rocketraider

A good friend who has a used car lot told me last week he can't find the top quality cars he built his reputation on. Said there isn't even much second tier stuff out there. He normally has 35-40 vehicles on his lot and that day there were 11. Then he says "you don't wanna sell me back that Marquis do ya?" Even the pay-here lot a mile down the road had less than half her normal stock.

Local municipal electric supplier (who has 2nd highest rates in the state due to horrendously bad supplier deals made nearly 20 years ago) set up FREE electric car charging stations at a community market site downtown. I didn't like the idea of my light bill subsidizing someone's driving, esp when that individual had already gotten a tax break on the vehicle's purchase. So I pinned the utility director's ears back until he proved to me that the charging stations were 100% powered by solar panels on the adjacent community market building. I'm good with that. In yesterday's Richmond paper an owner of a newly purchased hybrid was screaming blue murder because DMV had assessed a highway use fee on his car registration. It was put in place to offset fuel tax loss by electrics and hybrids. Guess the purchase tax break wasn't enough and he now thinks he shouldn't contribute to road upkeep. Like most states, if we could keep the legislature's fingers out of the transportation fund our roads would be in very good shape, esp after the gas tax nearly doubled July 1.

John, that is why no one but a franchised BMW dealer will warrantee a used BMW. Even then it's a ridiculously short time and mileage. In that price range one would expect a better quality car. Mercedes don't have the issues BMW do. I worked with a guy who was a BMW loyalist. He and his wife both had them including a BMW motorcycle. The damn things were at the dealer constantly, which really became a problem when the local dealer closed and the nearest one was 60 miles away. The price you pay for exclusivity.

That's four or more years the car's deteriorating from sitting and your grandpa may not be with you by that time. My dad was the same way. Stubborn as a mule and once he had something in his head, no changing it. Good luck and stick around. Join AACA or the Cad-LaSalle club, and feel free to ask for help and advice here.

I didn't have patience to build ships though I built aircraft and Rat Finks. AMT and Jo-Han made the automakers' promo models, so that may have been why their proportions seemed better. Jo-Han kits were excellent quality for most of their existence but I noticed molding quality got very poor towards the end. A 70 Eldorado kit came with a frame that was so twisted even a few minutes in the oven didn't help. IMC made some really interesting kits. I built the 48 Fords and the Mustang II concept. I know the 48s have been reissued in Testor's and Revell-Monogram versions, not sure on the Mustang. They were a little more complicated to build but showed well. I wish I knew what happened to all of them.

I admit. I built the Revell 57 Chevy with moderate success. Those operating rear side windows did it for me! But I ended up throwing the later-built 56 in the trash because try as my 12 year old self might, the doors never fit the body right. Warped, gaps, more body work than I wanted. My cousin, who had an appetite for destruction, wanted to blow it up with firecrackers. Patrick grew up to be a demolition engineer. Go figure.

Get the car running and roadworthy, then think about cosmetics. Sounds like you're capable of mechanical work. Cadillacs had to be reliable as ppl who bought them new wouldn't put up with troublesome machinery, and GM knew that. Maintained properly they are no less reliable than a modern vehicle and certainly not as expensive to repair as a modern car with failed electronics. Tell your dad life is too damn short to be practical all the time. Or have him find you a Honda disposa-car to take to school and you work on the Caddy anyway. I admire young people who have the unmitigated gall to take on something like this!😏👍

Went out for dinner tonite and on the way back passed a shopping center parking lot that had 20+ trucks and cars with teenagers and early-20s milling around. Most modified (I will never understand what these kids call a "Carolina Squat" on pickups) but these were well-cared-for vehicles and a friendly crowd who didn't mind talking to an old car guy in a Grand Marquis. One even asked if it was a Marauder, so they do know a little about cars! These kids said the same thing- they could find a several-years-old pickup, Honda, Mustang, Camaro etc cheap enough and fix it to their taste, but ppl with old cars would price the cars out of reach and talk down to them. And I well remember how bad it used to piss me off to be talked down to.😡

Back to getting young people interested: plenty of young friends tell me they'd love to have an old American car to play with and love, but... They can't afford one because older guys and especially investors have driven prices out of reason and the auctions have made that worse. So they ARE interested and paying attention. An Oldsmobile forum I'm on had an interesting post a couple days back. A fellow in WNY had taken his 68 442 out for some exercise and ran up on friends who were having their teenage son's senior portraits made. The photographer had a lightbulb go off and took a series of portraits of the boy posed with the 442. The kid was very pleased with that idea. So there's another way you can reach out to young people. Find a photographer who does senior portraits and offer use of your car as a background. I would about bet kids would go for it and might even decide they want their own old car someday.

