oldcarfudd

Speaking of kit cars - are Metz Plan Cars allowed? This is pure vulgar curiosity on my part. I don't have one, and don't intend to get one, so I have no dog in this fight (if it's a fight).

Nope.

The headlamps on the Ford aren't original. They're later electric lamps. The original lamps would have been acetylene, and the car would have had an acetylene generator on the running board. The spotlight is an aftermarket add-on; I know nothing about it.

1500 bucks for piston rings???? Just what IS this car?

Congratulations! You've caught the disease, and there's no cure!

Yup. Greater risk, for sure. How much greater? I dunno. I used to fly soaring gliders, as much as 500 kilometers. Risk? Yup. I still ski a little, despite being 77, having a polio leg, an artificial hip, and vision in only one eye. Risk? Yup. My son is doing business in Russia. He was nervous about Russian airlines, that seem to have 10 times as many deaths per passenger mile as ours. I pointed out that, on the trip around the world in 1959 on which I met his mother, I flew on top-of-the-line American, British, Japanese and Australian airlines that had way more than 10 times the deaths per passenger mile as our present airlines. The sky wasn't exactly raining big hunks of aluminum. People flew all the time in 1959. Most of them got where they were going. He felt better. Life has risk. Eventually, we all lose the battle. We can curl up at home in the fetal position, and hope a meteor doesn't land on our house; we're going to die anyway. I prefer to drive an old car, and be careful. Most of us who drive them feel the same way. By the way, I'm a retired life insurance actuary. I made my living understanding risk. I'm not blind (except in one eye!), I do care, and I don't make light of risk. My3buicks, I see that you have a 1967 Special deluxe hardtop. Do you drive it, other than on and off the show field? How many air bags does it have? Does it meet the latest Insurance Institute side collision safety standards? Does it have four-wheel computer-assisted disk brakes? Federally-approved crumple zones? Good grief, man, aren't you TERRIFIED? Gil Fitzhugh, Morristown, NJ

Amen, John! I was out in my 1912 Buick today and never gave a moment's thought to my master cylinder! And, at the event I attended, there was a single-cylinder 1958 (I think) Isetta, and he didn't seemed unduly worried, either. Gil Fitzhugh, Morristown, NJ

I'll bet the shop manual shows an easier way to get the rear axle out.

I presume there was no synchromesh on first gear in those days. You can get into first while moving, but it takes a technique called double-clutching. 1. Push in the clutch, shift into neutral. 2. Let the clutch up, rev the engine until it's going the speed it will be going when you're driving in first gear. 3. Push in the clutch, shift into first. It sounds harder than it is. Until you get the hang of it, you'll get a bit of gear bringing in step 3. By the way, those of us who play with cars built before about 1930 have to do ALL our shifts this way.

A plain black Ford from the '20s was a Boremobile to the people of the '20s. It was slow, obsolete, and plain as a mud hole. People didn't buy them because they coveted them - they coveted Packards - but because that's all the money they had. A plain black Ford these days is an icon and in high demand, even though the Packard is still more valuable. If the people of the '20s had been able to imagine owning a plain vanilla Chevy from the '60s, they would have quit aspiring to the Packard. A stripped six-cylinder three-speed '60s Chevy was a Boremobile when it was new. People coveted Cadillacs, but they bought stripped Chevies because that's all the money they had. A plain Chevy these days is an icon and in high demand, even though the Cad is still more valuable. If the people of the '60s had been able to imagine owning almost any basic 2013 car, they would have quit aspiring to the Cadillac. The survivors of the cars we think are Boremobiles will have a market in 40 years. We won't be the people who covet them, any more than the people who covet Model Ts or plain '60s Chevies are the people who had them new. Our dull new cars will be interesting to the people who will be around in 40 years, who will be bored by as-yet-uninvented stuff that would thrill us, if only we could imagine it.

