Crazy road trips to get parts!

Doubtless, many of you have seen a few pics of me getting parts (engines) in my little convertible (see below). For example, I went on a spur-of-the-moment road trip, 3 hours each way, in the middle of the night, on a low spare to get this 318 Poly.

What kinds of crazy-*** road trips have you been on/taken for parts?

~Jason

 

I read the following here: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=284946&page=2

 

There has to be a " You Might be a Redneck" story that goes along with the 318 in the backseat.

 

Years ago I got a call in the afternoon about a storage unit in Florida that was up for grabs. I live in Kanas. It was supposed to have a lot of old motorcycle stuff in it. A buddy and I jumped in a truck and trailer and drove non-stop all the way. The rent due was around $200. I paid up and started loading. The booty included an Ariel square 4, two Ariel Red Hunter singles, a 500cc factory racer, two 1947 Norton twins, and huge piles and boxes of NOS Brit bike spares in the boxes. We then drove all the way back non-stop. Did I mention the two Stieb sidecars? I gave my buddy a WWII military ammo carrying Stieb for the use of his truck and trailer. It was a great roadtrip. The only fly in the ointment was when he wouldn't stop for a whiz break. I was about ready to explode before he'd stop. His truck driver's bladder was way bigger than my waiting capacity!

 

It was planned, but in August of '03 we drove up to Ohio to pick up a '42 Ford hood, and then on to Detroit for the Woodward Dream cruise... Anybody remember the 03 WDC?

How about the blackout?

 

I think you win with putting and engien int he back seat of that convertible.

I have driven pretty far for some really random parts I wanted. Once about 6 hours one way, but thats about it. Usually I am lucky enough to have it brought to me, or a friend has what I want.

 

Oh my God that's ****ing hilarious!!!!!!!!!. How do you get BIG snot out of the computer's keyboard?

 

Bought an old T bucket, just the bucket from a farmer. He'd been using it to feed his chickens in. He'd open the door and run the chickens in it then shut the door and feed them, that way the hogs couldn't get to the chicken feed. Anyway we opened the trunk of my 58 belair and stuck it in as far as it would go. My two buddies road on the back fenders with their feet in the trunk and held the body in so it wouldn't fall out. When we drove up in my front yard my dad was somewhat less than thrilled with our efforts. We paid $3.00 for the bucket and sold it for $25.00, it was some years ago.

 

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HMMMM, it doesn't look like the middle of the night in those pics. Alaska?

 

I'd have gone ******* over that square four - that's awesome!

~Jason

 

we went to california and washington to puchase dodge challengers and pulled them back with a grand cherokee to pa on a car dolly, Also the time we went to michigan to get a 68 dodge dart and we pulled it with a lumina car, not van, ****** went out 2 weeks later

 

One good panic stop and that poly would have crushed you to death.

Scary ****.

 

I got back at 4:00 AM and crashed right away.

This was at 6:00 AM that same morning, in business causal, taking the motor out so I could put my 3-year-old twin girls' car seats back in so I could take 'em to school! After I pulled the car away, the crane tilted forward and lifted me by my crotch like 5 feet into the air and launched me backwards... I thought it ripped my balls off! Needless to say, it ripped my pants knee-to-knee, and I had to change... but that is a story for another day. No ****.

Here's pics of a Cadillac 500 in there... since it weighs the same as two people, if I fold the back seat down and put the motor on a tire, it weighs about what two people would, placed where they'd sit. So the car handles like it would with 4 people in it - plus I have seat belt mounts to strap it to.

Crazy *** road trips... this was only 45 minutes away.

Once me and a couple of buddies flew to Phoenix from Kansas City to pick up a Shovelhead, only to realize after being har***ed by THE MAN in an OKC McDonald's parking lot for one of us sleeping in the sidecar in the back of the U-Haul we were bringing it back in that we had NO paperwork showing ownership of said bike, and that the truck has temp tags THAT HAD EXPIRED - SIX MONTHS BEFORE!!!!

One of my friends was one of those guys that's American as Apple Pie, but has the "look" of a foreign nationality because of some in his lineage - he was the one in the sidecar. This dude looked FULL-ON Arabic, and this was right after the OKC bombing and just before they tracked down the folks that did it! The cops gave us a real good once-over in the U-Haul before they let us go...

MAn, I hadn't thought of that in years! I remember that two of us at a time could barely fit in the cab (it was a Toyota truck-based box truck) at one time, so we pulled over in Albuquerque and took the armrests off!!! LMAO!

~Jason

 

No doubt!

I used seat belts, but in retrospect it wasn't too smart. See the next post about using mounts as tie-downs.

I stopped a few blocks away from the dude with the 500's house and strapped it down good - it wasn't going ANYWHERE.

My kids would probably be pissed if they had to retell how their dad died over and over to peals of laughter. And pretty though it is, the Darwin Award really has no place on my mantle, man.

~Jason

 

Why

 

Here's the pic! One '34 ch***is on the roof, four rusty doors, a cowl, and part of the roof plus dash and other odds and sods inside. Luckily only about 25 miles on back roads so didn't get hauled up by the Law.

