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gwells

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Posts posted by gwells

    Celebration of the Authentic Car III - May 18, Duluth, GA

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    There's currently no car show in Georgia like the Celebration of the Authentic Car event, which showcases unmodified, uncustomized, and unhotrodded vehicles, restored or not, essentially as they were built.

     

    The CotAC criteria has been extended to recognize two classes of authentic cars: ‘The Greats’ through 1948 and ‘Mid-Century Moderns’ 1949 through 1959. If you own such a vehicle, please bring it out. If you have a later or a custom car, please do not feel unwelcome!! Regular museum admission will apply and your car will be parked right next to the main field, just so Mustangs aren't placed next to Marmons nor Teslas next to Thomas Flyers.

     

    We are pre-registering the CotAC cars this year, $20 in advance and $25 day of the show, which covers your car, your passengers, and admission to the museum. Gates open at 9 AM, the show is from 10 AM to 5 PM. Pre-register at https://tinyurl.com/CotAC-online-registration .

     

    Cassie’s Kitchen will be onsite serving food and there’s plenty of room for your trailer. No formal judging will be held but a few prizes will be awarded. Rain date is Sunday, May 19.

     

    This is the third annual CotAC show to benefit the Southeastern Railway Museum and it could the last one without your support. If you cherish authentic, historic, and rare cars, please attend this unique event. And please share this post widely! The first two CotAC events had the misfortune to be on the same weekends as an AACA National and a Grand National, and many members were already committed to attending those shows. There is no conflict this year and we hope to see a lot of our AACA friends and their cars on May 18.

     

    The 501(c)3 Southeastern Railway Museum is located at 3595 Buford Highway, Duluth, Georgia, across the street from Howard Brothers Hardware.

     

    Here's a terrific short video of the first Celebration of the Authentic Car event in 2022.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yioeF6jY5I

     

    • Like 1

    Franklin's wooden frames. I'd like to know which other cars used wood in the frame, especially post WWI

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    12 hours ago, Avanti Bill said:

    Of course Ford produced a lot more cars than even Chevrolet so that has something to do with the numbers. 

    Actually, Bill, I believe that's not 100% accurate.

    Here's the best table I could find that I didn't have to remake. Doesn't show production numbers, but I think it gets the point across.

     

    table.jpg

     

    Ford clearly dominated sales through the first half of the '20s.

    But most people don't realize that Chevy actually outsold Ford for two out of four of the Model A years. And that Chevy outsold Ford in 1927, 1932, and 1933, too. Ford fought back during the middle '30s, but after that Chevy took over until WWII. From 1926 to 1941, inclusive, Chevy was tops in sales nine times and Ford just seven.

    One personal experience many years ago suggests those who target the wood-framed bodies that Ford largely abandoned by the mid-to-late '20s as the reason old Fords of this era have survived at a much higher rate than Chevys are on the right track.

    In my later HS years, I bought a 1926 (IIRC) Chevrolet sedan that was essentially complete, out of a guy's garage near Nashville, for $80. This would had been in the very early '70s, perhaps very late '60s. Every single piece of body structural wood on the car was extremely rotten and all the nailed-on external sheet metal body panels were literally falling off.

     

    It's been almost 55 years, thus my memory is a little fuzzy, but I think I quickly sold the car to someone else for $200, without having to actually move the car first. I think I hleped guy who bought it from me take it to his place.

     

    To this day, it remains the most profit, percentage-wise, I ever made on a car I bought and then later resold. LOL.

     

    • Like 3

    Make and model at Stone Mountain?

    in What is it?

    Posted

    Or retrofitted, to help deaden the headlamp vibrations.

    There are actually two '26-'27 headlamp bar designs used by Ford, a solid bar (forged?) and one that was stamped with a U-shaped crossection. I assume the latter was the second design used, as it was probably cheaper to make.

    • Like 1

    Lill Coker

    in In Memoriam...

    Posted

    I'm sure I first met Harold at some small Middle Tennessee Region meet in the late sixties, but my fondest memory of him was attending an AACA judging school at his farm in Chattanooga in 1970, when I was 16 years old.

     

    We test-judged several cars and had our scores corrected by the senior judges present. One of the items I said was OK on a particular car was marked wrong, when I knew it wasn't based on recent judging rules published by the marque club for that vehicle. I'd seen the recent issue with the judging rules in the pile of magazines in the den of Harold's garage and quickly placed it in front of him and the senior judges, pointing out the section that supported my judging sheet.

    Harold took the podium to address the attendees and basically said that it is a mistake to dismiss the opinions of youth out of hand, and that old folks might learn as much from them as they were attempting to teach. I have loved the guy ever since.