I wonder whether we aren't more worried than we need to be. Suppose 99% of every year's car production has disappeared by the time the cars are 25 years old. Annual car sales in the US are about 12 million, or a bit more. In 25 years, 120,000 cars from this year's sales will still be around. What's that, two cars per AACA member? And two more next year, and two more the year after that, and on, and on - - - ? Where will we put them? Where will we drive them? A high percentage of the survivors will be the relatively few exciting cars, and that's as it should be. But some of the Plain Janes will make it, too. I'm always impressed by the articles in AA about someone who has preserved, and sometimes restored at considerable effort and expense, an ordinary Ford or Chevy from the sixties, with six cylinders, a three-speed manual transmission on the steering column, plain upholstery, and steel wheels with dog-dish hubcaps. These aren't cars any enthusiast would have bought new, but someone showered a whole lotta love on them, and they now command a lot of attention at shows, in our magazine, and on the street. Why do we think the same retro-love won't happen for some of the mundane cars that we're sneering at now? Yes, it will take a different sort of skill and interest to restore and maintain a car with a lot of electronic components. But young people grow up with those skills. When our hobby began in the 1930s, how many old-timers groused that youngsters weren't learning wooden body work, brass lamp spinning, and how to do diamond-pleated leather upholstery? Yet even now, people are learning those skills, that haven't been used for new cars in decades. And they've also learned modern body work. And they'll learn electronic fuel injection and emissions control. As for spare parts, someone will salvage the computerized components from enough cars that the handful of survivors can be maintained. Who will have the first Senior Grand National Yugo?

How do you milk a snake?

Only partly off-topic - last Sunday's New York Times crossword puzzle was in honor of the Lincoln Highway.

You might consider posting this in two other places: The HCCA website and the Early Cadillacs website. Gil Fitzhugh

You might post this on the hcca.org discussion forum, too.

I sure would have liked to see that first one as a ragtop!

It seems something collapsed under the foundation of that building. Look at the siding on the side wall. Maybe that's why there's an armed guard. I wonder whether a Google search on that address would come up with anything. Good call on the RCH.

Saturday - Drove the 1911 Stanley 20 miles round trip to the annual planning meeting of the Antique Steam Touring Club. This group mainly meets to talk about meetings. I'm the only guy in recent years who has driven an antique steam touring car to a meeting of the club. But it's an excuse to set fire to the beast and go for a ride in it. Sunday - Drove the 1913 Model T 70 miles round trip to a Cars and Croissants get-together. This one was generously hosted by a Mercedes dealer in Newton, NJ and featured real croissants in three flavors. There were a couple of very nice 190SLs, and the usual gaggle of 'Vettes, Porsches, Italian goodies and modern vroomies, plus a Volt, a Tesla, and an electric motorcycle. And my brass car buddies Tricia and Andy Wallace showed up in a 1911 Packard to give the thing some elegance.

I'll be hanging around the HCCA tent a lot of the time. Going to the HCCA board meeting at the museum Tuesday night. Helping out with the HCCA barbecue on Friday. If Saturday's weather's good, I'll drive a 1912 Buick from my son's home in Lititz (about 28 miles south) to the show field; I'll park it in my judging class with a DNJ sign on it so I don't have to detail the beast. (I've driven it over 900 miles since getting a senior at Carlisle, and it shows!) Sunday and Monday I'll be driving in the HCCA/Snappers Hershey Hangover tour. Last year there was a push to get a potful of E-M-Fs to the show field. Does anyone know how many E-M-Fs are signed up? Gil Fitzhugh the Elder, who (regrettably) has no E-M-F, though his son has one that will be on the field if the weather's good.

Put a new fuel pressure regulator in my Stanley and cleaned the carbon deposit out of the pilot light. Went for a test drive. Picked up a neighbor who was out for a walk, and took him for his first steam car ride. Need to tighten the oil pump packing, and maybe put in some more. That's tomorrow's job.

If only you'd been charged 29.9 cents a gallon for the gas, the illusion would have been complete!

That's a whale of a find! Good luck with it! Are you planning a preservation or a restoration?

Consider advertising it on the Horseless Carriage Club website, hcca.org. Also the model T sites. You'll get more concentrated buyers there.

Drove my one-lung Cadillac on the Brighton USA tour over the weekend. This is a low-key 1-and 2-cylinder brass-era tour in NJ, not to be confused with the much bigger New London to New Brighton tour in Minnesota. Three of us drove 22 miles on Friday afternoon, and 12 of us drove 66 miles on Saturday. Perfect weather. Gorgeous back roads with lots of hills. Friday evening pizza and Saturday catered lunch were at Andy Wallace's home in Branchville. Two-cylinder Buicks predominated, but there were also a two-cylinder REO, a Yale, a Renault, a Maxwell, and - ahem! - a tiny single cylinder Isetta from the '50s, that looked as though one of the big twins had laid an egg. A totally fun day-and-a-half.

You might consider posting this question on the HCCA website.