. on ABC, "Young Indiana Jones Chronicles "winds up its current run with the last half of a fine two-parter set in the Congo in Africa. It's the episode that producer Lucas says best defines his vision for this splendid series. Young Indy meets Dr. Albert Schweitzer, and in the midst of war's carnage, he learns something about the meaning of life.

"When we brought the show on this season, it was designed for a limited spring run," ABC's Janice Gretemeyer said from New York.

Make no mistake, though -- if the numbers had been there, "Young Indy" would still be running. And this early cutoff is a heartbreak for the best prime time series for young people that TV has ever produced.

The ratings have gone down since the premiere, and that's why "Young Indy" is going. But the quality has not gone down, and by ABC's own research, "it has proved very popular with kids and teens" -- precisely the group that Lucas had hoped to reach.

Ten more episodes are already done, and ABC has promised to let Lucas know by April 15 what will happen with those. Possibly they'll be held for next fall. And there's also still a possibility that the series will be extended, to go on next fall as a weekly regular. "Twin Peaks," after all, survived sagging numbers. "Young Indy" is certainly more deserving than "Twin Peaks" of a second chance.

ABC's fall schedule will be announced May 12, so it's looking at pilots now and reportedly considering trying a new time slot for "Young Indy." The one it has now puts it in tough competition, against NBC's "Seinfeld," a show that also draws the younger crowd.

Flanery hasn't had time yet to worry about the future; he's still getting over his jet lag.

"But even if it doesn't go on, as long as I'm proud of the work I did -- and I am -- I could not have any regrets at all."

He still can hardly believe what's happened since he went to his first audition for this show a little over a year ago.

"It was weird," he said. "I did that, and then came a long series of call-backs, and then I met George Lucas. On March 28, they let me know I had it, and a week later, I was on the plane to London. I had to scramble to buy a couple of suitcases and pay my bills.

"And even then, I really had no concept of what this would entail," he recalled. "We've been on a sound stage just twice, and we've been all over the world on location. Each episode is like making a movie. It takes four weeks to film one, and sometimes we work seven days a week . . . And all that traveling! I'd never been anywhere but Mexico, Canada, and Hawaii before."

He got two weeks off for Christmas, but he had to loop in London and go to Skywalker Ranch (Lucas' California headquarters). "Just three days in Houston," he recalled.

His longest location stint was in Africa -- two months in Zaire, the former Belgian Congo.

"It was like a safari," he said. "We lived under tents. We went by canoe to our location every day . . . When we went in by plane we had to make a low pass to clear the gazelles out before we could land. I had no phone calls for two months. I couldn't even call my mother."

He was in St. Petersburg in Russia just after the name was changed back from Leningrad. In India, he was too busy working to see much. But in Spain and Czechoslovakia, he had time to play tourist.

"I think the highlight of the whole thing was Prague," he said. "It was the most beautiful city I've ever seen, and I had a beautiful apartment, and Elvis on the radio, and biscuits in the oven, and a view of the castle, all covered with snow, that was right out of Disneyland. I'll never forget it."

Tentative dates are set to resume shooting on the show, and Lucas already has the scripts written, and more countries lined up for locations. But for now, it's a waiting game. And while he waits, Flanery wants to catch up on all the things he missed while he was on the road this time.

"I missed four things in Houston," he said: "My mom (Genie Flanery , who lives in Quail Valley), James Coney Island, Power Tools and Poop-a-Loop (a k a Kim). She's been my best friend since I was 7, but if I called her Kim, she'd be so surprised she wouldn't answer."

There is no big romance in his life right now. "The only thing I know of love is what I've read in books," he said with a laugh.

Flanery is 26, and the Young Indy he plays is 17 to 22. Young Indy is fluent in many languages, and Flanery speaks two -- Spanish and French.

"The German, Arabic and Greek I memorized phonetically to do those lines in the show," he said. "But in the course of my travels, I did learn the basic please-and-thank you's in most of the languages, including Russian. And I learned how to say "Please, may I have another cake with whipped cream' when I was in Prague. I said that a lot."

Flanery grew up in Houston, from age 3 . He moved to Los Angeles three years ago, and until "Young Indy" came along, he'd done "some small Disney films and a string of commercials." He graduated from Dulles High School and the University of St. Thomas, and until he was a junior in college, never even dreamed of being an actor.

He can thank a crush on a fellow student for that.

"I kept seeing this girl leaving the drama department, and she was quite beautiful," he recalled. "I dropped an English class and signed up for drama to meet her."

Instead, he met Sam Havens, the St. Thomas drama coach he credits with turning his life around, and getting him into local theater.

He doesn't know what became of the beautiful coed.