Interesting things you've found in cars

Couple of years ago I was talking to a young bloke who'd just bought a car the same as my daily driver. (Triumph 2500 sedan) Geting on to 30 years old now and pretty scarce. The car was terminally rusted, but had receipts in it for $3500 worth of mechanical upgrades done to it in the previous couple of years.

The kid was 'going to restore it' so I gave him a business card and told him if the job proved too big for him, I'd buy the car off him for the full $600 he'd just paid for it. Never heard from him again.

Last year there's a Triumph sedan advertised in the local abandoned vehicle auction, so along I go and sure enough. it's the kid's car. I bid at the auction, and got it for $225.

Got it home,. cleaned it out, found a stack of tools in the boot, the kid's supermarket nametag, the 20lb tin of bondo he was going to 'restore' the rust with, and in the glovebox... My business card.

Cheers, Glen.

 

I found a crater in the quarter panel of my Mustang about the size of a basketball, just filled in with fiberglass resin. I only found it because the entire chunck poped off one day while I was doing some brake work. It was a mighty fine cover up.

 

i found a live possum under my back seat the day I brought the car home

 

Well hell, since this I started this thread and it has recently resurfaced I'll provide a little update on mine. Talked with the folks once at my local VFW hall and they weren't sure what to do. Got back a hold of the guy I bought the car from, he got it from a farmer who picked it up an estate auction & he didn't keep any of the info on the car after he sold to who I purchased it from. Plus, shortly after posting everything went into storage because I moved and haven't gotten to unpacking it yet, as it's still in storage.

 

The screwdriver is pointing at the bullet, that is buried in the red Texas dirt, in the corner of the old truck cab, the very same bullet that was aimed at my crotch during the destruction of the old GMC body. The appropriate curse is, "Holy scrotums Batman!"
pigpen

 

In 1968 my buddy bought a brand new Firebird...( we thought he was nuts...$4200.00 )...anyway, we took it to Seattle to shop for cheap but groovy clothes and had to come back home through the Canadian border...we didn't want to pay any duty, so we hid the clothes in the rear quarter panel...( access through the rubber grommet in the door jam )...well we couldn't get them out....big leather boots...bell bottom pants....shirts...a lot of stuff we tore to pieces with coat hangers trying to get it out.....somewhere in a wrecking yard is a worn out 68 Firebird with a lotta new 1968 clothes in the back fenders...

 

I worked in a car dealership for 20 years and not a car that rolls in is not rifled through,by EVERYONE. If you keep something in a vehicle you might not be seen take it out before you bring it in for service.Found naked pictures of one guys girlfriend in his glovebox when she came with him to pick up the car there were no less than 12 people watching her through a window when it was picked up.I was also working on a pro football players jeep he was second string and was on green bay. There was a bonus check from a game he didnt even play in and recieved 125000.00 ,this was a playoff game.ONE GAME!!!! My boss had to photocopy it before i could put it back.Plenty of thongs in glove boxes,sex toys,drugs you name it but in my case if its really weird you can put a face to it and sometimes......... it isnt pretty.....just weird.

 

This thread rules! I guess I'll finally add one of my stories...

Around 5 years ago, I bought a '67 Chevy C10 out of a tow-yard. The body was fairly straight, 327/350 combo that ran like a top, and a decent interior, all for $800...the catch was that I had to take all the crap that was in the back of the truck too. No worries, I figured I might find something and I'd toss whatever else I didn't want. The only things worth mentioning IN the truck was a nice tacklebox full of crappie gear, a handful of wrenches, screwdrivers, and few bullet-casings. BUT...when I started sanding down the truck to prep for bodywork, I came across something quite interesting. It started on the rear quarter...the white paint slowly faded away to red lettering. The first letter, H...then I....then V...I kept sanding. Then the word "slammer,"...HIV Slammer? All the way down the side of the bed! Then I started sanding the hood..."Slut...Bitch...Whore"...painted in red across the entire hood.

If only that truck could have told the rest of the story. I primered it and sent it on it's way. I wasn't planning on keeping it, but I tell you...I didn't want to cross paths with that woman SCORNED!!

