Digger914

Bernie, You are an inspiration and after watching this build I might just try to make one of these classy little roadsters from a a left hand drive relic. Years ago I traded an old Colt revolver for an oxy-acetylene set and since then the Colt has done nothing but go up in value, but the gas torch set has probably saved me at least 10 times what the pistol is worth today and is one of my best trades. I still have my arc welder that I use about once every couple of years and my butt welds never looked as good as your gas welds when I was using it every couple of weeks.

I bet getting that big chain block on was a bugger of a job. As my welds don't usually look half as good as yours do, I would have cut down some of the removed section and welded the extra support inside the frame. Partly because I never trust my own butt welds on important things and partly because it would help me hold things in place while pulling things together.

Be glad she didn't get any farther than the car in your driveway. My neighbors uncle decided he could teach his niece (who had no license or learners permit) how to drive and she put his Cadillac Escalade through my living room wall. As far as insurance goes you would think it would be an easy claim to resolve, as uncle had full insurance on his Caddy and he had a commercial license, but my house and his Esurance were both underwritten by Allstate and the company decided to run the claim through my homeowners policy which turned a week long home repair into a 5 month ordeal.

Between lock downs and weather it's amazing you can get anything done, much less build a new car body for scratch. I am liking the idea you have for body style and looking forward to seeing if what you build from your minds picture looks like the picture in my mind.

Why do restorers smear the whole car with goo and spend another twenty hours of sanding. The DIY shinny coat of paint on the body repaired daily driver is one thing, but show quality paint jobs take time and quality materials aren't cheap. Prepping is the secret to painting and even brand new steel body panels have minute manufacturing wrinkles. A glass smooth paint job needs a glass smooth base. Ignoring all brand names and going for the gold, the real difference between body filler and glazing compound becomes obvious under the microscope where smooth sanded filler looks as porous as an absorbent paper towel and smooth sanded glazing compound looks as smooth as the face of a shinny business card.

Back in the days when CB radio was the thing several companies sold a 23 channel set that looked like a car phone. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/241435229998915131/

Bernie, I hadn't seen one in any of your postings and with your plans to remake the LeaF, I was going to ask if you had an English Wheel. I know what it takes to fix a compound curve by hand and now that I know you don't have a wheel, I'm even more impressed by your coach building skills.

From the day you wrote about taking a nap under the car the short lady has been looking over my shoulder while I check your postings. Being a hairdresser and concerned about how your wife can keep her hair good, she likes the green one with the full windscreen and the shinny radiator.

Hey Bernie, Everything I know about Koalas is second hand and the last word I had on Koalas in Victoria, was that when the road near my aunts old home got widened and paved there must have been 50 cars a day going by, so many Koalas were getting killed crossing the road they made their own Koala crossing signs. I had a couple of great aunts from down under, my Kiwi Aunt passed away when I was little and I don't remember her, but her son lived in town until his father died. I was in my late 40's when my Aussie aunt passed, she was actually Tasmanian but moved to Victoria when she was little. It was always an event when one of her siblings passed through town on their way to or from Europe and there were always pictures from back home and travel, most of them were black and white. The pictures of so many different things were always interesting, but it was a bit disappointing to learn that the Tasmanian Devil didn't look anything like it did in the cartoons. If you're mad then I'm mad too. The LeaF would be a nothing car, but the thought of putting it back together appeals to me because it looks so much like the old thing behind the barn that grandpa let my brother and I play in until it got hauled away with the old silo. The Rapier is a classic and classy roadster, seeing pictures of it out on the road always puts a smile on my face and I'm not the one behind the wheel. I love the pictures of it running through the countryside and color adds to the experience. Never really gave any thought as to how green Australia and New Zealand could be.

Did you see any Koalas crossing at the Koala crossing signs??

You don't have to explain the LeaF to me, I have a similar weakness for projects and if I lived across the road from you I would learn everything I could from you and I wouldn't get anything done around my house until everything I knew how to do on the LeaF was done, or there was nothing more I could do to help.

