Pluto

Many panels are available, http://www.356panels.com/ Much of the trim parts are out there, the upholstery can be bought as a kit, engine, trans, wheels, and so on would need to be found and restored. Some of the small parts would be a lengthy search, but it could be made into something. Porsche date-coded a lot of a car when built, and on this thing that history is largely gone. Purists look for those codes. Trouble is, even if the hobbyist's hourly wage was $0.00, the car, when/if superbly resurrected, is worth maybe $125,000. Maybe. Might be better for this hulk to go vintage racing and save the heavy lifting for better bones to begin with. I have a very nice C model 356 that I bought completely disassembled; all body work done and every part save one wheel and a horn in boxes. Loaded all that stuff on the trailer and drove it home for 10,000.

\ Always a pleasure to read about Duesenbergs.

With most of those cars, the color wasn't right for the car. The '53 Chevy; the color was OK, but it was just another Chevy convertible. The Triumph was the expected dark green color, but it was just another British car. Chargers aren't supposed to be green, although a kid in my town had a green Hemi Charger, so what do I know. Pea green on that truck is a poor choice, should be blue/white, red/white or black. The open Ford should be grey, black, or ideally, Tucson Tan. Who ever heard of a green Mercedes. Wrong shade of mustard green on the Olds, looks pukey. Lime metallic on a Jag? Seriously? Right colors on the Cad, but it just doesn't pop. Maybe reverse the colors. The '64 Chevy should be white and a 409. A GREEN Cobra, really? I don't mind the green over tan Vette, but I'm a slender market. The purist in me demands a blue Packard. The Duster; well I guess there's a butt for every seat. Not mine though. In sum, green can work well, but only on a very few cars.

Well done Matt! Have a glass of bubbly on me.

I remember a few early fifties Chrysler Corp cars had a sort of molded, white-painted accessory trim on the wheels which was neither fish nor fowl; not a trim ring or a whitewall. And certainly not sourced from J.C. Whitney, so it would be unappealing to the true portawall acolyte. I'm sure a google searcher could turn up a picture

His first day on the job, budding mechanic Jimmy learned a hard lesson about the compression strength of peach crates.

A friend's dad drove B17s and told harrowing stories of going to Regensburg to deliver iron to the Messerschmitt werks. What a delightful car. Matt, you have a singular talent for coming up with every car I want.

Does it run, go, stop? How many miles? Interior photos? It's hard to sell apples out of an empty cart.

I reckon that would have been a Lycoming IO-360 four cylinder.

Looks like beautiful work on a very desirable car. Your int'l operator is correct, I call down there one or two times a month, it's 011 61 and the then the 9 digit number. Good luck with the sale.

Here's an example of reverse haggling. Some years ago, my dad had a fairly rare Farmall tractor. A friend came over, looked it all over and offered him 3500. Dad said, "No, it's not worth that, let's just make it 3000 even." The man was flabbergasted.

Sitting firmly astride this fence, I've always been a fan of both. Chevy was my favorite growing up (I was born in 1948), and I always reckoned they were better mechanically. I had a '57 BelAir hardtop in high school, 283/4 speed. It had had a hard life but I was over the moon. Over the last 20 years or so, there has come to be a sort of a fad version of the Ford Custom 300 2 door sedan. Usually with straight front axle, an FE, ideally a 406 and 4 speed. The fad dictates all-over gloss black. Yeah, I know, it's modified, but I like it.

Use extreme caution with a temporary small gas can. Use something like a lawn mower fuel tank, lash it down remotely and securely and run your hose properly and well clamped. When I was 16, I nearly burned up my '47 Ford and my dad's garage by not doing that. That was more than 50 years ago. My approach after that episode was to just fix the problem. In this case, I'd pull the fuel tank, have it cleaned out and sealed or replace it. Done.

Does anyone sit like this anymore?

This is why I love this forum. Everything from thermo-sprayed parts to the Batmobile to Ivan's mother's Beattie washing machine to a retractable for VL to a V16 Cadillac coupe that (that is still a coupe) to Istanbul. If someone asked me if I thought there might be old American cars in Turkey, I would envision a few old junkers, patched together with rags and 2x4s like you would see in Cuba. This is eye-opening. Thanks to all for all the great times over the years. Bill

Very good looking car! I always liked those fast back Mustangs. It would make better viewing for your customers if you put the sun to your back when shooting. Also, just after dawn and before dusk give a soft, some say magic, light for outdoor photography.

Speaking of leaf springs going through an active life as they lurch down the lane, I recall a thought experiment I had some years ago. Consider the leaf-sprung live rear axle, secured at the front by a pin and a bushing. At the rear, there is a shackle/pin/bushing affair, which amounts to a swivel which required to accommodate the lengthening and shortening of the spring pack as it compresses and relieves during its travel. Consider further a steady-state corner wherein the car's roll causes the inside spring to pull up, possibly to the maximum of its travel. Conversely, the outboard spring flattens, perhaps to its limit. Now think of the axle. By the unyielding mechanism of the shackle assembly, the axle is caused to move, or rotate, effectively shortening the wheelbase on he car's side closest to the center of the curve and extending the wheelbase on the outboard side. These changes are slight, of course, but not insignificant. I expected that the wheelbase changes would produce a steering effect. I thought it might be fun, or at least instructive, to mount a half-baked gauge of some sort, probably involving a few pieces of scrap pine and a magic marker crudely scabbed onto the fender of the victim test vehicle to confirm. The readings from this would lead to an illustration of axle rotation under load. This would then show the rear axle's contribution to getting the car around the corner, or otherwise. Sanity prevailed, but the the vision remained. I like to believe the Cadillac, Lincoln and Packard, et al chassis engineers chatted about this phenomenon "in the olden days". This got kind of wordy, but I wanted to be clear. I should note I'm not an engineer, but I like to try to understand how things work and why they were were built the way they were. I enjoy old machines, from steam locomotives to pocket watches.

Your Cadillac should float silently over road irregularities. It seems the best and only thing left is to remove the spring assemblies and disassemble as suggested above. Grind flat, polish and paint. On later Cadillacs, (Late thirties, but I may be confusing that with an English car I had) I recall interleaf liners of some slippery material. I wouldn't use buttons or the rope thing as above, as that would induce point loads, or fulcrums that would derange the spring rates. Of course, as the spring's load increases, in cornering, for example, the spring flattens so all the leaves must be free to slip over their neighbors.

Beautiful!

What IH called a Line Setting Ticket is usually inside the glove box. That is the key to your truck. It would list all the major components: engine, transmission (main and aux), front and rear axle ratings, wheel size, etc. I recall the 406 was a six and possibly those other BD and RD numbers you listed are sixes as well. For their lighter V8 powered trucks, but heavier than pickups, they used 304 and 345 inch V8s, I don't remember the larger sizes of V8s. All of them are very robust, low-revving, high quality engines.

Bush, I see you have the rare optional combination crash bar/muffler on the Cub Cadet. Healey looks great!

How the mighty have fallen...

B. Ecclestone had a half dozen of those, more or less. Not the ersatz ones, though.

It sounds like you are new to the hobby and maybe not particularly mechanically inclined, all of which is fine. If you want an old car of some type and most any type will do, find something that is: fun for you to look at, reliable, good club support, straightforward to repair, fun to drive, fairly affordable, parts are available, fairly easy to sell when you’re tired of it. If i was advising someone, I’d suggest a Buick anywhere from 1937 to 1957. Buy a mid-range model and get the very best condition you can afford.

Is that a Grumman body?