Bryan

 

I found $100 in 20's under the rubber floor mat of a '72 GMC truck I restored. I had driven the truck for 6 years with them under my feet.

 

Hell yeah, this thread rules... it's one of the high points of the HAMB!

~Jason

 

'41 Ford Coupe, tucked behind the firewall insulation...and out flops this little box of old rubbers. Too cool.

 

More on eBay, Item number: 140162557956

Probably no longer viable.

~Jason

 

I found these tiny old leather gloves inside the door on my '32 Oldsmobile.

I'm sure they were for a baby, but my friend insists that they're "midget driving gloves"

 

YES! Those are the best midget driving gloves I've ever seen!!! Did you find a stack of phone books to see over the wheel? HAHAHA

Mike

 

For one Horrible moment i thought you were going to post a pic of one being "installed" ....

If the owner of the Chevy pickup had used one,they may never have got their Pickup vandalised.

 

I'm surprised not more replies from body men. I worked in a few shops before having my own resto business for 15+ years. The stuff we came across would either leave you gasping with disbelief or panicing trying to hold down lunch.

Here are just a few.

One was a brand new Acura Around 1988. Fresh hit early in the am. Tow truck driver says he aint going near the car. It smells funny. I take the car off of the roll back and yes it does reak. The floors were full up even with the seats. The back one was piled up all around the baby seat. There must have been 3 dozen Mc Donalds bags all crawling with maggotts, likeley fed by the dozens of dirty diapers!! The car only had around 10,000 miles on it. WTF?

The car was hit pretty hard we got it back in like new shape. The woman came to pick up the car. Got in it and came back in the office scraeming at the top of her lungs, wanting to know how the stains got in her brand new carpet? My boss was freaking out. Lady he says, you couldn't even see the carpets to know there was a stain. We were a Nationwide preferred shop, so she complained. You guessed it. We had to put new carpets in it on our dime.

There was another brand new car left on our lot by duty tow overnight. Boss tells me to go get it and bring it in. There was blood everywhere. Covered it up the best that I could and brought it in. After staring at the wheel for a while. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with the horn cover. There were 2 teeth stuck in it.. I yanked the horn cover off as the boss called the hospital. They sent someone over to get them. Don't know if they could use them or not.

Another duty tow late night drop off. Big 4 door town car. Front end hit. Windshield smashed to bits.Looked like a deer hit. Fur everywhere. And guess what? The deer was still in the car. Pretty sure it was dead, cause the floors were covered in blood. We had to draw straws on that one to see who was taking the deer out. Then getting it in the dumpster was a different story.

Buddy had a radiator shop near by. When repalcing heater cores he found all kinds of stuff in there. Mostly dried up puke and crayons. Change and like someone else said. Alot of fake fingernails.

Alot of fast food splattered everywhere. I guess it's not good to eat and drive. Most of the sandwiches were pretty complete. We had a guy in the shop that would do a CSI on the food, put it back together dip it in clear till it was all glued back together then nail it up to the header coming out of the parts room. There had to be 2 dozen sandwiches up there. Not to mention the thanksgiving turkey! Must have plowed into someone on the way to grandma's house for the holidays.

I could go on for hours of the other things. Porn and money were run of the mill.

Don

 

I bought a 83 Seville of this guy I knew and found chicken bones under the seat and about ten pounds of cigarette butts on the floor. He was and probably still is a slob of unequaled quality.

 

I got four cars in my back yard that are awaiting to be taken apart and crushed... a 64 t-bird, 70 falcon a 70 fairlain 500 and a 71 torino wagon...Their trunks and interior are full to the brim with old crap that came with the cars... Maybe I should get Giraldo to film it when I unearth the treasure!!!

 

Kids are always stuffing things in weird places.

The wagon I put the red seats (the pot seats) in had a padlock with key under the back seat. Who knows where that came from.

