wash11
Active member
- May 5, 2021
- 38
- 157
Greasemonkey asked that I post this here after reading it on RDP. Let's face it- we're all car guys to some extent so this is pretty easy to relate to.
Some of my earliest memories revolve around cars. I spent the first 10 years of my life in a West Covina cul-de-sac, living with my mom, and visited the same place often until I was in my early 20’s. The first car I remember riding in was mom’s ’69 Cougar, 428 Cobra Jet. It was her daily and I would stand on the front seat as she drove so I could see over the hood. (Until she had to panic stop one time and I got a mouthful of dash pad). Bob on the corner had a black on black ’70 Ranchero with a 429 Cobra Jet and that cool shaker hood. Across from him was Dan, an early patina’d Porsche enthusiast before they were cool. Having a single mom, and being a latch key kid in the late 70’s/early 80’s- Dan and Bob watched out for me, helped me keep my bike operational and let me hang out in the garages with them. I had two good friends, both with dad’s heavy into the car scene. Kevin Wallauer’s mom drove a 55 or 56 Nomad with Daisy wheels and used to pack us to Tower Records in it. Kevins dad drove a tunnel rammed 55 Chevy (I dropped his name as Kevin has gone on to be a big deal in the tri-5 world, campaigning a small tire 55). My other buddy, Carter, had a dad that was into all things air cooled. VW’s and Porsche projects littered the yard. Sleepovers, Friday night videos and building models was how we rocked 1981-1982.
As I approached my 10th birthday, mom was moving up in her career and had been putting herself through night school. I had the opportunity to live with my dad full-time which is how I landed in Havasu in 1983ish. Dad was always a Ford guy and if I remember correctly he did some horse trading for ’67 F-250 that needed a ton of work when I was about 13. That would be my first vehicle. We lived close to the top of Northstar drive, which is the very top of town. I think there were three houses on the whole street back then. With no kids close by, I was out working on that truck more than what would be considered normal. Taking things apart to clean and learn how they worked was a daily thing along with reading every car magazine I could get my hands on, cover to cover, about 20 times.
As time went on, my dad lined up Varners Auto and Engine to build a 410 FE from a mid 60’s Mercury for the F-250. We spent plenty of time at that shop where I’d drool over the ’56 Ford in the showroom with a 427 and dual quads (I ended up owning that car later in life). Here it is across from where Peggys is now on Countryshire in what was most recently Kepner plumbing supply, now Core and Main. This should be early to mid 80's when I took this picture with a Disc camera (remember those??).
I was a geeky, odd duck in school. Thankfully, so were the car guys (like Chicken Dan who’d I meet in high school auto shop soon enough). I could never afford anything cool, which was ok. I think I ended up owning and flipping the majority of 67-72 Ford trucks in Havasu at the time, all before I was 18. “Straight six, three on the tree, runs rough- sure I’ll give you $500 for it.” I’d have it running like a top by the next morning and sell for $800. I was a pretty enterprising kid when it came to cars.
I moved out to live on my own at a pretty young age (still in high school). Between working at two different restaurants and Prime Time automotive in the Campbell Bros. Storage complex, I still needed to flip cars to pay the bills. My world revolved around cars, clearly.
My mom’s side of the family had been in the repo business since the mid 60’s and I had an opportunity to pursue that as a career pretty young. Back to the San Gabriel Valley I went to put in the time as a grunt to kick my career off. Let’s fast forward several years. I had moved on from the family business to a company in Phoenix to be with a sort of high school sweetheart whom I’d later marry and have a couple of kids with. Life still revolved around cars. I had an opportunity to open up a branch office in Havasu for Interstate Recovery in 1993 or 94 and jumped at it.
