Gues them small hairdryers dont give me the performace i want as a grown up when you are 12 34hp give you rocket like acceleration but it gets old after a while and people dont give them away any moore the realy think some one is going to pay for a nasty bug
My buddy in Texas pulled the hemi and fourspeed out of his special ordered 69 Hemi Roadrunner and put it in a 70 Duster because he wanted a race car. The Roadrunner ended up with a 413 in it and may still be cruising around central Texas. I have no idea how many cars and trucks that would be real interesting to someone now that I cut up when they weren't worth anything. Most purchased for 25, 50 or 100 bucks and stripped and then given to the s****per. We did save a 61 impala four door once though. I bought it from a coworker for the engine and trans, drove it home and pulled those and then gave it to a buddy and we put the engine and trans out of her totally rusted out 59 chevy four door in it and she drove it home the same day with a big grin on her face. Back when I worked a lot faster than I do now.
I had to buy my cars myself. At 16 I needed a car to get to school and work so I was very careful with em. Back then (early 80's) I could still get smokin deals on turn key 60's cars. I would drive em and sell em but never wrecked one. Lucky I guess. My buddy still has my $600.00 65 Mustang. That car is still running strong.
All of these while I was in high school... two of them while I was in the servie: (see photos below) You guys please don't send me hate mail after reading all of this. I've been a bad, bad boy. 53 Plymouth Belvedere 2 dr. hardtop, one-owner, original paint, rust-free Texas car - Paid $200 for it. I was 15. Pulled it all the way apart, against my dad's advice...didn't know what to do with it...sold it to a friend, who's dad got sick of seeing it laying around their farm and had it crushed. 66 Chevy Belair Wagon, original paint, rust-free Texas car. - Paid $100 for it. Bought it just for the aluminum powerglide transmission. Put a junk transmission in it and took it out to a friend's farm and abused it until it wouldn't run any more, then shot at it for several days with various small arms. 54 Ford Customline tudor, small amount of floor-board rust, small dent in quarter panel. - Paid $150 for it. Bought it to supply a cherry set of gl*** for my personal 54 Ford (I still have the rear window out of it and a ton of small parts in boxes). After we stripped it, I heated the coils to see what a dropped 54 Ford looked like....didn't like it. Then we abused it on the same farm as the 66 wagon until we rolled it. Hauled it to the crusher and got $40 for it. 64 Ford Fairlane tudor, absolutely perfect interior, rust-free Texas car, one owner. paid $750 for it. Drove it 2300 miles from south Texas to Grand Forks AFB. Rolled it, end over end....put me in the hospital. 66 Mustang fastback. This was joint effort between my dad and me. The car was cherry, original paint, interior, etc. We stripped it to make a drag car. We ran it for a year with 289 in it with killer heads. Sold it to a guy who painted it, and rolled it in a ball at the Edinburg, TX Dragstrip. 63 Ford Galaxie. 34,000 mile original. Drove it to North Dakota to replace the 64 Fairlane. Slid through an icey intersection (hey...give me a break, I was from south Texas!)...a guy slammed me on the rear quarter going 50 mph....pushed the rear axle out from under it.
I ruined a 66 pontiac lemans,First build and stoned all the time ,Ended up cutting it apart with a sawzall to get rid of it,Damn car was solid as hell.Just had dents,From someone kicking it in,Always wanted another one 66 lemans and gto;s are my favorites,Not 67 though.
In '68 I bought a new L89(aluminum head) Camaro convertable.....one of only six ever made! Wrecked it the second week I owned it. I never made a payment on it and just let GMAC take it back. Still makes me sick to think about it...........
