Thread: Great car and truck stories

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The story about the cheerleader rang my bell. When I was 14 I had some savings from a paper route and my Dad was a fan of Model As, having owned three previously, although he was forced by economics to accept my Grandfather's hand-me-down Plymouths every three years. We bought it for $100. My Dad wanted another Model A even though I could not drive until I was 16 in Penna. Well it was a '31 Fordor and we painted it robin egg blue with a brush and painted the spoke wheels red. We added a dimmer switch on the floor and used tin snips to cut the rims out of '38 Buick sealed beam headlights which fit right in the Model A buckets (with a little rattle) to pass Penna. inspection. I couldn't drive it but I would go out in the back yard every so often and start the engine and gun it just to make sure it worked and keep the battery charged. At that age I was in the marching band and one of the "Flag Girls" lived at the end of my block and she really looked good in the special band uniform. When I finally got my license I asked her if she wanted to ride home from school with me, but she said NO! She did not want to ride in an "old car" since she was already engaged to a guy who had a '51 Ford! Boy that cooled my interest in the Model A and soon thereafter I sold it and bought a '47 Ford ragtop (literally), painted it orange and my Grandmother staked me to a new top (took pity on me driving in the cold!) but it was too late for that girl. I really liked that orange convert so much that one of the next girls on the list kicked and scratched the new paint on the rear fender because she thought I liked my car more than her, well maybe. Sorry, no pictures of either car, wish I did have a picture! Funny how you remember the early stuff.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Boy! Don's story reminded me of one. It was 1968, I had a 1963 Falcon with a 327 Chevy and a 4 speed B&O 4 speed Hydro in it. Married with a 6 month old daughter in the back seat. We were coming home from the drags, it was late, when I pulled up to a stop light on this hill. A '57 Corvette pulls up next to me. I couldn't resist we both nailed it, now we are going down hill, my car was fast but with this helping, we were flying. I pulled the Corvette in first and second gear, I shifted into 3rd and broke a U joint and the drive shaft came flying out. I pulled off to the side of the rode and put it in "park" in front of a closed gas station with a phone booth in front. My wife got out with me and walked to the phone. I was talking to my neighbor, telling him where the tow bar was for my car when I hear my wife scream. I turned around to see my car rolling down the hill with my daughter in the back seat. I ran as fast as I could, dove in the side widow and stopped the car. All I could do was hold and hug my daughter, I never raced again with any of the kids in the car. I think back on this kind of stuff and wonder what kind of bone head decisions I made!
Ken

Boy, we've all pulled those kinds of tricks and sweat bullets later when we think back on what could have happened. Young and dumb.

Ken's story also reminded me of one. When my Sons were about 4 or so I took them to the store with me one time. It was a little grocery store on an incline in Pennsylvania. I shut the car off, but just put the four speed shifter in one of the gears to hold it while I ran into the store. The kids stayed in the car (those were the days you could do that kind of stuff) and as I am paying for my loaf of bread I look out to check on them as see my Mustang rolling slowly past the window but gaining speed! Like Ken I ran out, threw open the door, and jammed my foot onto the brake pedal. The car stopped inches from a parked car in front of me, and my two little drivers were sitting there wondering why they couldn't play with the steering wheel and shifter any more.

Mom never knew about that story either.........Mom never knew about a LOT of stories, or she would have never trusted me taking them out by myself again.

Don

I was actually the kid in a similar story. My mom had a Ford Falcon. I was sitting in the passenger seat playing with the shifter when I put it in gear, she dove into the car and stoped it in time to keep the car from going thru the house! I was lucky mom was quick! Thank god it wasn't Dad's maserati!

Just thinking back tonight after a butt kicker at work about when I was 16 and all my friends had their drivers licenses. My buddy Jim's parents had a Plymouth Satelite with a 318 v8, very cool beast of a car. We had put a Kraco casette player in and a pair of Jensen 6x9 speakers, and decided to take it to the local reservoir for a spin.
When we got to the dam we pulled over to check out the lake and some cute girls bathing in bikinis. Well being a bit distracted girl watching, I pulled the car door slightly closed to keep a dog from jumping in the car. Right about this time Jim who was cranking Boston's Foreplay(great song still!) got this wild hair up his butt to show off to these bathing beauties, and starts the car, spins the wheel and floors it on a banked hill side. Next thing I know I'm flying through the air arms clinging to the door which is flying open, legs dragging on the pavement, past the cuties with a look of horror on my face! As we complete the 180 the door swings back closed, and Jim says to me what the hell was that? I look at him thinking the same thing. The girls were laughing their a$$$ off as we took off back home! Ah to be 16 again!

