3macboys

Now on to the task at hand - cleaning the place while also making progress on the cars. My normal day is to pick what I've sold and pack it up to ship and then try to clean up one small area, accomplish one task on one of the cars and take pictures for new listings on Ebay that I do at home along with the shipping labels. The shop is located about 10 miles from the house and we do not have an internet connection there. I'll mention this just for perspective of those thinking having big space would be fantastic - and it is, but as you can see it is easy for things to get out of hand and our building costs about $25 a day to cover heat/hydro/taxes and water. Any maintenance is over and above that. I'm not complaining and I've found my way to take care of that, but it needs to be a consideration for anyone thinking of this size of building. The first project of the day was removing the pulley from the power steering pump of my father's 1951 Plymouth. My oldest had pulled it for me while he was home over the holidays. The car was modified nearly 35 years ago and though not meeting the purpose of the AACA it does show the major issue with modifying a car, my father knows what went into it, I know most of what's there and kids have no idea. It was done with all Chrysler product parts so that helps. Specifically with regard to the power steering pump, it's leaking along the seam of the reservoir so time to replace it with a rebuilt one and while I'm at it I'll replace the two hoses. My father says that he has no idea what that pump is off of as we had already replaced it once and it was one that we happened to have on hand. It's a good thing the guy at the parts store is a Mopar fan as he's currently looking for the right pump for me. My mantra going forward is "Do it right, do it once" Next up was one of those stupid things of I'll get to it tomorrow, I can't tell you how many times I've walked past the stack of empty boxes saying "I'll look after that tomorrow". Well tomorrow finally became today and the boxes are cut up for recycling and will be at the curb tomorrow evening. The stupid part is it took less than 5 minutes and it was done. Long hanging fruit I know, but when you are dealing with a problem that's not just square feet but cubic feet, I've got to take those small victories too.

This is a picture of the original dealership - less than half a block from the current building and is now a hairdresser's I realized that I forgot to include pictures of the showroom. The chassis is for a 1930 Dodge DD6, rumble seat coupe - the body is at the body shop and the rad is at the rad shop, both for extended times but hopefully they will both be back soon. In the meantime the chassis still has work to be finished up and we have had it running. We had put the chassis the showroom to work on so that we didn't have to heat the whole shop. The floor shows what happens when you go cheap on paint and floor finishing. Latex paint and 70 year old concrete do not make for a happy marriage. My plan is to just get rid of the paint and go back to the bare concrete. On the upside, every time I sweep more of the paint lifts!

I believe that in the 50's Chrysler had a standardized look for new buildings, at least for the front facade. Actually I suspect all of the companies did, someplace I have layout plans from Ford showing what they determined to be an efficient shop layout with different opens for different markets. I'll have to see if I can find that again. Here's an item from each store https://www.ebay.com/itm/165769832356 - that cap came from a closed Ford dealership in Flesherton, Ontario, Boyd Bros, that dated to about 1910. I've got an NOS Model A rear axle shaft in the showroom from there that I'm keeping in the original factory wrapping. https://www.ebay.ca/itm/252707648633 This is neat tye tack that came from a fellow in Shakespeare, Ontario that was getting out of the swap meet business. And yes for those that are wondering - Shakespeare is just outside of Stratford and the Avon River does run through Stratford.

I price everything with shipping included - every once in awhile I cringe when I see where the buyer is but it's the old story of you don't make money when you sell, you make money when you buy. I end up sending the odd Jeep or truck manual/part to the territories but not a lot. I did send a NOS bumper for a 1978 Chrysler 300 to Newfoundland a few years ago and the price couldn't have been better - my one sister just happened to be going their on vacation and the bumper fit perfectly in her Journey! Cost me the time of putting her snow tires on that year and she and her husband met some locals on their trek. Don

The shop is located in beautiful downtown Innerkip, Ontario, just outside of Woodstock. Its a rural community, heck we just got a Tim Hortons in the village last week! Commercial property is still generally affordable here, it's the ongoing carrying costs that get you such as the taxes, heat and hydro because everything is billed as a business, hence the Ebay stores. The story to us buying the building is that the fellow that we bought it from - Ron, more sold it to us, than we bought it from him. My parents were out on a drive with their 1951 Plymouth Suburban wagon and dad thought that it would be neat to have a picture of it in front of a period dealership as those buildings are disappearing. Cutting to the chase they stopped by the building and dad went in to check with Ron if it was alright to take the picture. As the two of them talked Ron as the story goes said to my father said to my father "I think that you should have this place" So after some back and forth about 6 months later we took possession. Ron still has a key to the building and we store his boat for him every winter. He stops in just to chew the fat at least once a month, but the one thing that has stuck with me is observation of younger people not being hands on with things is because "Their dad never showed them how" The secret to the shipping is that I have a business account with Canada Post which cuts the price significantly, unless something is going to Newfoundland, in which case it's just crazy expensive and I feel for anyone living there on what the costs of goods must be. I can actually ship cheaper to the US than people in the US can ship to Canada. The vast majority of my books were printed for both the US and Canadian market. Even the Canadian editions will specify the appropriate service for vehicles built in both countries. The first few pages past the index will show the break down of both US and Canadian built vehicles - I just make sure I show pictures of those is my listings. Keep in mind a good number of Canadian built vehicles have made their way south.

