Thread: random stuff

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75 degrees saturday .. with a tornado that night coming within less than a mile of me and i never knew it .. a most unusual one as it traveled directly from west to east .from Hazel Green to New Market . most travel in a north eastern pattern .. tore up several mobile homes and blew the roofs off a few houses .. Sunday was a day of transition as i woke up this morning to nearly 3 inches of snow .. we normally have our worst part of winter the first 2 weeks of the new year ..

While it's makes a pretty picture... I'm old enough to say. OKAY, enough of that "stuff"! LOL

a car i forgot to mention that i had for a moment in late 74 or early 75 was a 55 ford ex drag race car .. it was blue and had " GOING THING " painted on the door and quarter panel .. i did not know that GOING THING was a ford race team term .. it was set up for a small block chevy drivetrain which i had none of .. the broken 406 sic pac 64 was still around and i traded it for a 327 engine and trans but never put them in the 55 .. i dont remember what ever happened to that car ,, i do remember giving 35 $ for it ..perfect car ..

That was what She Who Must Be Obeyed was driving when I first met her.
I wasn't interested in the girl at that stage; it was the car I was admiring.

But She got the claws in eventually...and we've now been married for coming up to fifty five years.

76 and 77 i have no distinct memories of anything .. i still have my 69 Xl ford .. 78 i begin dating my soon to be ex wife .. i wish some of you had told me not to .. HA ! ,, 78 i am working at the junkyard still and notice a neat looking little sky blue 72 pinto barely hit in the front .. just a bumper and grill fix it .. can you believe a car is totaled over a bumper and grill . 79 and 80 are also a blur as far as cars go .. 81 i am married and at the same time i am building my first V8 pinto ..

like a good neighbor .. um .. save 15 % in 15 minutes ,, um ,, your in good hands with ,, um i wonder how many times these cotton farmers have to explain they dont sell insurance ..a farm near me ..

the next 30 years are a blur of life and car activities that i have to try and unravel by connecting what i was working on by where i was working at the time ..81 i was freshly married and putting my first V8 pinto together .. i was working at a gulf service station as a mechanic .. i dont remember where i was working on the pinto .. it had to be at a friends garage as i had nothing and i know it was not at the junkyard .. i do remember building a later car at the same friends shop ( Edit ).after going back a few thousand posts i just found evidence that i did build some cars at a friends shop .. i was looking for my bogus boss 302 buildup for my next car ,, in post number 194 the last guy on the list was where i built a few .. .after only about 3 years of owning the V8 pinto i am now working at a machine shop so i can get insurance for my family .. i sell the pinto to a fellow worker for a grand ( later to get it back ) .( edit agian ).and i found a pretty good list of a lot of cars i have owned up untill 09 or so .. it is post number 233. while working at the machine shop i built a straight axle 72 comet with a BOSS 302 sort of engine .. the engine is post number 391 .. while testing the car at the machine shop i nailed it while sitting on a 5 gallon bucket as i had no seats in it yet .. i had forgot that the steering wheel was not bolted on and i wound up where the back seat used to be and the car wound up in a big ditch bent all up ,, that was the beginning of my first pro street pinto ..

84 i had given the beat up comet back to the junkyard and spotted a neat little barely damaged 72 pinto ,, i`m still at the machine shop so i have the pinto delivered there .. i proceed to build a full 2 x 3 tube frame on a flat build table ,, people there liked me and they helped me get things right and let me work when they were closed . they had a tube bender so i made a 8 point role cage .. they had an overhead crane so i mounted the pinto skin on my home made frame .. i had cut out the entire floor pan and made a new one from aluminum sheet they had laying around .i cut the rear end and had a professional welder put it back together for me . i shortened the axles myself and again with a friends help re splined them to 31 and put a 4'56 gear and mini spool in the chunk.,, i used the stock pinto front suspension ..after i got a rolling chassis together i was layed off and went back to the junkyard ..there i finished the body and put in the wheel tubs for the 15 x 32 slicks .i installed the bogus BOSS302 and a c5 auto trans . ( mistake ) .. i made headers from old stuff laying around ..i played with that combo all summer long and could never get it to perform right .. i even put in a huge stall convertor that would not work with the no torque 302 ..if i had put a 4 speed in the car the rest of this story would have been vastly different ..my pinto was solid white but looked like Bobs ..

as i said earlier it aint nothing for me to get some years mixed up .... i know that while working at the junkyard a nascar race driver would come by from time to time and get a monte carlo body .. ..i`m thinking it was mid to late 70's .. i know that in the early 80,s i'm working at the machine shop .. Thompson Industries ,, and i know that we are the major sponsor of a nascar race team ,, car # 52 .. the junkyard owner also had a small advertisement on the car .. i`m telling my new wife that " hey !! i work at a company that sponsors Jimmy Means race car .. she knows absolutely nothing about race cars but she knows Jimmy Means .. she`s related to him .. he came to a family reunion later that year .. i remember seeing him but do not remember speaking .. you can see Thompson Industries on the quarter panel .. North Alabama Auto Parts should be on a small sticker somewhere else ..local radio station WIXC sponsored him for a bit earlier .. i found a picture of that car and this car ..