here`s you a chiller .. when i wore a childs clothes me and several of my brothers had to walk everywhere we went .. we were walking several miles back from aor favorite swimming hole one day and thought ourselves lucky when a car slowed down to pick us up .. we recognised the driver as a older neighbor guy .. we all happily piled in this 1957 christine plymouth .. this would be in about 1966 or so .. off we went flying down the road .. he took us into some woods down a deserted road and set the car on fire .. told us he had stold it and just wanted a quick joy ride .. we were too young at the time to understand mental illness .. we just thought pistol ( his name ) was kinda funny acting .. later he was convicted of killing some people and sent to a mental home .. he could just as easily have killed us all that day .. the car was still in the woods up till a few years ago .. hemi engine and all .. it disappeared before i got heavy into web sites and taking pictures .. several members of pistols family we later realised was quite off balance ,, i will add a photo of them .. unbelievable .. 27 kids .. one father ..two mothers .. the father is the old gentleman in the black hat in the middle back upper left holding the young baby ..

Things that make you go HUM!
Funny story for sure! A friend of mine parked a old Ford Festiva after almost 200k on the engine when a head gasket blew. It sat in his garage for 4 years, until he had to move to Conneticut for a new job. His company paid to move him out there, so he could take the Festiva, it only had to make it up the truck ramp under power. Well he got the battery charged, filled the fluids, and cranked it over, and dambed if the little car didn't come to life and work just fine. When he got to CT. he only lived about a mile from work, so he used the little FORD that could, for about six months with no leaks. Come winter he switched back to his 4 wheel drive, but alas six months were it for that little Ford Festiva, but by god it amazed us all that this little beater that was surely beat, rose again to drive another day. He still has it(license plate moonbuggy) as he is an aerospace engineer. He keeps flirting with either rebuilding the engine or maybe making it into an electric car! Something about just about every low line economy car ever built, is that they really seem to go the distance with just routine maintenance.

I just read this guys story at Fordtruckenthusiast.com and had to share it here. I think lots of us can relate to his story

The cost of Divorce and Old Trucks

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I've been mulling this thread around in my brain for some time, wanting to put it all out there for you to read. I imagine that there are hundreds, if not thousands of stories like mine. Without further adieu I give you "The cost of Divorce and Old Trucks"

I have always loved old trucks, probably a bit more than I should have. My first lover was a 1954 Chevrolet 3100 pickup that I drove in high school. I would work on it all night just so I could drive it to school the next day. That old truck waited for me out behind the folks barn while I joined the Military and was stationed on the other side of the world. I would sit there at my little table fantasizing about what I would do; I could practically rebuild that truck in my mind.

During my Military career I met the 'other woman'. It may seem funny now thinking of your mate as the other woman, but I sure didn't think my love of my old truck would cause any problems in the marital arena. We had been married for about six years, all of it overseas. We returned to Montana and bought a little house with a garage.

The two had met one another on occasional vacations back to the States, but I don't think that she realized that the old truck would become a pivotal part of our relationship later on. After moving in and having a brief affair with a 1949 4-door Mercury, I finally brought home my pride and joy. The mice had made a condo out of it and in the housing boom of the early 2000's I'm sure the highest bidder got to burrow deep into the seat lining.

I saw rolling eyes, huffing, puffing, sighs and otherwise unseen gestures as I unloaded the truck in the driveway. I cleaned out all the occupants and began to strip the truck down to the bare frame for the fantasy to begin. As in many marriages, money was tight and the cost of a dream is out of reach. The truck sat in the garage, just the cab, bed, fenders, and assorted engine parts occupied a corner. The small house led to a larger house with an extra garage bay where the parts of the infatuation could breathe and plans could be hatched.

Again money was tight, always being spent on other items. Vacations aren't cheap and higher education isn't free. The day came when I knew the old girl was doomed, and I'm not talking about the wife. She came to me in my sleep and whispered a soft rumble of a 350 cubic inch song. I had the fever, I wanted my lady to purr and carry me down the road. Something had to be done!

My wife effectively killed my love affair when she asked me if I had ever had sex in the truck as a teenager. I always believed honesty was the best policy, but my ego overran commen sense and I told the truth about losing my virginity in that old Chevy. She then told me matter of factly that she would NEVER ride in that truck. Desperate to reconcile the differences between two loves, I tried to make ammends, but both women wanted me for their very own. I had to make a decision.