This was probably the biggest load, but I also had two smallblock Chevies and an early Ford rear axle plus wheels for a 120-mile motorway thrash once - the front wheels were touching the road most of the way

 

Once drove 4 hours each way to buy a dual quad intake and factory finned valve covers for my nailhead. Made the purchase in the guy's garage for $275.00. Sweet deal.

 

I suppose a Model A pickup bed on the roof was nothing to write home about, but I just remembered I collected a Model A Sport Coupe body and doors (in pieces) from HAMBer Mart's in the trusty Volvo once. Same score as the '34 really - as much as possible wedged inside, and the rest on the roof bars, and hope I didn't have to stop in a hurry (Mart lives about 50 - 55 miles away).

I know people hate Volvos but I miss that one since it dissolved into an orange dusty pile (it replaced a '79 Chevy C10 pickup that had also dissolved - now some of the loads I carried in that when I moved house looked just like the Clampets on their way to Hollywoodland!).

 

Makes me feel like I'm not the only one desperate to haul stuff!

I have a '50 F2 I'm working on - maybe by Spring I'll have a freakin' truck to do stuff like that in.

~Jason

 

A story i heard from a guy with a Hispano Sueza(sp?) in his shop was this. It was in the country of Hungary and declared a national treasure. This status made it illegal to ship it out of the country. It was cut into non reckognizable shapes and shipped out as s****, then re***embled again in this country

 

Back in the 70's, I was going to school in Lubbock and had a buddy ask if I wanted to go with them to pick up a car. "Sure, why not?" So 4 of us jumped in a 65 Mustang and drove to Dallas to get a 67 Mustang fastback that didn't have a engine/transmission in it. Drove 400 miles, hooked up a tow bar and drove 400 miles back. We put two in the tow car and two in the towed car. I guess the highlight of the trip was both cars sliding sideways around a curve and argueing with the guys in the back car that we didn't do it just cuzz we were bored. Got back to Lubbock just in time to pick up the books at the dorm and make the first cl*** of the semester. The fastback ended up with a 427 Chevy/4 speed in it to use as a street racer.
Thanks for the wayback machine, Mr Peabody. That memory was just gathering dust in the back of my mind. LOL
Larry T

 

Now THAT rocks!

~Jason

 

I drove about 3 hours to help some guys cleaning out an estate to get a free Model A front axle, rear axle, and some wheels and tires. I get there, the front axle has split bones and juice brakes, the rear is a '40 or so. Loaded that up in a hurry. Wheels and tires were all 50's European car wires, all real knockoffs, so I loaded them up too. Then I bought a Stromberg 97 in pieces for $25 and an Edmunds Hudson 2-carb intake for $75. Had to go to an ATM for the cash, the closest one was in this run down part of the city that was so ghetto I half expected to get robbed any minute.

The 97 went on eBay for $100 or so a few weeks later, and I still have most of the rest of the stuff.

I remember buying gas on the way home for $1.48 a gallon at an Indian reservation, too, and saving about 50 cents a gallon.

 

This is a long story but here goes.

A few years ago a guy in MN, "Bill", on the Ford truck site bought a set of front fenders for his F-2 on eBay from a guy in PA. After winning the fenders Bill determined couldn't afford the shipping charges so he was going to let them go. In the mean time another guy in MN, "Tom", had a set of free stock F-1 rims and I was planning on making a short family vacation of getting the free rims. When I saw Bill's post I called a friend who made monthly trips to PA to visit his daughter to see if he'd be willing to pick up the fenders in PA and bring them home to <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comMilwaukee</ST1lace</st1:City>, where we both live. He said he would. I contacted Billand told him I'd deliver his fenders if he would go to Tom's and pick up the free F-1 wheels and split the gas for my trip to his home in MN. He agreed. Everything was set. In the mean time I won two F-1 hoods on eBay for $10 from another guy in MN, "Mike". I then found a parts truck that didn't sell on eBay that was located again in MN, north of Bill. I then found a '48-50 Ford truck clip on the Ford Barn cl***ifieds for $35 just west of Bill's house.

