Another shot

Here's a picture, taken in the winter of '83 near Lecoma MO, of my '51 next to grandpa's '52. Teh tan '74 Vega was dad's. It was the source of the sleeved engine that went into my first Vega. Here it was repowered with a cast-iron 151 Pontiac "iron duke" engine. He drove it for many, many miles before selling it to my brother who also drove it a bunch. between the two of them they put nearly 100,00 miles on that engine. He sold it to someone else who drove it til the car was worn out (but the engine still ran great). The engine got transplanted into a Pontiac Astre wagon (that' what it came out of in '79) and was driven for several more years. In fact that car was parked for reasons other than engine trouble. At that point the engine had close to 300,000 miles on it. 

'51 Chevy

About the time I was building the wagon, I got this '51 from my Grandpa Sherrill. At the time he was fixing up a nice old '52 to replace his worn out '50 and bought this for parts-mainly the grille. It turned out that although the '51 and '52 grilles look almost identical with the exception of "teeth", the area surrounding the parking lights is larger on the '52 so the grille wouldn't work. Brakes,tires and a carburetor kit got her back on the road after sitting for about 20 years. We drove the wheels of of this old thing. An old man kept after me to sell it to him and I finally gave in. After that, every time that I saw him he would gripe about the condition that the car had been in! Sure it was pretty rough-it needed a lot of interior work and paint-but that was all very obvious when he was pestering me. Needless to say, that kinda aggravated me. I've often regretted selling this one, but in the last few years we put my great aunt's '53 on the road and that satisfies my "stovebolt" urges (sort of). 

Next please...

When my first car was wrecked and totalled, I took the settlement offer that the other guy's insurance company gave me. If I'd've known then what I know now I'd have counter-offered. The gave me $500 (about twice my investment) and let me keep the car-why would expect more? Oh, well.

Not long after that dad was on a run through Arkansas and saw a cute orange Vega wagon on a used car lot. He and mom threw a tow bar in their truck and headed south. He bought it for me before I knew anything about it. He was sure that I would love it and he was right. He got for the $500 that I had gotten out of my old one, so I was tickled to death.

He tried to drive it home, but overheated within a few miles. Someone had dumped a can of stop leak in the radiator and neglected to let the engine warm up enough to circulate it. The result was a plug of stop leak at the bottom of the radiator tank blocking the lower outlet-a minor fix once he got it home. Luckily they had the towbar and were able to take out the drive shaft and bring it on home. It wasn't a sleeved engine (Vega engines had an aluminum/silicon block that was notorious about oil consumption-the fix was to sleeve the engine which made for an excellent engine), so it smoked like a chimney. That didn't matter to me since I had a rebuilt Buick V6 and THM200 waiting in the wings for my now totalled hatchback. Unfortunately the wagon's motor mount location differed from the hatchback (who'da thunk it?) and I had to do a bit of fabrication to get the hatchback H-body mounts that I had already purchased to work. I had to repaint the rr 1/4 panel and hatch to make the exterior up to snuff. This picture is from early summer 1982. I had just finished the swap and had dealt with some heating problems(more about that in the future) Ultimately, once I had worked out the bugs, the biggest of which was my own dang fault, it made for a cool ride. Duals and glasspacks sounded awesome, but contributed to my being the target of more police attention than I desired.

later, 

Vega #2

Not after my wife and I started dating I had a minor accident in my 1st car-I bumped a Nova in the rear at an intersection-and wrinkled the right front fender (which was already the wrong color-I had bought the car wrecked and replaced the rf fender, header, bumper etc. and hadn't had a chance to repaint it). A schoolmate had this Vega, another '72 model, that he'd just quit driving so I bought it for a mere $75. It smoked like a chimney and had no rear shocks or brakes. It loped down the road like a Greyhound. I put it's rf fender on my brown Vega. Then, I got to thinking. My sweetie had just gotten hired at K-Mart and was relying on me for transportation to and from work. I put the lightly wrinkled fender on this one, fixed the shocks (welded the broken mounts) and fixed the rear brakes (replaced the rinky-dink adjusters that were failure prone-I had to put them on every Vega I ever owned) and presented it to my then girlfriend as a gift. We bought oil in 2.5 gallons jugs, and I had to put the oil filler cap on a chain like a bath tub plug-she kept forgetting to put it back, and that got expensive after a few-but it was transportation. It was a barebones car. It had 3 speed manual transmission but at some point the rear end had been replaced with one with 2.7_:1 gears from an automatic car. With it's low compression, oil burning engine and those gears in the rearend, on level ground it would run faster in second gear thatn it would in third! When you had it on the mat in second at 70 mph and shifted to third it would fall back under 65 mph. On the bright side, the tall gears and low power made for a combination the really worked on ice and snow-it didn't have enough oomph to spin the tires! It came with a little blue "clergy" sticker in the back window, and I remember parking on lover's lane and leaving the back end facing the road in hopes that I might raise some eyebrows-as far as I know we went unnoticed. Right before our wedding, late the next year, my 1st car was totalled (see previous post) so we had to resort to driving thes one on our wedding day. My older brother/best man was supposed to fill it up with gas, but forgot. So, about five minutes into our chase around town-with a procession of followers blowing their horns, we had to double back to the church and steal a car from my new in-laws! The rest of the "chase" was an adventure. But, I'll save that story for another post...

ttfn

Ca-rash!