I actually have two stores on Ebay - MaryOldStuff and 3MacBoysDodge , both are a bit of a play on words, I actually live on Mary St and I sell old stuff. As for the 3MacBoys, well I have three boys and my family going back to my grandfather have been a Mopar family. My grandfather was a mechanic and had a small shop in Ilderton, Ontario once upon a time. The radiant system is all that is used to heat the shop now, the steam units were long disconnected before our purchase. I leave one of the three on in the heating system and it maintains the shop at about 55 f and is pretty cost effective being on natural gas. I actually rarely turn it up from that when working in there. I also run two dehumidifiers year round. The front showroom has forced air. So long as the overhead doors aren't left open for long periods of time the shop staying fairly cool all summer even with all those big windows.

My estimate is about 15 to 20k manuals. The space is a cursing and a blessing at the same time but I'm not complaining. Don

I couldn't agree more - even worse when there are three generations sharing the space, one cleans and two clutter!

Jim my grand plan is to get the parts department fully stocked, at least on the face, with all Mopar products to make it look like it was in the day. I'm hoping by the return of the HASC in the spring to have made significant progress in the main shop. I understand my father has offered up the shop for the spring safety checks. Don

Part of what got me going on this is the thread about the next caretaker of your car. I'm 55 but as you can see I have a lot to get taken care of and the auction when the time comes is going to be along one if I don't get a handle on things now.

The TR6 belongs to a friend of mine - his first old car and he's never really done anything mechanical before but he's already getting his hands dirty. Pulled the rad last week after finding a leak in the seam of the top tank.

To the Moderators feel free to move this if you feel it belongs elsewhere. My plan for this year is to document the changes in my shop through the course of the year to try to get it back in to a functional space. I will admit that it is partially self servicing to keep me motivated to keep going with the various projects and to get the place to where it should be. I hope that it also serves to motivate a few others who are "suffering" under similar circumstances. I will try to regularly post updates and reports on the progress to both the shop and the cars. There will be gaps as both my wife and I are retired and we have a cottage in the north that we spend a fair amount of the summer at. A little background is that along with my father we bought this building on April 1st about 8 or 9 years ago. I'm still not sure if we should have ran with that closing date. The building is a former Chrysler dealership that was built in 1952. We bought it from the son and daughter of the original owner. The dealership was originally established in 1938 and that building still stands in the village. Total floor space is about 7000 sq feet. At one time there were 14 mechanics working here and they had Cities Service gas pumps out front. Fast forward to now and the pictures tell the story of how 3 generations can fill a place in a hurry and now I'm left working backwards to get it to where it should be. Let this serve as a warning to make a plan and stick to it before moving into a new shop. As this is zoned as a commercial property and taxed as such I decided that I had to do something to help with those carrying costs and have ended up with a small business in my retirement selling Service Manuals/Owner's Manuals/Brochures and NOS parts along with a few used ones for everything from cars to heavy construction equipment and maintain over 5000 Ebay listings. I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story for now lets see where this journey takes us! The picture of the Star sign going up was the first project of the year with my oldest and youngest hanging their grandfather's Christmas present in the showroom. The sign is a pure fantasy piece, but since we have a Star seemed fitting.

To follow up on that - please don't forget that you can follow along on the posts without signing back in. The OP may very well be reading along, just not signed in so you don't know for sure if they have been back or not, the only thing for sure is that they have not commented further.

I believe the first one is going to be LaSalle, just not sure on the year

Hundreds of thousands of parcels a year go through the post office and we only hear about the very few issues that happen. I'm willing to bet that most of you screwed up more often at work than the post office does with delivering packages, you just don't tell anyone in an open forum about it. I just sent a package on Dec 22 - last day here for the post office before Christmas to ship and it arrived yesterday in the middle of Oregon - that's two countries and passing through customs over the holidays all for I think it was about $27 Canadian. As an aside, these are old cars - who needs overnight shipping? Most everything I send (20 or so packages a week) arrives in a week to 10 days, around the globe! To the OP there is no scam - you sold through Ebay and got paid, and you shipped through the USPS - those are the two businesses that you dealt with and you are their customer, neither of which are going to run a scam. You rarely hear from the happy customers but oh boy that one unhappy one....

Thanks for that additional information - makes complete sense now. I keep thinking that if they aren't aftermarket that they are heavy truck (something like a Peterbilt) or military surplus from a deuce and a half or likes but still can't find a match. Just a couple of thoughts if you haven't already expanded your search that far. Since that was built prior to buying online being a thing see if you can get your hands on a JC Whitney catalog or truck accessory catalog of the same era of the build and you might find them.

If you scroll down a bit further you'll find a Buy/Sell Section just for Chrysler vehicles as well and it will be worth posting there too. BTW don't sell yourself out by being in Southern, Ontario, I consider it be a pretty good place to live! Shipping by mail to the US will likely be in the $75 to 100 range and most pieces are received in about a week. If you get quoted higher than that drop me a note and I might be able to help out. Good luck, Don

That's just the usual thread drift when something different shows up. If you can take some more pictures focusing on just the lights that you want identified without all the other distractions in the background you might get more information. There's a lot going on in the pictures so it is difficult to see the details that would aid in the ID.

Easy enough to do and welcome aboard! No harm in posting further down in the Chrysler/Mopar section that you are looking as well. There is a specific Buy/Sell section there. Good luck - it will be out there! Don

Here's the other one with no replies