Not only did I have the ability to make fair bids on repos, I was now traveling the tri-state area with a tow truck. I’ve lost count of the parts cars I packed home at the end of a shift. I knew the old Fords well, so I stayed in that lane. Fairlanes, Galaxies, 60’s t-birds just for the 428’s, bump side/dent side trucks, wrecked mustangs (cuz I could never afford anything nice when it came to popular cars)- I had an acre lot on Aviation that was about 1/3 full of my old junk I was flipping, well before craigslist or the internet for that matter. As my income went up, the quality of project cars did too. I finally bought the 56 Ford from my childhood, a nice 63.5 Galaxie Fastback, 63 and 64 Fairlanes, REALLY nice 67-72 trucks, low mileage with original paint types and a 75 that we did a full restoration on. All of these cars were incredibly affordable back then as they just weren’t popular. I still dig the slightly different stuff.
I bought the 56 from Earl and Debbie around 2000.
A '64 Sports Coupe with a 289 that I gave $250 for. All it needed was points and a carb rebuild.
'63 Sports Coupe I gave $1500 for from Joe Hazlett. It was a nice running car. All I did was have Stockton Wheel Co. build custom offset 15x8 wheels for the rear and stuff a bunch of tire under it.
63.5 Fastback Galaxie I paid $1500 for from Pete Skuse.
This one was another dream come true. I used to ride my bike to this guys house as a kid to stare at it. I believe his name Sugamele and he was the original owner. It was everything that my '67 was before it turned to a basket case and it actually helped me put the first truck back together. Low mileage, super original right down to the McCulloch factory parking sticker on the drivers side front bumper. I gave $2500 for it February 10th, 1999.
I bought this '75 F100 as a 6cyl, stripper from Jim Hinkley out of Kingman. He's gone on to be a great Route 66 historian and has written several books. He's even been on Leno. I started the cosmetic restoration and my dad finished the mechanical stuff. 428, C6, air, steering and brakes using all period correct Ford parts. I've seen it driving around Kingman again the last couple of years.
Those are some of my favorites and only represent about 20% of the cars that ran through my hands during that time period.
All was dreamy on the car front. The reality was, disappearing into these old cars, while fun and lucrative, was an escape from a fairly unhappy marriage. There’s probably 100 reasons why my first marriage was doomed from the beginning, 75 of them likely being my own fault. Cars didn’t play into the problem though. They gave me an escape, something to involve the young kids in and provided dough for the ex’s retail therapy. After ten years, we parted ways. For a bit, the storage units full of cars, parts and complete engines provided some relief through the split- thankful to have had that.
When Amy and I got together, I was in love for the first time in my life. I wanted to spend every minute with her (and have done just that for more than twenty years). What was once an escape or salvation- I no longer needed. In fact, I resented the enormity of having to babysit all that stuff. I was excited to start a new life. It took about a year but I eventually dumped everything. Fire sale prices, giving lots of stuff to friends in the hobby- didn’t care. I wanted away from that old life. I was ready for a complete reboot. And that’s what I did.
I never really stopped appreciating old Fords (any old car for that matter). But, that wasn’t my scene anymore. Amy and I were building a life that revolved around new friends, Coors Light, Glamis and boating as often as we could. As the friend’s circle grew, the Schiada was replaced by a 28’ tritoon and we were racking up 250 engine hours per year. Our life was beyond full. No time for car shows or drag races but I’d still stop and admire most old cars as we walked through a parking lot.
I bought the Schiada from John Albers, who's a member here and long time friend. He and his wife have an open bow River Tunnel currently.
Amy and I were expanding our friend circle and the kids were growing. As much as I wish I'd have kept it, a Tri-Toon made more sense. Remember, I was building a new life and leaving all the hot rod stuff behind. This thing packed so many gd.com members across the lake for good times and beer buzzes.
Eventually, we had the crazy idea of building an off grid property which turned into a decade long project that found us in the agriculture business. All consuming to say the least. That swallowed a decade in the blink of an eye and I did my best to take you guys with me but the thread was lost in the great gd.com info loss.