Bernie, Never to old to try something new and never underestimate the WOW factor, that is the boost you get when someone walks into your shop and says WOW. What you might be lacking in youthful stamina and exuberance, you more than make up for in talent and experience. To me, what you do with steel tubing is so far beyond my ability that it boggles the mind and way more difficult that replacing sections of rotted wood with epoxy soaked strips of fiber mesh. I knew almost nothing about fiberglass when I bought a boat with a busted hull and it was a learning experience, a big part of the experience was removing what I did wrong so I could do it right and doing it more than once.

Looks like keel rot but horizontal and I would have bet that it fixes the same way until I read up on timber coach / wood frame restoration and discovered that it might be even easier than I imagined. Of course there is only one way to find out and I've got nothing to try it on.

Never seen a car with this much metal and a wood frame, so my imagination is running wild with what kind of rot could make it un-restorable and I really do wish I was close enough to get a good look at this thing. I didn't know anything but the absolute basics about fiberglass and nothing about carbon fiber before I bought a boat with a busted hull and my wild imagination has me wondering about replacing the rotted wood by molding in carbon fiber. I'm sure that whatever you do it will look great when it's done, but curiosity as to how this body is wrapped around the wood has me wondering.

Bernie, you have a very colorful way of describing an engine that has very little wrong with it.

Getting through the main number can take forever and I've never had a problem getting hold of the field office duty agent. https://www.einvestigator.com/federal-bureau-of-investigation/

Roadsters are good for fun in the sun, but this thing will be great for a stately night on the town. Wish I could be there to help.

Sounds like the same former friend flimflam man that Carl told me about. The Sheriff is a good call to make, but with the internet add selling a car you don't legally own makes this Federal and the FBI is better.

I spent a couple of hours on the phone with Carl a couple, maybe three years ago talking about this car and I thought this was taken care of. When I was talking with Carl I was still doing fraud and forgery work for attorneys, so I would go with misappropriation over a money dispute because we talked about his options. Carl knew where the car was and told me why he was having trouble getting it back, from his description the guy was a former friend, flake and flimflam man. If he didn't go to an attorney to take care of this back then, the car is probably legally owned by now. I don't know how Nevada DMV handles these things, but there can't be to many recent abandoned vehicle storage leans for 1927 Cadillac LaSalle's on record.

Hey Bernie, I was in the service back in the early 70's with a guy that picked up an old Lea Francis while he was TDY to England and it cost him a fortune to ship it home. They way he talked about getting parts to rebuild the motor I was sure he was talking about a motorcycle., until I googled up the motorcycle and found out that it was a bike with a motor.

I was in service with a guy who had a Lea Francis bike, but I thought he was talking about a motorcycle. I didn't know Lea Francis made cars until you mentioned it.

Now that the Singer is half way gone, [ I may never learn ] About 4-5 years ago I went to look at an old Bug Eye from a craigslist add where I also found and passed on a $1,000.00 Le Mans Replica Singer that needed full restoration. Being in the states and not spending hundreds of hours restoring an old right hand drive would have been a good reason for the decision, but it wasn't my reason. The word Replica chased me away because I didn't know enough about Singer to know it was important and didn't give it a second thought until you drug this thing home.

When a new/used dealer puts a car like this out on the lot, they usually aren't in any hurry to sell. This T-Bird looks to be the point car of a used lot and as long as the point car is doing its job, its worth its weight in gold.

You got paid for this, you lucky dog you. My dad was a Minnesota dealer and keys were a pleasant childhood chore. The unpleasant childhood chore was sweeping snow off all the new and used cars all winter long.

A Tesla on auto pilot hit a tree and it burned for how many hours? and took how many gallons of water to extinguish? We are going to need more infrastructure than charging stations to fill the highways with modern electric vehicles. We are going to need a super fast fire suppression system that works on these batteries, or a lot of urns for the ashes of their occupants.