Not a car, but when I was like 17 I worked a summer for the school district cleaning out their one sattelite elementaty school so they could lease it to boces - knocking down old insulation panels on the gym roof beams with a long stick, painting, and cleaning out under the heaters. Now every room had stuff in it, I had about a dollar in silver coins, a series 1957 one dollar bill silver certificate, pens, pencils, safety scissors... but the one room, was just plain loaded. I had 40 pair of those damn scissors and at least half of them came out of this one room, along with papers, crayons, pennies, and all sorts of crap. No one had cleaned them in the 30 years or so since the place had been built in '59. I guess that one teacher didn't pay much attention to the kids. I think it might have been a second grade class (I went to kindergarten there but don't remember much about it).

The '49 Hudson I bought recently had a 1934 penny in the glovebox, a box with 4 carbs in the trunk, a bunch of old NOS engine gaskets - mostly late 50s OHV motors - and a rusted out coffee can with a bunch of strange pieces. None of it went to a Hudson.

I'm still not sure what all was in the Nash I just got. I threw an old baby crib and an 80's GM car half front seat out of it, and there was some kind of old winch under that I left. The trunk I tossed out a bunch of old tires but left some wood trim pieces. Later, there were some old jacks falling out... car jacks by the look of them. I haven't even looked through behind the seat yet.

My friend has a pair of Falcons he got from the same guys. I sold them earlier this year to a guy who just took the hood and trunk and a couple pieces off one and was happy with it. In the trunk of that car were two good vintage porcelain signs and an old victrola. The guy who took the parts could have had them and we'd never have known - he left them. My buddy gave the guys back the Victrola, but kept the signs - I think one was a Goodyear.

When we were getting cars out of the one junkyard, there were old bottles, old oil cans - in one I found a near full gallon can of fresh Gulfflex SAE 30 - other car parts, sometimes parts to cars we never did see. One Stude Lark was full of old clothes. I found a plastic toy hot rod that had fallen out of an old Rambler - broken in three pieces, of course, because they'd ripped the car apart with the loader to scrap it.

All these money stories, I'm beginning to think I should fish around more in some of these cars, maybe I have $10,000 I don't know I have -

 

In 2001 my father bought a '28 Tudor that had been in underground storage since '61 - the seller's son drove it back and forth on 99 from Portland to Eugene to the University of Oregon before I-5 was built. Behind the back seat there were a couple textbooks and an era U of O student newspaper.

I work in the parts/service dept. at a car dealership and the techs are always finding money and assorted weird stuff in trade-ins. I've never found anything in the cars I've bought besides change and dead bugs.

 

There's a thin line between vandalised and Kustomized...I could show you one being installed...but then I'd have to..well, you know the rest.

 

A thin" rubber" line.....

He'd love to look under your hood and give you a tune up.

 

Granted this was on my late model truck but I'll tell it anyways. I took the dash apart to fix the A/C and heat control panel and when it finally came out two syringes fell out onto the floorboards that were hiding behind a panel that pops out!!!!

 

Whoa, man!!!

~Jason

 

That's just... disturbing.

~Jason

 

My cousin bought a 1968 NOVA ( org # car ) from a couple in CT about 3 yrs ago ..was a big mess got it for $2800 .. decided to go for a simple resto with a local guy for about 15K no problem untill

He dug closer into the car and found COPO papers under the rear seat ..BINGO

Resto was stopped now ..keep the car the way it is
O

 

Hmm...Well lets see..when I got my 64 bird, we had to change out the gaskets that go under the carb. When I pulled the carb off, I was surprised to see a ladies star of David jeweled necklace wedged between the gaskets. It hangs around my rearview mirror now.

The only other thing I thought was neat, was the original owners manual in the glove box. Complete with the owners name. Jaques Deckwar. Other than that, nothing but some seat cusion foam, and lots of change and dog hair from the previous owner!


xoxo
Niki

 

This guy found 14lbs of pot in his VW bus
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=248880&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

 

Having bought/acquired over 50 vehicles for the road and done bodywork for years... I've had some interesting finds. No human body parts though.
I took the radio out of a truck I was fixin' for myself and there was about 1/2 pound of "white powder" in a bag.
It got flushed. I don't do that crap. My head is messed up naturally!

 

The only thing I found in the Model A was a spider in the door wood. Yep, he bit me. Hand swelled up for three days.