I was following a few hot rod builders on Instagram and enjoyed their posts and enthusiastically clicked on anything Bones posted on RDP, but it still wasn’t my scene. But the conversations started to spark more often. In our down time we started watching Finnegan, Freiberger and Cleetus. David Freiberger and his road trips while spitting out an encyclopedia of automotive history and trivia would draw us in the most. The number of places we’d ignore in the southwest on our travels that he makes a destination out of is almost impossible to count. I am married to an incredibly adventurous lady and our best friends and neighbors, Chicken Dan and Denise are equally up for shenanigans. So when I started throwing around ideas like a mid 60’s Ford wagon project to do Route 66 from Santa Monica to Chicago as a bucket list item, it was met with surprising enthusiasm. Remember, my whole young life the car thing had been a solo deal for me.
The four way conversation basically turned to 50 marketplace ads being forwarded every day, and still continues. Ford and Chrysler wagons would dominate with full size 2 doors sprinkled in too (the girls are both 4’13” and would be comfy in big car back seats for long drives). Straightish bodies, mediocre paint and complete interiors were the only real criteria. If it’s a Ford, modern fuel injected drivetrain swap with overdrive- lots of choices there. If it’s a Chrysler, modern junkyard Hemi swap will be fun. Denise already started buying Mexican blankets for whatever interior we’d end up with. Many of you are following Dans thread on RDP or remember his postings about fabrication in years past. Clearly, we have a full fab shop at our disposal. CNC plasma table, mill, lathe, the famously gay “scissor lift”, every possible way to glue metal together and a stocked beer fridge. We’re all pretty handy with a wrench, girls included. This is to be a family project, not some guy disappearing into the shop for weeks at a time.
“Wait, what’s this??”
A fairly crappy marketplace ad for a ’65 Galaxie in my all time favorite Ford color, Springtime Yellow. By the pictures and description it’s way too nice and far outside our budget. Of course I’ll make the 240 mile trip to Mesa for a look see. (The real story is, we had a beef delivery just a few miles from there so it was a convenient detour) Through this process, about 85% of the people selling had been flips. Buy a decent ride for cheap, comet wash it, slap wheels on it and throw it on marketplace. Disappointing to talk to someone for the 20th time that has an out like, “It seems to run good, I don’t know much about it though”. Part of me was hoping this was the same program. At this price point, I wanted to hate the car. Nope, 88 year old owner that knew the history between him and his buddy going back 15 years. The ad had very little information but a phone call revealed that the car had been gone through about 4 years and 4000 miles ago by his buddy that he bought the car from. Cool, 80 year olds going through cars. Lots will have been missed and work done, “the way we used to do it”. I was already feeling confident that this was another tire kick mission and my hard earned money was safe.
After dropping our beef order off, Amy and I arrived at the sellers place and the car was sitting in the driveway. Clearly, he didn’t want me seeing how much oil that 390 leaked where it normally parked in the garage. The Torque Thrust 2’s looked great against that yellow paint, even if the rear wheels and all tire sizes were wrong (reminder, I’m here to pick this thing apart in my own head)
I crawled around the car for 20 minutes without saying a word. This paint is nice, no way it’s original though. No mask marks and zero overspray. It’s the right enamel paint and has enough imperfections to tell you it’s not freshly painted using modern methods. “Scratches head”. Seller agrees and says he thinks it’s had one re-paint.
My saving grace was the early 2000’s Run to the Sun style tweedish, low back bucket seats and Explorer console. This makes it easy to hate. I like things to lean more stock and a full-size car has to come with the factory option of your gal sitting right next to you on that big bench seat. I must have had a look on my face as I checked out the interior straight from Rod and Custom.
Seller: “I’ve got all the original interior bagged up in the garage that’s still in nice shape. That’s just a cover over the original back seat as well.”
Me: “Fuck”
So Amy and I peel out of there for a long test drive in 85 degree weather. I’m purposely cruising 75-80mph with the air running on the 202 trying to get this thing to heat up above 180. Didn’t happen. It’s smooth, quiet and completely drama free. I’m silent and Amy’s got a huge smile on her face. It’s too nice for me. About 8 miles into the test drive I look down and notice the original clock is keeping perfect time. Again, fuck.