I placed my first love on EBay and sold all the parts for $1200. My heart was broken, but I felt as if I had done the right thing. She left me on a trailer, headed east with a new lover. This new man had dreams of his own and spent considerable time telling me the plans for the future, which included a new frame from a S-10 pickup. I felt as if a part of me had been ripped away. How long had it been? I still remember when my dad brought home the truck with its straight six pinging away due to a faulty lifter. I remembered the time my dad told me I could fix the spedometer and I ended up gutting the transmission onto the ground, to which my father said that the truck now belonged to me and that he wasn't paying to have it fixed. It took me three months to piece that tranny back together, now as I watched the trailer pull away I knew it would take a lot longer to piece together my heart.

As a lover who is jaded, I ignored the tempting call of car shows, or the occasional rumbling of a 55 two door post cruising by. It felt as if the life had been sucked out of me. In the spring of 2007 my heart began to heal and I had some extra cash from the sale of a Toyota T-100 pickup. I found myself cruising through Craigslist and looking for the old familiar call of an era past. I talked the wife into a drive up the valley to see a mustang that someone wanted too much money for. On the way I saw a crowd of people surrounding a vehicle. I pulled over, the curiosity getting the better of me. There in the center of the crowd was a beautifuly restored 1927 Ford Model T witha 'for sale' sign in the windshield. Thinking that surely this beautiful car would bring a lot more than I had to offer, I casually asked the owner how much money he wanted. "$6,000" was his reply. "The first one with the cash or check will be the new owner; I have to sell it because I'm getting a divorce" said the gentleman with a 'Ford' ballcap on his head.

I ran back to the car where my wife sat with a disgusted look on her face. I explained that you don't see deals like this on restored Model T cars very often. I detailed that I had seen similar cars fetch above $15,000 on Ebay in that condition. I could tell that a fuse was getting ready to blow as she reached over for the checkbook. She looked me in the eye and said "Go buy your ****ing car!" With her arm cocked back in a pitching stance she threw the checkbook past my head and onto the lawn that separated the road from the sidewalk. Checks and deposit slips flew everywhere and my face turned beet red as I collected up the mess. Not deterred from this childish outburst I walked over to the gentleman and handed him a check for $6,000 and told him I'd be back in the morning to pick it up.

The ride home was the coldest I'd ever experienced in my 14 years of marriage. When we finally reached the house I tried to open a line of communication, but it had been clogged by the years of wear and tear on the suspension of a relationship. That night I slept on the couch and decided that my relationship was more important. I drove back to the gentleman's house and retrieved my check. He said that he figured I'd be back to pick up my money and that he already had another buyer for the car.

I was solemn all spring and into the summer while the hot rod clubs put on their annual events. My soul had been sapped and my love affair with old vehicles crushed under the weight of relationship responsibility. When the passion of life is gone, what else is there to do? I worked, I paid bills, I got by, that was until I passed a local sell-it-yourself car lot one afternoon. There in the lot was a 1950 Ford F-1 pickup with a handwritten piece of paper in the windshield. There wasn't a price, just a telephone number. I felt something strange in my chest......it was a pulse. My heart began to race as I dialed the number. The voice at the other end of the line said "I need $2,500 for her. My well pump went out and the wife said I had to sell one of my toys." He came down and let me drive the truck around the block. It seemed to drive well, with a little shimmy coming from either the tires or the driveshaft. I bought it on the spot, even though the front fenders had cancer, the brown primer paint hid horrible green paint and the floorboards obviously needed replacing. It was beautiful.


I drove that truck around all fall and started buying little parts and pieces for it during the winter. Not soon after my wife of then 15 years said she was leaving. She and her sister packed her things into her new Toyota Tundra and left for good. I had papers very soon after and stood before the judge on February 14th. By then my new love affair with the F-1 was in full bloom. Simple upgrades to the dash had turned into a full engine rebuild, and a noisy shock mount turned into a front independent suspension upgrade and install.



Not having the burden of a wife who demanded new clothes or expensive hair appointments was a blessing; instead I had a lover who required a custom aluminum gas tank and a new Ididit steering column. Slowly all year the pieces came in and were installed on my new lover. The house that I had been living in was purchased with me as the co-borrower and the ex-wife as the primary. I had been paying my share but the ex decided that she didn't want to pay anymore. The loan soon went into default and the bank wanted the property. My lover was still in need of serious attention.