i pulled the BOSS302 out of the pro pinto and set it aside ,, i found a 70 lincoln 460 engine in the motor pile ,, rebuilt it it with a big cam , aluminum intake . big holley carb , shaved the heads and ported the exhaust side a bit . a friend with a desk top dino calculated that i should make 441 horse power with my combo .. i had had a bump steer problem since building the car so i cut the front suspension out and remounted it with a different more level angle to the control arms .. and dropped the 460 in place .. again made some headers from scrap ..also during this time i had bought back the original V8 pinto i sold to the fellow at the machine shop .. i saw an add in the paper for a V8 pinto with a bad engine .. i flew down and looked and saw it was my car .. i heard the knock and knew exactly what was happening ,, the engines motor mounts had relaxed a bit and let the oil pan ride on the steering rack causing it to dimple the pan and let a rod tap it .. i fixed that quickly .. in the wintertime i backhalved that car and had a friend paint it as i was not there yet .. i was very impressive arriving at the drag strip in the spring with 2 pro car V8 pintos on the back of a car hauler .. the junkyard owner let me use his hauler .. i had remade the boss 302 back into a regular 302 and set it in the second pinto .. the 460 pinto still had bump steer issues so it only made a couple of half throttle passes at the track .. it sat for a few years while i had fun the the 302 pro car ..it looked very much like this car ..

recently i switched from direct TV to mediacom and have found that there is just as much i dont want to watch on both providers .. i dont care for the few car fixem up and race shows they have for all the fake drama so i find myself watching a lot of the beverly hillbillies and i dream of jeannie or bewitched ..a day or so ago i`m watching bewitched and they are outside and in the background is a 427 Cobra parked next to a jaguar xk something that looked cool .. later in the show they were in Italy looking at the leaning tower of pizza and in the background 2 67 mustangs constantly circled through the scene ..i thought " mustang in italy ? " .

sometime in the late 80s i buy a long wheel base 70 ford truck and car trailor to haul my junk to the drag strip ..as usual i fix the body and have it painted white ,, i think i am at the junkyard again as a 70 short wheelbase ford truck comes in with a bad motor .. i get it and install my hot 460 from the ill fated ill handling pinto .. and guess what color i have it painted ( you will see that white is a color most used by me even though my fav color is blue ) .. people spend many thousands of dollars on paint jobs these days but all i had to do in those days was to get the vehicle ready and buy a gallon of paint and a buddy would shoot it for 200 bucks .. i did all my own body prep and primmer painting .. i just had no confidence in top coating yet .. i mini tub the short wheel base truck and relocate the rear springs inside the frame so i can run monster meats on the rear .. this combo would run 8 flat in the 8TH mile dragstrip and i actually won a trophy one nite in the truck only class .. there was 3 of us .. HA ! . ,, i know i have this truck and the tow truck and the pro street 302 pinto and the 460 pinto body during the time my wife is asking me for a divorce .she complained i never asked her to go to the drag strip with me .. she never asked if she could go .. HA !! .. luckily she does not want anything to do with any of them ,, if this truck were white it would be the same as mine ..

People that know me have heard me say several times “always expect the unexpected out of me” Once again I put a huge smile on somebody’s face and made them extremely happy. My little brothers birthday is tomorrow so I flew in from Florida unannounced and showed up at his house. Let’s just say he was quite surprised and shocked to see me standing in the hallway of his house after hearing me yell his name. Tomorrow we’re taking a ride for his birthday, go eat somewhere and going to go scouting out fishing lakes….. Stay warm folks it’s a balmy 25° in St. Louis….joe

Testing the marital vow because you don't take her to the drag strip lol! Those years of Ford pickups I feel are the nicest looking looking ones they made. I had the opportunity to buy two of them for 1500 bucks about 5 years ago. Probably should have done it, but there's only so many things a guy can do.

early 91 i am freshly divorced and living with my parents until i can sell both the pintos and get a small mobile home to put back on my property .. the ex took the other mobile and moved it away with her new boyfriend .. a former friend of mine by the way ..he had actually gotten me the job i had then with the space and defense industry where i spend the next 28 years ..i guess 91 thru early 95 were pretty uneventful until i am leaving the dragstrip one night and a tornado hits .. i cant see where i am going for the torrential so i stop in the middle of the road .and survive what i believe is a almost direct hit from the twister .. my tow truck is pushed over in another lane and when i try to pull away it seemed to be tied to something . after jerking back and forth a few times i got going again .. the next day when i looked at my stuff i found a huge tree limb thru the front windshield of my drag truck and the roof caved in a bit and it was covered in pine needles and pine cones .. later i went back to the area and found several trees that had been blown down but cleaned up already .. i probably dont know how lucky i was .. i had been passing a 84 Tbird sitting in a yard every time i went to the strip and i was wanting to build one so i stopped in one day and bought it ..my 302 pinto has an interesting story for later .. this picture is on the road i was on .. GooGle 1995 anderson hills tornado ,, i live just off butler road ..