I parked it back in the same spot and asked questions about what’s been done to it. A very detailed explanation on the stock rebuild. It burned an exhaust valve in #4 (the most common issue from a lean condition as vacuum is pulled for power brakes and transmission modulator from the intake closest to #4 cylinder). Heads were rebuilt with hardened seats, legit NOS rocker shaft assemblies, quality rings-bearings-oil pump-timing chain with stock spec cam and lifters and gaskets. Part numbers and pics of everything. The only thing I’m questionable on is they said the bore was near perfect, well within spec so they re-ringed the factory pistons and left the bore standard. I’ve never seen a 390 make 100k miles without bore wear- I’m also wrong quite a bit so the complete lack of piston slap or smoke might mean something. After giving it enough time, I checked under the car to see what kind of FE oil stains I just blessed his driveway with. Zero oil on the ground. Fuck, fuck.
Seeming unimpressed, I shake the sellers hand and thank him for his time and we hit the road. I told him I’d check in later after we had a chance to talk. Uncharacteristic silence in the truck for the next 1/2 hour. Amy breaks it and asks how I feel about it. Man, I picked it apart. Not the car itself but all the reasons why it was too nice. We live down a 6 mile dirt road, no good place to keep it safe in this same condition (until I buy another 20’ shipping container), way more than I pictured spending for a driver… the list was long and well thought out. My case against was lock tight.
Amy: “Well, I want it.”
Me: “Fuck”
I admitted that I was dying inside while picking it apart and this car was hitting me in ways I hadn’t expected.
Within the next 36 hours we were able to negotiate a deal, register and insure it and make a family road trip to pick it up. Dan offered up a home for the Galaxie in the shop as well. I cobbled together a roadie toolbox and we headed out while still dark on a Saturday morning.
Until then, this is the car that made me a car guy again. Now, I have to make it mine of course.
I should point out that the idea of the family project car isn’t dead. This was a case of an unexpected love affair with a car that just had to come home with us. We’re still sharing marketplace ads, looking for the adventure vehicle. Until then, this is the car that made me a car guy again. Now, I have to make it mine of course. This story is far from over. As I find time to update the thread, please share your car guy stories if you're up for it. Late model stuff, classics, muscle cars, mini trucks- whatever hooked you the hardest.
Some of my earliest memories revolve around cars. I spent the first 10 years of my life in a West Covina cul-de-sac, living with my mom, and visited the same place often until I was in my early 20’s. The first car I remember riding in was mom’s ’69 Cougar, 428 Cobra Jet. It was her daily and I would stand on the front seat as she drove so I could see over the hood. (Until she had to panic stop one time and I got a mouthful of dash pad). Bob on the corner had a black on black ’70 Ranchero with a 429 Cobra Jet and that cool shaker hood. Across from him was Dan, an early patina’d Porsche enthusiast before they were cool. Having a single mom, and being a latch key kid in the late 70’s/early 80’s- Dan and Bob watched out for me, helped me keep my bike operational and let me hang out in the garages with them. I had two good friends, both with dad’s heavy into the car scene. Kevin Wallauer’s mom drove a 55 or 56 Nomad with Daisy wheels and used to pack us to Tower Records in it. Kevins dad drove a tunnel rammed 55 Chevy (I dropped his name as Kevin has gone on to be a big deal in the tri-5 world, campaigning a small tire 55). My other buddy, Carter, had a dad that was into all things air cooled. VW’s and Porsche projects littered the yard. Sleepovers, Friday night videos and building models was how we rocked 1981-1982.
As I approached my 10th birthday, mom was moving up in her career and had been putting herself through night school. I had the opportunity to live with my dad full-time which is how I landed in Havasu in 1983ish. Dad was always a Ford guy and if I remember correctly he did some horse trading for ’67 F-250 that needed a ton of work when I was about 13. That would be my first vehicle. We lived close to the top of Northstar drive, which is the very top of town. I think there were three houses on the whole street back then. With no kids close by, I was out working on that truck more than what would be considered normal. Taking things apart to clean and learn how they worked was a daily thing along with reading every car magazine I could get my hands on, cover to cover, about 20 times.