During that year I had met a wonderful woman who oddly enough was able to pry me away from the long tedious hours in the garage. Her grandfather was a mechanic and helped me finish the mechanical aspects of the F-1 and was there when the engine was fired up for the first time. We got the truck in driving condition on the day before the bank took possession of the property. The truck drove so well that we used to to move my meager possessions to a storage unit. By that time my girlfriend had become my best friend and confidant. We were inseparable and she supported my love of old trucks. As I sit here and type this, I look to the wall in our bedroom where there is a Napa Auto Parts car calendar that she wanted on one of my trips to the auto parts store. She hung it up on the wall and changes the pages every month. Winter time is hard on old trucks and old bachelors who don't have a garage, but when the old F-1 is fired up and the snow melts, I am happy to have both of my loves right there with me cruising down the road and listening to those pipes ring.

So boys and girls, thus ends the story of the cost of Divorce and Old Trucks.

In Feb '65 my best friend, Gary, turned 16. His grandad gave him a pristine '56 Crown Vic Sunliner, Coral(pinkish)and White--it still had the plastic on the door panels and back seat from the factory, less than 5,000 mi. Wasn't long before Gary reversed the rear spring shackles, giving the a$$end up look, pulled off the stock mufflers and put on cheap glaspaks. discarded the hupcaps, painted the rims gloss back blacked out the wide whitewalls and put on "Baby Moons". Then he put those twist in blocks in the front coils, as many as he could---now the car rode like a lumber wagon:0, steering was difficult 'cuz it wandered. He also added a cheap Kraco 8-track and a pair of 5x9 speakers, best sound system any of us had.
For a high school kid it was "a bitchin ride " in the mid '60's in small town Colorado. I don't remember the engine size maybe a 292, but it was fairly fast, even with the automatic(of course in our "esteemed knowledge" only a manual, floor mounted 4-spd was truly fast and really "bitchin". Gary, would constantly rev the engine in neutral then drop it into low, impressive tire squeal, a loud thunk/clunk, and off he'd go.

Fast forward to late Aug '65-- Labor Day weekend, summers over, school starts on Tuesday, our senior year. We decided to have a party at Seeleys Lake on Sat. night. We had a small bonfire, beer, food, a warm evening,friends and girlfriends, a great view to the mountains to the west as the sun went down...perfect. Gary parked his car close to the fire and cranked up the tunes and he had a ton of tapes.
Awhile later we noticed the tapes were starting to drag....Gary's battery was going down. He jumped into the car, got it started, started the old generator charging the battery. Being the "knowledgeable" gearheads we were we suggested he keep the engine revved up to charge faster...Gary goes "OK" finds a rock and places it on the accelerator pedal...We're all having a great time.... THUNK,CLUNK and Garys '56 is spinning its wheels and going like a demon...straight for the lake...over the bank ... and splash.. into the water about 5 ft from shore into about 6' of water. I'll never forget the song playing on the 8-track, Beach Boys-"No Go Showboat"...and how it sort of just faded away as the water rose.

There was no way we were going to get the car out of the lake. Gary just knew his dad would kill him but we eventually went back to town and Gary called, finally, after a lot persuading, his dad. Slim met us out there in awhile,he was pissed off(it was around 11 pm), he looked at the car, looked at us, muttered something that I think was "ya stupid young dumb s#its", he told us to stay there and left. Awhile later here comes Slim with a tow truck in tow.... he's really pissed off(Slim always seemed pissed off but he had different degrees of "pissed off") . Slim never said a word to us...the tow truck driver managed to get Gary's car out.
They took off and left the two of us standing there. Gary just knew he'd catch livn' he!! when he got home. We drove around for awhile, I told him he could stay at my house, but he said no and I drove him home.
Gary called me the next day...I was expecting the worst news... he told me everything was cool. He said when he walked in the door he expected the worst...his Dad was sitting in the kitchen with a bottle of JD in front of him, looked at Gary and told him to sit down. Gary then said his dad just shook his head and started laughing, told Gary that it was ok, kids need to learn by their mistakes and Gary "by GOD learned his" that night...then told him to get a glass and he poured him a drink of JD. Gary also had to pay Slim back for the tow charge of $500 dollars(why Slim was pissed off at the lake).



Insurance totaled the '56 and after Gary payed his Dad back for the tow about Dec. Slim helped Gary buy a '57 Chevy convertible... and told him he didn't need to pay him back for the loan...Great Christmas gift!
I should say that Slim was a product of the Depression, a hard scrabble farm raised man that had children way later in life than most, he wasn't violent to his kids, but the belt or a slap or two was not uncommon. And Gary could be real a hellion, the youngest of three and the only one still at home.

We used reminice about this incident when we would get together over the years...and laugh. Sadly, Gary passed away a couple years ago and I knew him since the 7th grade.We shared a lot of memories over the ensuing years