Bought a '71 Dart ******* in 1980 rebuilt the motor had it 6 months and wrote it off in a ditch and dam near killed myself . The car was mint until the ditch , power pole and culvert made their body enhancements . Still kick myself for that dumb *** night ! Rob
The local paper had a section in the cl***ifeds for items costing 25 bucks or less. There were always a few old MoPars, Studes, Nashes, etc. for sale. We would buy them, drive the **** out of them until we dumped the trans or rear end or got a ticket for excess smoke. Since we rarely bothered to register them, they would be left on the side of the road. I had a friend, who's big brother bought a brand new SS396 Chevelle in 65. These people were the whitest of the white trash. About a month later I went to see my friend and there was the brother with the car on blocks and the rear wheels off. He was cutting the wheel wells out with.................get ready..............................A MACHETE AND A SINGLE JACK HAMMER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Afterwards, he installed a set of long ***ed shackles and a set of mud and snow tires on silver painted wheels. No, he did not mask off the tires before he painted them. Within six months, the repo guy showed up for the car. It was in the back yard. No engine, trans or front clip. Just gone, AWOL, MIA, vanished. A brand, spanking new car reduced to rubble in a matter of months.
I'm guilty of it also, in the late 60s early 70s lots of 50s cars could be bought on a daily basis for anywhere from 10-100 bucks and not just 4 doors. Drive around our neighborhood and just look down driveways and you'd find one or two cars in line ahead of the only driver. Knock on the door and ask if they wanted to sell it and more often than not I'd hear "we're thinking about it the junkman offered us $20 for it" or something similar. An offer of 30 to 50 bucks and it was yours. At least we had some fun with them and some guys did manage to save a few parts and cars. The junk guys bought and stole even more all to feed the need for metal during the Viet Nam war. On the plus side their constant low buck offers set the prices low for the rest of us.
I hate this thread...but like a train wreck I can't look away. I ruined a few too and can't stand to think about it. Forgive me HAMBers for I have sinned...
So when you go back do you ever rescue anything ? You're actually fortunate as you might be able to partially redeem yourself.
Also guilty,but it sure was fun! If I had it to do all over I would do it in a heartbeat,great memories.
I destroyed an original DZ powered 1969 Z/28 with the front bumper of my GTO. sent a 73 Buick 2 door to the junk yard after selling the motor and removing the tilt column.... that one won't be a bummer for anther 40 years though. never ruined any cool HAMB cars on purpose.
I'm also someone who destroyed a 1933 dodge 5 window coupe by trying to rechop it to make it look better due to advice of friends. I really wish I never had as it was a nice coupe with a 3 inch chop. Lost this car due to financial problems at the time still wish I had kept as I felt I could have fixed it Jen
Yeah, Zapato, I have been back and scavenged a few bits and pieces. But I would have to agree with JeffB2 who posted... " Also guilty,but it sure was fun! If I had it to do all over I would do it in a heartbeat, great memories"
at 15 years old I was going to be the next George Barris, so worked all summer on a farm to pay for a '50 Merc coupe...saved for a torch and some lead, and started "customizing," the result was warped doors, a mis-aligned hood, and several fires (set the undercoating on fire), ruined the front end by mis-cutting the front springs to lower it, etc, etc...my father gave a guy a bottle of whiskey to take it to the dump... ok, shoot me now...
i killed alot of muscle era performance mopars .....earned me the name of the reaper its funny how many of those cars i thought were too rusty then that id give anything to have sitting in my driveway today but the one that hurts the most is the first car i bought myself a not my fault accident sealed its fate it was an o/t 72 mach one i WILL own another one someday
It wasn't a car, but in the early 60's my Dad came home with a complete running, riding '48 Indian Chief. It was bone stock and complete with some dried out old leather bags. He paid $100 bucks. We had a Chevron gas station at the time that had a large gravel lot adjacent. I thought (then) that it was the ugliest thing I'd ever seen. I wanted one of those cool new Honda 90's. My teenage buddies and I would back up to the far side of the lot, rev the piss out of the poor old bike, then drop the foot clutch to see how deep a furrow we could cut into the gravel. After a few unlicensed back road trips we got bored with the thing and decided to make a chopper. First to go would be those "ugly" fender skirts. Hmm. Not much for tools, but seems like a heavy cold chisel and a big hammer would do. F---ed up that front fender pretty good. My mom had this cool lawn mower/rototiller with some big long handles. They would make some good ape hangers. Whacked them off the mower and bird ****ted them on the Indian. At that point the bike became immobile. Long story short: Mom pissed, Dad pissed, dead bike, dead lawn mowerand kid and buddies in deep S--t.