I made arrangements to make one big swing to deliver and pick up everything. First, I picked up Bill's fenders in <st1:City w:st="on"><ST1Milwaukee</st1:City>. I then headed to MN. I picked up my two eBay hoods, then to Bills house to drop off the fenders and pick up the rims. From there I drove west 30 miles to pick up the front clip and found a motel room for the night. The next morning I headed north 80 miles to pick up the parts truck. This is where it got real interesting.
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I was supposed to meet the parts truck guy in a small town and follow him to where the parts truck was located. I got to our meeting place a couple of hours earlier than I expected so I called the cell phone number the guy gave me. It was disconnected. Since this was a very small town I called everyone with the same last name, no one knew him. Finally, after two hours of sitting in 80+ degree temperatures with a wife and two kids waiting in the truck, the guy showed up with his girlfriend and a small gas can. He said he hadn't heard from me so he'd figured he come to see if I made it. I told him I'd been trying to get a hold of him for two hours but his cell wasn't working. He asked what number I was trying to call and when I told him he said that it was his old number, DAAH! He then said he needed to fill the gas can and we'd be on our way to the truck. We left town and went left and right and right and left on a bunch of gravel roads finally reaching an old farm in the middle of nowhere that looked like something from Dukes of Hazard. There was a pig's pen, chickens running around and horse tied to the house. When we pulled into the property I saw the parts truck sitting in the woods. I walked over to the truck, which had a couple of 6" trees growing behind and next to it, and lifted the hood. There was no battery so I asked if the guy had a battery so I hear it run. A second guy came out of the farm house, the actual owner of the truck, and said, "Heck, I doubt it will run." I said,"Your eBay ad said it "Runs Great!" ". He replied, "Yeah, it did, 8-9 years ago when I parked it." I grabbed the fan and the flat six engine was frozen. I told the guy it wasn't worth the $700 agreed upon price if the engine was stuck, I offered him $400 for it because the cab was pretty decent and it had the stock '48-50 radio, which is next to impossible to find in any condition. He replied, "Hell, I can get more than that for s****." This was way before the price of s**** went through the roof; he probably could have gotten $75-100 top for it. I started to get into my truck to drive away went the first guy said his buddy would take the $400 for it. First, they had to cut down three trees to get the truck out of the woods. Then they had to fire up the old M-F farm tractor, which they needed the gas for, and then the only way they could get it going was to rev it all the way and pop the clutch. They chained the tractor to the truck, popped the clutch and yanked the truck out of the woods almost taking out a couple of more trees with the side of the truck. We the truck into the clearing in front of an old tool shed and filled the Widow Maker tires with air, after tearing off the rotting wooden flatbed. As I and my two sons were winching the truck onto the trailer the first guy comes out of the house with a shotgun and a case of beer and says to the second guy, "Hey, I got the weeds cut down behind the barn, you want to do some target shooting?". This didn't give me a very good feeling, we were in the middle of absolutely nowhere, no one knew where we were and these guys knew I had more money on me. It upset my youngest son, who was about 9, enough that he quietly slipped my wife his unfolded pocket knife and told her to keep it handy. Meanwhile I called my brother and told him what was going on and if he didn't hear from me in an hour he should call the police. We made record time quickly chaining the truck onto the trailer and getting out of there. I drove a mile down the road to check the chains and call my brother to let him know everything was OK. The ride home was also very interesting because the truck was heavier than I thought it was and I ended up taking two lane highways home because the trailer got squirrely every time I went over 45 mph.

 

last year when my parents were still driving an 05 dodge magnum, my dad and i were working on my 69 chevy pickup, so we went everywhere to get parts with the magnum went on a trip up near boston, filled the magnum to the roof with 67-72 c/10 doors, a grille, a radiator, door hinges, and a bucket full of miscellaneous ****. then another time it hauled a less heavy load barely worth telling about, wich was a steering column, and other small parts we needed to get the truck on the road. now the magnum is gone, and in its place is an 08 silverado, so now we have 2 parts haulers.

you should see the bed of the silverado, completely scratched up, and we have only had it since february. that has hauled a load full of old ford parts for my model A from boston, and another trip from hudson, MA when we picked up 4 solid doors for the '55 chevy, but this kind of haul is expected of a truck.

 

I drove 8 hours (each way) to pick up a stck rear end for my 42 Chevy truck. Since I drove so far, the guy loaded my truck up with a bunch of extras and gave me the parts for free!

 

Dude... WTF?

~Jason

 

I can't compete with yall but here is my best shot. We bought my 51 in january. We go to pick it up on that saturday morning and it was cold. I had on coveralls and double socks and was still freezing. The rearend was out so we riged it back under there in a pasture. We load it and have no problems. We get home and try to unload it off the trailer so we can pick up a parts truck. Remember when I said we rigged the rearend under there. We tried to push i off put the rearend was twisting. We finally got it off. I have also learned that my 92 4dr civic is good for hauling bumpers and such

 

My best parts road trip took place over 25 years ago. My dad and I went up to the Iola swapmeet. On Sunday it started to rain and I found a guy who wanted to get home so he sold everything in his swap space to me for $100. The parts were mostly '48-52 Ford truck parts, the very stuff I was after. I pulled my truck in the swap area and loaded the entire back of my pickup with boxes of parts which consisted of two mint doors and hood, along with a bunch of other stuff. We left and decided to scour the mid-central Wisconsin junkyards we could find. We couldn't find a motel that night so we slept in my truck. My dad slept on the front seat, I slept on top of my parts, it wasn't the most comfortable night's sleep I've had. The next two days we spent going from one country junkyard to the next. We met some very interesting people and found more good parts. Spending that time with my dad was the best.

My dad died 17+ years ago and I've gone back to some of the junkyards I can remember but most of them are gone, kind of sad.

 

Can I play?

Not really a roadtrip, but I had bought a 413ci engine years back, but didn't have a real good place to store it yet. So I secured a spot in my '64 Chrysler for the time being, which happened to be a strechted limo-version. I ended up driving for over a couple of months with that thing in the back...







Aren't Limo's cool and handy