This intro is maybe a little overdue? I first signed on 14 years ago according to my profile page. Better late than never, right? Anyway, I've been lurking here for a while now. I've been into cars since an early age, then got distracted by Italian motorcycles in my 20s. They were my main focus for quite a few years, but now I'm selling some of them off and want to get back into cars. My dad was an industrial arts teacher (metal shop) who had summers off and a lot of tools in his basement shop. With a bit of supervision I started screwing around with bicycles at about five years old, which led to working as a bicycle mechanic all through high school, college and a couple years after I graduated. When I bought a car in high school (1972 Triumph Spitfire, a story for another forum) I started to hear stories about my dad's cars back in the day. Apparently he worked in a service station and had a 1940 Ford convertible with a built flathead in it. The only details I remember are it had a Mercury crank and a hot cam. At least one picture exists of the car, but none of the engine as far as I know. He also told stories about a friend who bought a beat up Model A. That night the guy was at a party with my dad and some friends, and commented "I wish it was a roadster". Teenagers with torches and a Model A. By the end of the night the top had been removed. Later that summer they drove it from Minneapolis out to Yellowstone. No top, no floors, whatever. My mom met him right around that time and said she rode in the car once. There was nowhere to put her feet, and she burned her shoe on the exhaust. I have one crappy picture of him in that car, circa 1949? I'll try to attach it here but no guarantees... I'll try to post a pic of one of our summer trips too. 1970ish? We ended up on the saltflats and hey, what are all these cars doing here? Speedweek. Coincidence? I always thought so but now I wonder. Need to ask my mom about that I guess. Dad passed away about 20 years ago so a lot of the details of the car stuff is gone. Long winded point being I come by my interests naturally. My infatuation of the day is traditional 1926/27 Model T roadsters on Model A or '32 frames, which is strange since a year ago I would have told you I don't like Model T's but recently something clicked. Now if I could just get rid of a couple more bikes, there's a body in the classifieds I'd love to pick up and see where this leads. EDIT: My dad's driving the Model A, and that's me in the Bonneville photo. And it wasn't until I started to type this edit that it occurred to me what kind of car that is I'm standing in front of. Weird. (I realize it's a well known car BTW)
The Jalopy Journal