I remember when I was a kid (under 10) down the block there was a very wooded area. Seemed large to me at the time, for all I know it was a small area lol. You ever go back to a child hood place that seemed immense at the time and as an adult you found out it was just a small place? Any way, me and the neighborhood boys would go down to these woods where there were a whole bunch of old cars. Looking back I'm guessing they were probably 40s and possibly very early 50s cars, because this would have been mid 60s. We jumped on the roofs, broke out all the windows, just generally we were destructive little cusses. Just realized this was supposed to have been teen years ... I messed up a bunch of 50s cars and a few early 60s cars using them for parts and general learning experience =)
My very first car was a one owner '55 Chevy 210 that sat in a barn fer the previous however many years. Not a dent on it. Then I get ahold of it and run it into a telephone pole 60 miles an hour. F'd that thing up pretty good. Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
i screwed up a lot of stuff as a kid! but the worst was a w30 70 olds cutl*** 455 400 auto pos track with track package(i didnt know what all that meant till later) bought it off an old lady down the street who had stopped driving. the tuner guy just thought the invented drifting i slid that car sidways all over town and out ran every car around until one night of drinking and showing out me and 2 of my buddys ended up on our top and totaled the w30(just lucky we were not hurt) i to this day when i see one of those car priced at 30k i cringe!
They say you learn by your mistakes. Well I probably should have earned a masters degree. I started ruining (I called it building) cars before I had a license. There was a group of us in the neighborhood who helped each other (ruin) cars together. I remember the VW with the flowers and 2 bullet holes in it, the 51 Dodge we zipper plated, siphoned gas from a neighbor and took turns driving, my paintjob on a 66 Chevelle that took me 2 days to smooth out the orange peal, my 38 Chevy coupe that barely made it home as the wiring burned up when it got dark and I turned the lights on (I sold that one to my Brother). There were many more I will call them projects that I started and never finished. My dad once told me I could sell snow to the Eskimos so I guess my gift as a salesman helped me grow and keep my p***ion going. Never liked to throw anything out and always thought if I didn't need it someone else might. In later years my old and some new friends continue to help each other. Our projects are better now and we hopefully don't ruin any of them. Of course if we do, someone usually steps in with a solution to fix the problem or maybe just sell it and move on to something else.
yeah, like most I ruined a few in my youth too, trying to make them better, a pristine '56 NewYorker that never saw the road again after I started making an El Camino stands out in my mind.. but I learned quick and have saved at least a dozen for every one I destroyed since
Like some of you guys, I always worked too hard for, and on, the cars I had. I drove the **** out of them but never ruined any. I did however, sacrifice a really original but very rusty '70 Buick GS by swapping the complete drivetrain, suspension, interior and hood into a mint 70 Skylark hardtop with a blown engine, then junked the empty hulk. That was in the early 80's before "numbers matching" was such a big deal. Today I'd do it the other way around since the GS is probably worth $50k and the Skylark $12k. The other car my dad and I wasted was a '53 Catalina hardtop we started to restore when I was in High school (mid 70's). Stripped it down, sandblasted and primed the frame and underbody, we were getting ready to paint it when he got a call from a friend who owned the Pontiac dealership in Geneva. NY, he had just taken a mint '53 Custom Catalina in trade from the original owner. Long story short, Dad bought the mint car, (my favorite road trip with dad) which I still have today. We tried to sell the first one, even give it away to someone that wanted to finish it, no takers, so it went to the junk yard. I've been cleaning out my parents house and many of the parts from that car are still around, including a super nice, complete leather interior for a hardtop.
In high school I had a '63 Nova. It needed way more than I could give it. I was young and stupid, had no money, no tools, no money, no knowledge, no money, and no place to work on it after my folks split up. Did I mention no money? Ended up parting it out and junking the rest.
The Jalopy Journal
