Technical When you have the money in your pocket

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G'day, I believe it was in 1981 and I found a 58 Corvette roller for sale. The pictures looked really nice so I dug up a couple of the mason jars from the farm and headed south to Kansas. When I got there the car was a pos. It had been a drag car for many years and was so twisted up and poorly done I had to walk away. Drive 600 miles when the interstate speed limit was 65 I was bummed.

So getting fuel to leave town a guy tells me he knows of a 59 for sale. And it's close. We go to check it out and it is 10 times the car as the 58 and has boxes and boxes of spare parts. We loaded it all up and off we went. We soon found out that a tow bar would not stay on the split bumper cars. We towed it from Kansas City to Cavalier ND with a tow rope.

But when we started unpacking we found a lot of treats. Complete original dash cluster that had been removed when new. There was a big heavy box that had a brand new Doug Nash 4+1. Amazing stuff. So the car is still sitting in Cavalier ready to be returned to the drag strip.

 

Went upstate to look at a supposedly solid 1935 Olds 3 window coupe many moons ago , took my wife and daughter for the ride...Nice scenery....about 3 hours away...talk about a bullshitter...this Olds had holes in the roof...???? ...must of sat under a tree for years with leafs and dirt just piling on top of it...Man was I excited at the thought of buying a solid coupe....No Deal

 

I looked at a '61 Ford last week on a cold windy day. It turns out I know the seller, decent guy not trying to push a car on anyone. It had serious rust issues and would need a trunk pan and wheel houses at a minimum, doubt the floors were far behind. It had a great 390 in it, started up cold and idled nicely. We shot the breeze and he was okay with me not buying it.

 

I have put pics on Craigslist for a couple parts cars. When I looked back at my ads I saw that the cars looked much better than they were. I mean these cars were Flintsone mobiles- for parts only. Anyway I went back and edited the ads saying that the pics were better than the hulks actually were... I wonder why that occurs w/digital pics? Maybe because the pics are put in little squares? But I swear all digital pics make things look better.
-- Another car that may make someone mad in the future....My friend ( who likes old cars, but doesn't know anything about them), told me about a 63 Riviera that he could buy for $2000 off a family- the owner had died. I went with him to look at it. It was at a dealership on a Sunday and no one was there, seller wasn't there either. It had patched up floors that were done bad which raised the seats so a tall person's head hits on the headliner, Very bad repairs done with pieces of sheet metal bent in "L's" using 2 sheet metal screws holding repair patches on, Pieces of vinyl laid over the dash, And lots of surface rust. I told him that is was a pretty good deal for that money and we left- he was going to think about it.
--In a few days they called and said he could have it for $1500. He bought it. He took it immediately to a small body shop and asked him to paint it. In a couple weeks it came back and looked really good- new bc/cc paint in gold. Next spring he started to drive it and mechanically it is good. So then I was looking at it pretty good and what a POS underneath. This car has a X frame and uses a sort of support in the floors that support the front of the doors- this is rusted out. This car is a POS that looks good.... Problem is the owner has seen all these 63 Rivieras going for $25-30,000 and he really thinks his is that nice. He really doesn't know it is bad. He has decided to sell it and last I know he put a ad in Craigslist for $17,000 for it. If someone who knows cars at all travels some distance to see it they will be mad!! I actually tried to tell him of the issues with the car but he believes it is as nice as those cars sold on Barrett-Jackson for huge money!!

 

My buddy comes upon a free OT Nova that was sitting behind a shop for years. He was thinking about a father-son project, but the car was rusty in places where Novas never rusted. He puts it on CL for $1800, amazing enough that the straight 6 sounded good, the clutch and transmission worked too. He gutted all the loose crap out of it and blasted it with a steam jenny. He was able to get $1500 for it.