Here's a shot of the left 1/4 panel on the morning after I was rearended. The other side wasn't quite as bad, but it would've cost WAY more than the car was worth to fix it right. I fixed the tailights and drove it this way for a few months, until it blew a head gasket-that's another story.It sucked (literally) after the wreck-the hatch didn't seal so it sucked exhaust fumes into the passenger compartment. Ah, but never fear. To paraphase King "There are other Vegas than this."

My 2nd, 1st car.

I guess that this is truly my first car.(The Vega, not the giant baja bug!) It's the first that actually got license and insurance. I bought it in the little town of O'Keene (sp?) Arkansas. Metallic chocolate brown (most people thought it was black). It was wreck in the right front and had a blown engine. I had a sleeved engine and was on a raoad trip with my dad looking at potential candidates for an engine transplant. We passed on a couple that he had seen along highway 67, but spotted this one on a detour. I paid $75 for it and towed it home. I had lots of fun with it-it ran surpisingly strong, but I went through transmissions like crazy. '72 and earlier Vegas used Opel transmissions that just weren't stout enough. I used up every 4 speed I could find within a 100 mile radius and ultimately had to settle on a 3 speed. The gear ratios were far enough apart that it took some of the wind out of my sails, but it held in there. I bought a Buick V6 to put in it, and had rebuilt it for the swap. On a drizzly evening in December of '81 I was heading home from work, sitting at a stoplight at the foot of a hill when I heard the sound of tires sliding on wet pavement. A '68 full-sized Ford rearended me, totalling the car. I drove it for a while longer (until the four-banger blew a head gasket) and used the insurance check to buy a slick Vega wagon (again in Arkansas) to put the V6 in ...but that's another story. This picture was taken just west of Salem (a place that is currently within the city limits) MO, on highway 32, in the winter of '80-'81. The big bug was an advertisement for an off-road shop. I recall that when I got out to take this picture I noticed that the Vega had "chalked the pipe"- something you don't see since they took the lead out of the gasoline.

1st ride, 'nother view.

Here's the ol' Pinto from a bird's eye view. Note the "T-handle" on the shifter. I took a stripped out discard and drilled and rethreaded it to fit the Pinto's metric shifter. I was only about 12 years old at the time. s

This is the one that started it all. A 1971 Ford Pinto that was stolen and driven off into a flooded quarry. It was found by divers about a year later. A body shop bought it for the frontend clip. There the top was cut off as well. When I got it, (from, my favorite uncle) we towed it 130 miles home. I spent the entire trip carsick from looking backwards to make sure nothing happened to my treasure. The motor was stuck, but we eventually got it freed up. Unfortunately it didn't have enough compression to run. Further surgery (with an airhammer) on my part destroyed the remaining structural integrity of the uni-body. I pulled the engine/trans with plans of using it in a future project. My father-in-law gave the engine awy 15 yrs later...I still have the tranny in the junkpile! The kid in the picture is my cousin's boy J.C. Last I heard he was a cop.

ca. 1985. '48 Dodge coupe. Floatin' Power! I always wore my pinstripe suit when I drove this beast to church. You can see the corner of my '53 Chevy p/u on the left and my '67 Bug on the right. That Matthew at about 3 yrs. old-he's a truck driver now.

'53 Chevy COE. It had a 261 with a broken crank when I got it. I put in a crank and sleeved one cylinder. Eventually converted it to LP-the updraft gas carb was nothing but trouble. The LP was fantastic. A guy from Jeff City offered me enough and I let it go. One of my big regrets...:^(

My '74 Toyota 4x4. 231 Buick V6, THM350, '79 Toyota t-case & diffs. Dump bed, tilt frontend, shaved doors 38" Gumbo Monster Mudders among other things. Totally impractical, but tons of funs.

Here's one of the few shots taken of our '95 Windstar that we had in '04-'05. We traded it off for a Kia Sportage...What a load!-one of many like this that we hauled away from Diana's folks' house when they sold it.

My $50 Scout hard at work building a bat friendly gate in the Pioneer Forest, Shannon County Missouri

My Scout on the east shore of Lake Michigan. We camped near here on our way back to MO from NJ/NYC via Canada.

Intro

I started this blog as a repository for pictures of cars that I've owned. I've been informed (by the boss!) that my daughter and I are going to sort family photos and put them into albums tomorrow. I figure I'll take time to scan the car pictures and post them here. I don't know why-no one will care but me, but I'm all that matters anyway!?!? (Some attitude eh?)

'til then,

yours.