As time went on, my dad lined up Varners Auto and Engine to build a 410 FE from a mid 60’s Mercury for the F-250. We spent plenty of time at that shop where I’d drool over the ’56 Ford in the showroom with a 427 and dual quads (I ended up owning that car later in life). Here it is across from where Peggys is now on Countryshire in what was most recently Kepner plumbing supply, now Core and Main. This should be early to mid 80's when I took this picture with a Disc camera (remember those??).
I was a geeky, odd duck in school. Thankfully, so were the car guys (like Chicken Dan who’d I meet in high school auto shop soon enough). I could never afford anything cool, which was ok. I think I ended up owning and flipping the majority of 67-72 Ford trucks in Havasu at the time, all before I was 18. “Straight six, three on the tree, runs rough- sure I’ll give you $500 for it.” I’d have it running like a top by the next morning and sell for $800. I was a pretty enterprising kid when it came to cars.
I moved out to live on my own at a pretty young age (still in high school). Between working at two different restaurants and Prime Time automotive in the Campbell Bros. Storage complex, I still needed to flip cars to pay the bills. My world revolved around cars, clearly.
My mom’s side of the family had been in the repo business since the mid 60’s and I had an opportunity to pursue that as a career pretty young. Back to the San Gabriel Valley I went to put in the time as a grunt to kick my career off. Let’s fast forward several years. I had moved on from the family business to a company in Phoenix to be with a sort of high school sweetheart whom I’d later marry and have a couple of kids with. Life still revolved around cars. I had an opportunity to open up a branch office in Havasu for Interstate Recovery in 1993 or 94 and jumped at it.
Not only did I have the ability to make fair bids on repos, I was now traveling the tri-state area with a tow truck. I’ve lost count of the parts cars I packed home at the end of a shift. I knew the old Fords well, so I stayed in that lane. Fairlanes, Galaxies, 60’s t-birds just for the 428’s, bump side/dent side trucks, wrecked mustangs (cuz I could never afford anything nice when it came to popular cars)- I had an acre lot on Aviation that was about 1/3 full of my old junk I was flipping, well before craigslist or the internet for that matter. As my income went up, the quality of project cars did too. I finally bought the 56 Ford from my childhood, a nice 63.5 Galaxie Fastback, 63 and 64 Fairlanes, REALLY nice 67-72 trucks, low mileage with original paint types and a 75 that we did a full restoration on. All of these cars were incredibly affordable back then as they just weren’t popular. I still dig the slightly different stuff.
I bought the 56 from Earl and Debbie around 2000.
A '64 Sports Coupe with a 289 that I gave $250 for. All it needed was points and a carb rebuild.
'63 Sports Coupe I gave $1500 for from Joe Hazlett. It was a nice running car. All I did was have Stockton Wheel Co. build custom offset 15x8 wheels for the rear and stuff a bunch of tire under it.
63.5 Fastback Galaxie I paid $1500 for from Pete Skuse.
This one was another dream come true. I used to ride my bike to this guys house as a kid to stare at it. I believe his name Sugamele and he was the original owner. It was everything that my '67 was before it turned to a basket case and it actually helped me put the first truck back together. Low mileage, super original right down to the McCulloch factory parking sticker on the drivers side front bumper. I gave $2500 for it February 10th, 1999.
I bought this '75 F100 as a 6cyl, stripper from Jim Hinkley out of Kingman. He's gone on to be a great Route 66 historian and has written several books. He's even been on Leno. I started the cosmetic restoration and my dad finished the mechanical stuff. 428, C6, air, steering and brakes using all period correct Ford parts. I've seen it driving around Kingman again the last couple of years.
Those are some of my favorites and only represent about 20% of the cars that ran through my hands during that time period.
All was dreamy on the car front. The reality was, disappearing into these old cars, while fun and lucrative, was an escape from a fairly unhappy marriage. There’s probably 100 reasons why my first marriage was doomed from the beginning, 75 of them likely being my own fault. Cars didn’t play into the problem though. They gave me an escape, something to involve the young kids in and provided dough for the ex’s retail therapy. After ten years, we parted ways. For a bit, the storage units full of cars, parts and complete engines provided some relief through the split- thankful to have had that.