     

    "... antique automobile royalty." Absolutely!

     

    "Just plain good people." Way, way higher than that on my scale.
     

    • Like 2
    • Thanks 2

    Lest we forget - Henry Austin Clark Jr.

    in In Memoriam...

    Posted

    I met Austie during the 1978 Pocono Glidden Tour (as well as Bev Kimes). He had a portable bar with him and poured me a very strong drink at one of the tour rest stops. Was very glad I was riding with Don Peterson in his 734, instead of driving, after that stop.

    Austie was excitedly showing off a large very early automobilist's scrapbook he'd recently discovered somewhere, when he wasn't mixing drinks...

     

    Soda blasting?

    in Technical

    Posted

    19 hours ago, dodge28 said:

    I would think twice about restoring any British car... PLEASE DO YOUR HOMEWORK.

    I've owned this car since 1977 and it's been stripped to the bare shell basically since that year (please don't ask why...).

    I wrote feature stories about Tigers for Car Collector in 1978 and Special Interest Autos in 1981. And interviewed and stayed with the late Ian Garrad, essentially the 'father' of the Tiger, in preparation for those pieces.

    I think I probably have done the homework to a decently high level...

     

    Quote

    Soda blast removes paint but not rust.

    That's not what I am hearing from numerous sources. Seemingly it does remove surface rust, which is primarily the concern here.


    Still debating how effectively to kill the rust in the rocker boxes that form the main structural members of this unibody.

    Soda blasting?

    in Technical

    Posted

    I have a LBC (Sunbeam Tiger), which as you may know is a unibody car, i.e. not a body on frame. These cars are notorious for rust, as bad as early Porsches and Jaguar E-Types. My car, actually dismantled and stripped in 1977 when it was just 11 years old, had roughly 30 pounds of Bondo layered with aluminum foil in each rocker panel, with surprisingly little rust elsewhere on the body.

     

    The rocker boxes comprise a majority of the structural integrity of the body and they're not rusted out (except for the outer rocker panels), but contain a fair amount of internal surface rust. I want to kill that rust, so that it will take a very long time for it to reappear.

    The question is how to do that.

    Afte considering sandblasting, chemical stripping, and other options, I am focusing on soda blasting.

    I would appreciate hearing from anyone here who has direct, personal experience with the soda blasting process.

     

    • Like 1

    2023 Model A adventure - daily episodes and pics

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Paul,

     

    I was so focused on getting all the way home that day, I didn't think to reach out to any of the club guys. If I had had time, I would to love to have stopped to see you.

    Hope you can make it to the 'Celebration of the Authentic Car' event at the Southeastern Railway Museum in 2024. Should be the same third weekend in May and for the first time, I don't think we'll be going against an AACA National show on the east coast. At least that's what West has told me when we spoke about it.

    As far as hitting the tunnel wall, on reflection I don't think I drove into it, but jammed the brakes on so hard I skidded into it. Not that it makes much of a difference...

    • Like 1

    Another Model A trip adventure starts soon

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    On 7/6/2023 at 7:13 PM, Matt Harwood said:

    It still doesn't change my mind that it's always smartest to ship a car home rather than drive it. If someone had bought that car from me, at the first sign of trouble they'd be on the phone yelling at me, demanding that I come personally fix it, pay for a hotel, give them a refund on the car, and pay to ship it to their home – or worse.

    For the average buyer, you're probably more right than wrong. I don't think I would consider making trips like this in anything other than a Model A Ford.

     

    Nothing that happened could be blamed on the seller IMO. The car ran great until the carbon button in the dist cap shredded after maybe 100 miles. And the coil didn't miss a lick for over 250 miles. How could have he foreseen either of these problems? The exhaust pipe coming loose was a minor fix, as all the pieces stayed in place.

    Anyone who buys an antique car thinking it is going to be as reliable as a low-mileage, late-model used car is being delusional.

     

    I've been around Model As since I was in HS and while I don't claim to be an expert on them, I do know how simple they are and how often fixes are inexpensive and relatively easy (unless you melt the babbit out of the mains and/or rods).

    • Like 2

    Another Model A trip adventure starts soon

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    44 minutes ago, JohnS25 said:

    Good news is Model A parts are cheap and plentiful.

    Absolutely!

    Without the superior parts availability for these cars, and the network of nearly 16,000 Model A car club members, angels really, more than willing to help fellow enthusiasts when they have problems, I likely would not be brave enough to attempt such a journey.

    Ordered a bunch of parts today from Bert's Model A Store in Colorado to replace the those lost in the fender-bender and to fix the broken driver's door look so I can drive the silly thing again.

    • Like 3
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