This kinda-sorta validates my tongue-in-cheek post on another topic, where I said greenies think electricity is made by elves in hollow trees like Keebler cookies. I got excoriated over that post, but the sad truth is a lot of people have no idea how their electricity is produced, they only know when it's not working and their electricity-dependent modern lives come to a screeching halt. I can only imagine how the additional load of car chargers will affect the country's electric grid. Plenty of areas the grid is sorely taxed now. Yet those are the same areas experiencing population booms. To have the convenience you have to have the infrastructure. Shame Mr Tesla's Wardenclyffe experiments didn't pan out.

I was in Hobby Lobby before the pestilence came, looking over their model car selection. Most priced $20 or higher. Made me think of the days when I'd save pennies, scour roadsides for Coke bottles to turn in for the deposit, hire myself out to neighborhood farmers etc to make enough money to buy a $1.50 AMT 3-in-1 kit or really splurge for a $2.00 kit. A Monogram was an indulgence but boy were they nice. 55 Chevy, 58 Thunderbird and 40 Ford pickup- great kits. The 1/8 scales were always Christmas or birthday gifts. Although Revell had some interesting kits, I found many of theirs to be a bit flimsy and lacking in detail. Had fitment problems with most too, especially ones with opening doors and trunks. I have a lot of unbuilt kits packed away. Eyesight and arthritis take their toll.

Meow.😼 Even though we get off topic, chase squirrels and swerve all over the road, with rare exception I learn something every time we do that. Sometimes it will even inspire me to read posts from the one individual on all the AACA forums that I've chosen to ignore!

My Pontiac bud and I are 5 yrs apart in age. At 59 his hair is still dark. I'm 63 and mine's been white for over ten years. We walk swap meets and I am invariably taken for his father. Going gray/white early does have its perks. I've been getting senior discounts for years!🦳

You have a PM.

The blue Corvette, the "Big T" and the Jag 2+2 go back at least to the 60s. Built all three in grade school but cannot remember what happened to them, though my mama had a housecleaning after I left home. She gave a lot of my treasured and well-kept toys to my cousin's brat, who could tear the horns off a brass billy goat. Doubt they survived him.

Keep trying. DK how the plague has affected the H/OCA office but I do know the "editor" email no longer goes to Judy. Try the research library email or 69 advisor Kurt Karch. These people are truly interested in properly documenting and authenticating all Hurst/Oldsmobiles but it might take them some time.

Ford used that 1000 mile/quart oil consumption standard for years. You would think with improvements in oil, metallurgy and technology a car in BMW price range would do much better. Normal? Maybe. Acceptable? Absolutely not. In that price territory anyway.

Padgett. That's the ass end of the thing. What's under the skin? Is it like the 90s Batmobile, built on a 70s Impala chassis? Grille emblem looks like "ETV".

That thing looks scary. Like a giant space slug!😬

44879M is correct for a 69 H/O or 442, but there are clones out there. Contact Judy directly and run the VIN by her. If it's legit she'll have the documentation. You should be able to contact her thru the H/OCA website.

Oh, pretty! 👍

Now that right there is funny, no matter which side of the aisle yer on!

Edison was a mere wizard. Tesla was a god.👽

There's a recent General Discussion thread on electrical issues on a similar year Dodge that may help you. I haven't figured out how to link a thread with this phone yet, otherwise I'd link you to it. ☺️

Friend posed an interesting question yesterday when we rode past a house we knew was built 11 years ago and was having solar panels installed on its original shingle roof. "What happens when you have to replace the roof?"