When Amy and I got together, I was in love for the first time in my life. I wanted to spend every minute with her (and have done just that for more than twenty years). What was once an escape or salvation- I no longer needed. In fact, I resented the enormity of having to babysit all that stuff. I was excited to start a new life. It took about a year but I eventually dumped everything. Fire sale prices, giving lots of stuff to friends in the hobby- didn’t care. I wanted away from that old life. I was ready for a complete reboot. And that’s what I did.
I never really stopped appreciating old Fords (any old car for that matter). But, that wasn’t my scene anymore. Amy and I were building a life that revolved around new friends, Coors Light, Glamis and boating as often as we could. As the friend’s circle grew, the Schiada was replaced by a 28’ tritoon and we were racking up 250 engine hours per year. Our life was beyond full. No time for car shows or drag races but I’d still stop and admire most old cars as we walked through a parking lot.
I bought the Schiada from John Albers, who's a member here and long time friend. He and his wife have an open bow River Tunnel currently.
Amy and I were expanding our friend circle and the kids were growing. As much as I wish I'd have kept it, a Tri-Toon made more sense. Remember, I was building a new life and leaving all the hot rod stuff behind. This thing packed so many gd.com members across the lake for good times and beer buzzes.
Eventually, we had the crazy idea of building an off grid property which turned into a decade long project that found us in the agriculture business. All consuming to say the least. That swallowed a decade in the blink of an eye and I did my best to take you guys with me but the thread was lost in the great gd.com info loss.
I was following a few hot rod builders on Instagram and enjoyed their posts and enthusiastically clicked on anything Bones posted on RDP, but it still wasn’t my scene. But the conversations started to spark more often. In our down time we started watching Finnegan, Freiberger and Cleetus. David Freiberger and his road trips while spitting out an encyclopedia of automotive history and trivia would draw us in the most. The number of places we’d ignore in the southwest on our travels that he makes a destination out of is almost impossible to count. I am married to an incredibly adventurous lady and our best friends and neighbors, Chicken Dan and Denise are equally up for shenanigans. So when I started throwing around ideas like a mid 60’s Ford wagon project to do Route 66 from Santa Monica to Chicago as a bucket list item, it was met with surprising enthusiasm. Remember, my whole young life the car thing had been a solo deal for me.
The four way conversation basically turned to 50 marketplace ads being forwarded every day, and still continues. Ford and Chrysler wagons would dominate with full size 2 doors sprinkled in too (the girls are both 4’13” and would be comfy in big car back seats for long drives). Straightish bodies, mediocre paint and complete interiors were the only real criteria. If it’s a Ford, modern fuel injected drivetrain swap with overdrive- lots of choices there. If it’s a Chrysler, modern junkyard Hemi swap will be fun. Denise already started buying Mexican blankets for whatever interior we’d end up with. Many of you are following Dans thread on RDP or remember his postings about fabrication in years past. Clearly, we have a full fab shop at our disposal. CNC plasma table, mill, lathe, the famously gay “scissor lift”, every possible way to glue metal together and a stocked beer fridge. We’re all pretty handy with a wrench, girls included. This is to be a family project, not some guy disappearing into the shop for weeks at a time.
“Wait, what’s this??”
A fairly crappy marketplace ad for a ’65 Galaxie in my all time favorite Ford color, Springtime Yellow. By the pictures and description it’s way too nice and far outside our budget. Of course I’ll make the 240 mile trip to Mesa for a look see. (The real story is, we had a beef delivery just a few miles from there so it was a convenient detour) Through this process, about 85% of the people selling had been flips. Buy a decent ride for cheap, comet wash it, slap wheels on it and throw it on marketplace. Disappointing to talk to someone for the 20th time that has an out like, “It seems to run good, I don’t know much about it though”. Part of me was hoping this was the same program. At this price point, I wanted to hate the car. Nope, 88 year old owner that knew the history between him and his buddy going back 15 years. The ad had very little information but a phone call revealed that the car had been gone through about 4 years and 4000 miles ago by his buddy that he bought the car from. Cool, 80 year olds going through cars. Lots will have been missed and work done, “the way we used to do it”. I was already feeling confident that this was another tire kick mission and my hard earned money was safe.
