409K!!! That is great, Butch.
Where does one stop?
- Thread starter Tom Kochtanek
- Start date
Yeah, I can't hardly believe the price of some of these parts. Take a 553 bell housing for instance. Most you see on E-bay are around $500.00 when years ago one would have to pay to get rid of one. Then the breakable pumpkins are running $500.00 to $1300 and the list goes on. I think I paid $400.00 for rusty old 1961 14x6 rims that had the outside nubbins. Getting less and less of these parts. I remember going to old car junk yards like the one around Vancouver Wa. They advertised that they had 3,000 old cars but do you think I could find a bench seat front and rear. Ney ney. What I found interesting was that there were very few 2 door cars. Mostly all 4 doors so finding a 2 door front seat was really hard. What I ended up doing was finding one that was so bad it took 3 of us to carry it because it was falling apart because of rust. A 2 door back seat is also different than a 4 door and quite difficult to find. Well I found a great guy that had no qualms about rebuilding the front seat and he squared the corners on the 4 door back seat to make it a 2 door seat. Some parts seemed very hard to find for me and at a decent price. Anyway I now know I really appreciate the guys and gals rebuilding these old cars for the time and hard earned money that can go in them. Chevy Ford or what ever. Great old cars that will last hopefully for many many years and hopefully the younger generation keep them up and looking good. Wished I had great advice but one of the best parts is the journey and the people you meet along the way. Way to long of a post. Jumping off. Butch
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When I first bought my current 63, I was going to pop a motor in it do the thing"s to get it drivable , brake"s ect.I could not even pull the headlight switch knob out from mice piss freezing it up, and seeing wiring cut and spliced all over under dash,I said to my self it has to be torn completely down and start over, which I did. So yes there is a stopping point and start over so to speak.
Well I am going to go ahead and tell the story on ours and where to stop got to be a quite an issue. When we found the original owners or they found us on our 61 they had a quite a story on the car along with pictures. Well now it is worth restoring Right??? Not only I had never done anything like this but never crossed my mind I ever would. Well I had my cross ram motor already done so I thought I'd throw the motor back in it and paint the car. So I had a fellow paint it I thought would do a good job and I paid $8,000.00 for it. Remember $8,000 for this is going to come back In the story. Well it did not turn out all that good and after meeting the original owners like Glenn Larson I found out Glenn's son Mickey was quite a car builder and painter. So I called Muckey and made a deal with him to straighten the paint job out. Our son Chad started working for Mickey about this time buding show trucks for Freight Liner and Western Star. Mickey said bring it on down which was about 200 miles away. Ok this is where it gets interesting. 2 weeks later I got an Email and pictures of the progress right. Well my $8,000.00 paint job was gone. All sanded off. Body off the chassis along with the doors fenders, well there was nothing left on the car. Zero big fat zero so I asked Mickey what are you doing? He said if we are going to do it we are going to do it right. So after that l seen all what Mickey was doing I thought I better do my part. So now I am on the hunt for a 360 hp 623 motor like it had when it was ordered, I found a right number and dated trans, flywheel, 812 pumpkin with date coded gears and posi unit. I found the motor at Lamar Walden's. That is when I had to sell my 1923 tune ported T bucket roadster. Next Mickey moved his business to the So Cal Speed Shop so the car went with him now 1200 miles away. The car got its paint this time from Mick Jenkjns who is the second time winner of the America's Most Beautifiul Roadster Well there is a ton of story left but our 401 K that we saved for most of our lives went down hill in a hand basket. Not wanting to really say what we really got in it but let's go back to the post heading. WHERE DO YOU STOP??! I had no idea it was going to get that involved but one thing lead to another. Like I said before. Our 401 k is now our 409 k. Hopefully if I ever need to sell I can get some of the money back. Glad I did it though. Car came out great thanks to Glenn, Mickey, Mick and our son Chad and so glad Mickey did what he did and a super friendship came out of all this. But where do you stop. One more thing to mention. Mickey and Glenn are building a clone to ours at So Cal and is almost complete. It will not be numbers matching but there are going to be twins. It has my World FinalsMotor in it. Butch
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That is very cool. Show car only or are they going to do some passes at 409 events in that one?
The best remedy I found was to have deep pockets and short arms! I did my car a little at a time and did all the work myself except for seat covers.
I decided to add "suspension" to the growing list of things to take on. Upon looking around down the basement I located a good set of A arms and a new set of bushings and ball joints. I think these are from the 2004 Reunion in KC, I bought a lot of stuff from Michael Mason and these were included. Just a bit of cleanup and removal of the old ball joints and these will go in place of the existing originals:
Cheers!
TomK
Cheers!
TomK
Tom, the suspension is pretty straight forward to work on. Just use some basic precautions with the springs, wrap a chain around the spring and control arm to prevent it form popping out too fast. By the way, I can't tell from the picture, but make sure the lower control arms have the bracket for the sway bar.
Just a floor jack and chain needed.I have a heavier floor jack then what Tom has pictured,longer frame ,but also have a aluminum num num num one like he has too..Gonna be harder with no engine though. I just did one like that. About 8-10 80# bags of concrete stacked up on the frame rails works too.
Tom, it looks like you forgot to "stop." Gonna snowball from here...
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Floor jack and chain is ow the shop manual describes the process.