How did you find your abandoned car?

Make friends with a cable guy or power company line man. They are up poles and see into back yards all the time.

 

i posted once in a thread about an old merc at the bottom of Carbon Canyon in Chino Hills State Park. No one took me up on heading out there. Too bad too, because most of that park burned and i'm pretty sure that the spot that the car is in is gone now too. The park will be closed for a long time due to the fires.

i've been looking for many years. part of being a runner is getting to head and venture out in areas that most people can't. since you're on foot and in the trails (and just a runner) it's easier to talk your way/ sneak into areas that are "restricted."

 

Old guys. They seem to know where stuff is. Just pretend like your interested in their stories, then steer the coversation towards cars. They'll talk.

 

Once you get the "touch", you'll find that when you only have enough money for that car, it will find you. Sometimes it's like the devil is seeing juuuuuussssttttt how close to the edge you'll go moneywise before you'll stop.

 

I've had a bunch of guys approach me about old cars when I'm driving my '62 Suburban.

Drive your stuff daily, and people will come out of the woodwork to tell you about some old car or truck somewhere.

-Brad

 

I have customers come into my shop. We start talking cars they tell me about cars the have seen. I check them out and sometimes we get them, and most of the time its a wild goose chase but always fun.

 

i chase a lot of leads more dead ends then not but every once in a while we hit big.what i wander is how much is left after the scrap prices this summer

 

Not much left on the farms around here. I saw more cars than I could count headed toward the metal scrappers this summer.

 

Ever hear the old adage "takes one to find one"? I use large magnets on the side of anything retrieved on the trailer that read:

WANTED
ANY CONDITION

More often then not every time I stop for fuel or food someone has a story of one. Even had people flag me down. Also, I put a dot on an atlas where the 'story' is and keep detailed notes in a separate notebook. When in the area, I chase the goose. Some leads I have go back almost 20 years now...

 

I found my 51 Chevy on craigslist.. And i found a full mustang II set up on ebay.. When i got to the guys house we talked for abit and before i knew it my car was filled with extra parts that he wanted to just get outta his way.. It was like chrismas in.. ummm december?lol

 

The guy i bought my 56 from said he and a buddy was coming back from huntin camp and saw the nose of her sticking out of a collapsed barn. He talked to the old couple the barn belonged to and they said if he could dig it out he could have it. so they got to work. And then i bought it from him.

 

I know where what looks like a '32 Ford tudor and another early 30s car sit in the way back of someone's yard, in view of an interstate if you look quick. Sometimes it's just a matter of keeping your eyes open. I just wish the damned things weren't 4 hours down the road, or I'd track them down.

 

this is true with a twist i was removing a tree and had some time to look arond while i was in the tree and found a 68 chevelle sticking out of a garage and bought it

 

out of the 2 I currently own..one I found talking to an old man who had his mother inlaws car in a chicken barn in Kentucky for way too many years..bought it right and worked on it with spare cash , got it running and driving within the first 6 months and drove it for the past 10years doing a little here and a little there to it..a nice 4 door 53 -210..


<---the second one is my 28A project. My daughter found it local to where i live, (origanally from Twin falls Min area) it was sitting out infront of a now "car friend's" front lawn for sale..its all in pieces out in the shop slowly becoming a Hot Rod

 

How many of you guys can look right through a wood slat fence? Seriously. Even if the boards are real close to each other, if you don't look at the fence and focus past it you can see what is behind these fences as you are driving by. I have found several cars this way. Sometimes I have to drive by several times to make out what it is, but I can do it. It also seems that driving by too slow makes it harder to see through them.

 

Craiglist is really good these days ! My friend found this (one family owned 59 Plymouth wagon)

 

http://www.jwoodandcompany.com/trucks.htm
online auction searches help

 

I had a friend call me, knowing I was into old cars, saying he had a friend who'd bought a piece of property and it had an older car on it. No more description than that. Told me they'd said if I showed up with my truck and trailer I could have it. I drove the 1 1/5 hrs to pick up the mystery car. 64 Galaxie Country Squire!

Another one I have, was told that if I'd cleaned out a storage unit that was visited every so often by the owner, to dump more shit into it over a 20 year time span, I could have the old car that was buried at the VERY back of the unit. It'd been started as a restoration project by the owner and his son. The son passed, as only the chassis was restored and loosely assembled, every nut and bolt accounted for, tagged, and bagged, the owner stopped after his sons death. 29 Ford!

 

I bought mine from the auto trader. Not the local one but like the 5.00 dollar one and read it cover to cover and saw an add for "1928-1931 tudor bodies" then said to myself "self you want that car" drove out to PA 3 hours away and bought it that day!!! i thought i paid to much for it but it was mine and i didnt care. Plus the guy was super nice and showed me some of his stash he had WOW

 

My dads coworker knew that my dad was into old cars and said ive got an old van sitting in our lakehouses garage in brownwood tx that you can have if you come get it. after seeing some pictures too close to see anything we drove the two hours to brownwood and suprisingly found a van with a beautiful patina

 

ok this is one of my spots i go and get parts from some guy came over to look at something i had for sale and explained how to get to this old dump site in idaho so if you search on google for black canyon in grace idaho and look at images look for the guy in the canoe and check out whats in the background its insane

 

This the 'insanity' you speak of..?

 

I had my driver's license for a month or two and was cruising around in my mom's 63 Dodge Dart with a friend. I spotted my '30 model A roadster body dumped under a RR overpass. This was in Queens, NYC.
We went back to my house and got an old canvas tarp to put on top of the Dart to protect it from the A body during transport.
A couple of years later another friend repeated my story to a co-worker at his temp job at UPS in Manhattan. It turned out the co-worker's brother had dumped the body where I found it. Small world!

 

Okay this gets my vote

 

My uncle found my car for me, guess it was sitting alongside his buddy's neighbor's barn for many years,now it will sit behind the rental house in my yard for a few more

 

...around here a spotting scope works well,you can find even more stuff stashed in the fall/winter,when all the leaf's have left the trees and the black berry bushes die down....

 

whats really sad is one of the shops i do bussiness with kept telling me they knew where there was a 1940 steel willys. i would ask and they would say its out in north plains, someday we will take you out to it. one after noon a buddy of mine pulled up and low and behold he found out where it was at and bought it. its probaly one of the nicest bodies ive seen. so there are still some cars still out there and people who know about them but wont tell ya where they are. bummer i missed my willys.

 

i found my 59 caddy burried in a garage. it had been sitting there since 78. when i say burried i mean fucking burried.there was a oak table upside down on the roof of the car and boxes os hit on the hood trunk and all around it. the car was completly covered i shit all way aroun. to make it worse the poeple who had it dident have a garage door up...they used a big blue tarp so all the weather got in.

 

as seen on the hamb before..My friend Hot Rod Johnny knew I was rod-less since my heart surgery in'07 and called one night and said "get over to Kimball and Catalpa; some guy just pushed an old car into the street and wants it towed away". I went right over there and he was outside and about to call a wrecker to take it away. It turns out he's a former member of the club I'm in and he gives me a bill of sale for it. Seems he tried to sell it on Ebite and the deal fell through, then he tried to give it away. No luck. When his shiny new car got hit at the curb- that was it. I got a 33 Olds for FREE.............

 

well it looks like you guys found the picture of my favorite place to go