After dropping our beef order off, Amy and I arrived at the sellers place and the car was sitting in the driveway. Clearly, he didn’t want me seeing how much oil that 390 leaked where it normally parked in the garage. The Torque Thrust 2’s looked great against that yellow paint, even if the rear wheels and all tire sizes were wrong (reminder, I’m here to pick this thing apart in my own head)
I crawled around the car for 20 minutes without saying a word. This paint is nice, no way it’s original though. No mask marks and zero overspray. It’s the right enamel paint and has enough imperfections to tell you it’s not freshly painted using modern methods. “Scratches head”. Seller agrees and says he thinks it’s had one re-paint.
My saving grace was the early 2000’s Run to the Sun style tweedish, low back bucket seats and Explorer console. This makes it easy to hate. I like things to lean more stock and a full-size car has to come with the factory option of your gal sitting right next to you on that big bench seat. I must have had a look on my face as I checked out the interior straight from Rod and Custom.
Seller: “I’ve got all the original interior bagged up in the garage that’s still in nice shape. That’s just a cover over the original back seat as well.”
Me: “Fuck”
So Amy and I peel out of there for a long test drive in 85 degree weather. I’m purposely cruising 75-80mph with the air running on the 202 trying to get this thing to heat up above 180. Didn’t happen. It’s smooth, quiet and completely drama free. I’m silent and Amy’s got a huge smile on her face. It’s too nice for me. About 8 miles into the test drive I look down and notice the original clock is keeping perfect time. Again, fuck.
I parked it back in the same spot and asked questions about what’s been done to it. A very detailed explanation on the stock rebuild. It burned an exhaust valve in #4 (the most common issue from a lean condition as vacuum is pulled for power brakes and transmission modulator from the intake closest to #4 cylinder). Heads were rebuilt with hardened seats, legit NOS rocker shaft assemblies, quality rings-bearings-oil pump-timing chain with stock spec cam and lifters and gaskets. Part numbers and pics of everything. The only thing I’m questionable on is they said the bore was near perfect, well within spec so they re-ringed the factory pistons and left the bore standard. I’ve never seen a 390 make 100k miles without bore wear- I’m also wrong quite a bit so the complete lack of piston slap or smoke might mean something. After giving it enough time, I checked under the car to see what kind of FE oil stains I just blessed his driveway with. Zero oil on the ground. Fuck, fuck.
Seeming unimpressed, I shake the sellers hand and thank him for his time and we hit the road. I told him I’d check in later after we had a chance to talk. Uncharacteristic silence in the truck for the next 1/2 hour. Amy breaks it and asks how I feel about it. Man, I picked it apart. Not the car itself but all the reasons why it was too nice. We live down a 6 mile dirt road, no good place to keep it safe in this same condition (until I buy another 20’ shipping container), way more than I pictured spending for a driver… the list was long and well thought out. My case against was lock tight.
Amy: “Well, I want it.”
Me: “Fuck”
I admitted that I was dying inside while picking it apart and this car was hitting me in ways I hadn’t expected.
Within the next 36 hours we were able to negotiate a deal, register and insure it and make a family road trip to pick it up. Dan offered up a home for the Galaxie in the shop as well. I cobbled together a roadie toolbox and we headed out while still dark on a Saturday morning.
Until then, this is the car that made me a car guy again. Now, I have to make it mine of course.
I should point out that the idea of the family project car isn’t dead. This was a case of an unexpected love affair with a car that just had to come home with us. We’re still sharing marketplace ads, looking for the adventure vehicle. Until then, this is the car that made me a car guy again. Now, I have to make it mine of course. This story is far from over. As I find time to update the thread, please share your car guy stories if you're up for it. Late model stuff, classics, muscle cars, mini trucks- whatever hooked you the hardest.
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