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........................................--- 1951 Ford Vicky ---
I bought my 1951 Ford when I was 16 in 1960 for $150 and it was a typical 10 year old car at the time. My parents paid the insurance, so that entitled my dad to use it one day a week in his car pool until my aunt quit driving (1961) and gave us her '51 hemi Chrysler (another story). I worked on the car for over a year taking the chrome off and shaving and decking it and installed elect. doors. It was my first attempt at body work and my last until the '61 at the bottom of this page. Of course I had no welder, or much of any tools for that matter, so the holes were just filled with fiber glass mat and bondo.
After a year I finally saved a $150 to have a painter paint the car a medium blue. I also installed the '55 Ford grill I got from J.C. Whitney for about $15. This was serious money at the time. Of course I never had any money to make a Hot Rod out of it so it always retained the Flat Head V-8 (stock) and Auto Transmission which I hated. Me and some buddies were at the drive-in one time out of town and the locals wanted to know what was under the hood, so the flattie became a Caddy they weren't allowed to see. My friends use to make their cars back-fire, so once I found the biggest hill around, turned the key off, went to the bottom at about 40, turned the key back on and blew the whole muffler out. Of course me and the car were grounded until I earned enough for a new muffler. This was the only custom in my high school (1500 students) and the only one I saw for years except for in the magazines.
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..................................--- 1961 Chevy Wagon ---
I bought this '61 (three seat wagon) in '88. I had started reading car magazines again and was bitten by the bug to build something. I saw a '48 GMC pickup in a magazine and said 'hey I got one in the back yard", so that is what I will build. I needed an engine and drive train and hadn't read about sub-frames and Mustang II's yet so I bought the wagon off of a gal for $200 planning on using it for the above mentioned items. You couldn't keep it on the road. She had 4 different size tires and some were radial and some weren't. I put tires on it and it ran great.
Well about this time my computer store was really growing and I needed something for my service guys to get around town in, so guess what I used. I again yanked most of the chrome off like on the Vicky, except I thought dad was right this time and left the door handles on (the service guys appreciated that). I never touched the 283. I put a floor shifter on the 3-speed. When I moved to Utah in '90 I took it with me along with the GMC, which was chopped and sectioned (just tacked together). I took the wagon to B'ville in '91 and '92. Of course at that time wagons were not kool like they are now. I then sold it to a friend (for the $1600 I had in it) who used it to distribute the newspapers he puts out. It was a good billboard. I recently tried to buy it back, but he had given it to one of his kids up by Salt Lake City and someone had stolen it from them. It was last seen somewhere in Calif. Who would steal a yellow wagon and drive it across three states?
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..................................--- 1950 Chevy - “The Box Car” ---
I bought this '50 Chevy when I was in the Navy in 1965. I was on the USS Consolation aircraft carrier and we were in Bremerton, WA having the ship refitted. My high school friend and fellow shipmate Bob and I had motorcycles. He had a Honda 305 and I had a Ducati 250 Scramble. You can see one on the trailer we built behind the car. About this time you started seeing cab-over pickup campers. We wanted to camp and had no money so we cut the back half of the body off and built the cab-over box that we could put the bikes in or sleep in. No windows so had to leave the back door open.
I also rebuilt the motor in the base hobby shop and that is where we did the other work. The motor went in and the 'Box Car' was loaded on the carrier along with other sailor's cars and the ship set sail for San Diego where the cars were off loaded and we started doing sea trials with planes flying on and off as we cruised up and down the coast. We were to be discharged soon after the ship went back into port the first time. Driving the car there was a huge oil leak. We put the car in the hobby shop there and pulled in a new rope seal on the rear main bearing where we thought the leak was coming from. It also ruined the clutch disk. Put things back together and it still leaked. Another seal and it still leaked. We were running out of time due to be discharged in a day or two so bought a used engine at a salvage yard, a '54 six with higher oil pressure than the 50 and more cubic inches. When we pulled the leaker out we found out that they never put the plug in the back of the block for an oil passage and that was where the oil was coming from. We could of put it back in but decide to go with the newer engine. Bad decision.
We had been discharged the day before and should have been off the base already so packed up and took off for home, just outside of St. Louis, Missouri. We soon found out that the engine was very hard starting. To save money we were going to drive more or less straight through from San Diego to St. Louis. Since it was winter, just before Christmas, we went the south route over through southern Arizona. There we were pulled over by the highway patrol for a resown I forgot. The officer told us to turn off the engine. I told him that if we did it might not restart but he insisted on us turning it off, so I did. He checked our papers and such and when he found out we had just been discharge apologize for stopping us. It then took forever to get it started but it did before the battery went dead. We never turned it off again until we got home. Later I pulled the head off and found out that one of the exhaust valves had two finger size holes in it so the six had been running on 5 cylinders.
I had the 'Box Car' for another couple years. Drove it back to college in Laramie, Wyoming and around the west some. The steering was terrible and should have been rebuilt as you constantly were sawing the wheel back and forth to drive straight. I went home once and left it at a friend's ranch. While I was gone he tapped off the lights and windshield and shot the whole car in forest green and stenciled the 'Box Car' on the side. I use to have a couple pictures of it liked that but can't find them.
I quit college again and drove it back to my folks house in Missouri and parked it there for good. I got more into motorcycles and another friend and I bought a Honda/Suzuki/Norton shop that we were working in at the time. I was living near the shop in Alton, Ill. and the 'Box Car' was at my folks still. They let me know that it had worn out its welcome and I needed to move it. I decided to give up on it. When I went to get it there was a couple wasps nests in it that I couldn't locate. I drove it to a salvage yard with a hooded sweatshirt over my head pulled closed with just enough opened to be able to see the road. I had to talk them into taking it.The 'Box Car' saga ended there.
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