60FlatTop

I bought a 15 year old BMW 760 V12 when I turned 70. I am 75 now. The car had an original price tag of $125,000. Mine was very well maintained and I paid $7,200 for it, Other than routine service I bought a bottle of German leather dye to touch up the bolster on the driver seat. I kept it for 3 happy years and sold it for $4200. Great experience, but I am a multiple car owner. If I wanted one old car (over 20 years old) I may have kept it. I knew it would be demanding to keep and take resources from other cars so I let it go without marrying it. We had a pleasant relationship instead. For $3,000 it was a pleasure. Nothing was wrong with it mechanically when I sold it but I couldn't get a drive cycle completed to reset the OBD2 monitors. I knew I was looking at a $3,000 or so trip to the dealer and decided to bow out gracefully. I expect to have similar experiences in the future just as I have in the past. It was an impulse buy but supported with good historical data. There are people I associate with who would be scared to death to do something like that. Like one who said three years ago "I have $10,000 cash on the barrel head and I'm looking for a good used 4WD truck. He is still looking. Bemoaning the market the other morning I asked "Well, your money is worth more than most people's isn't it?"

I have heard Dave Ramsey talk about cars. If you need information relevant to the 1985 cheap used car market he's your guy. He would be broke or walking if he took his own advice. I enjoyed listening to him when he was on our local AM station. But when he gave car advice I had to pull to the side of the road until I wiped the tears out of my eyes. He speaks eternal concepts with details of yesteryear.

Common topic. How many of you are in possession of cars that you do not have clear title and ownership of? It should be job one even if it is a restoration project. Show of hands of those in the same predicament and why?

It is kind of comical. I have never found a shortage of anyone in the old car community to step forward to correct anything they thought was wrong. We sometimes get those club emails with the whole list of addressees listed in the cc: section. For around 20 years I would occasionally respond to one of those with "reply to all" and show a picture or make some relevant reply. Never an acknowledgement or reply from any in the group. Until one time, when I wrote Cliff Robertson when I meant Dale Robertson. The correction was immediate. You just have to laugh when things like that happen. Be assured if incorrect information is stated the correction will surface quickly. Sometimes you can bait them.

There is something about a bullet nosed Studebaker that makes you wish the movie had a disclaimer about harming them. Even a not so mint one.

A friend of mine ran a traditional junkyard for 50 years. Everyone who ever worked there or knew him would go to the parts store and say "It's for Zerniak's" they got the trade price and no sales tax. His wife told me they had been paying the tax on all those parts for years since they did not go into resale stock and accounting called them company use items. She kept telling him "Get those guys to pay the tax!" He never did. He also had a rolling credit notebook in his shirt pocket with a bunch of names in it. Mine was in there all his life. Once I met my wife to be she cleaned up a lot of my "casual debt" and kept me up to date. He was always happy to see I was carrying a zero balance. Of course bringing the tall, leggy, long haired, blonde to the junkyard and knowing she kept the books made it just that much more fun.

I am building a new computer desk for my home office. It is called a floating desk, !' laminate oak finish. I wanted a brass edge molding and figure some gold automotive side trim will work fine. I sure hope it doesn't end up on some custom furniture forum being slandered.

It could have looked a lot better, more integrated and less like cladding.Too many vertical strips. And the yellow does help much although it isn't the killer. It made me think of this Buick Roadmaster that went the other way. The "wood" surround on these cars is wood grain painted aluminum. I have seen one of the polished RM's in person, stunning. Adding those custom touches to cars balances on the sharpest edge know to man, Like between the Peakness and a donkey cart. Most get the cart.

Probably one of those southern hemisphere starters is the reason for the whole problem. I thought all the stuff down there was upside down. And you have to be careful about those hemispheres. There are four of them, you know.

Every Sunday the last row at the grocery store has a large display of paper products all labeled "One Billion Trees Planted". It always makes me laugh. "OK, got the billion trees planted. Watcha want me to do next?"

Sort of like putting actresses noses back to original I'm thinking.

How about when the dust is still lingering in the air. You know, for living in "New York" I sure have a lot of dirt road pictures on my cars. Crushing to the stereotype.

I do have a lot of pictures. I will post them in a separate topic with some stories. The 1932 Greater Eight close coupled sedan and the 1933 Essex Terraplane 8 convertible coupe now in the Wayne Newton collection both belonged to a friend. I did a bit of post-restoration reliability work on both. Flowers courtesy of my wife.

You have to look at 100 of them to catch that good one. The comment about a large old man who couldn't bend over implied a lot of the things you found. The majority of the cars out there are like that. For a 98 that seemed a pretty plain Jane car. My unwritten thought was that it needed a red ball on the antenna so you could spot it at the mall. Good luck with that Miata. I have never met an unhappy owner. Enjoy ir until the right other car comes along.

Never let the background overpower the condition of the subject matter.

I looked at the picture and thought: You can't get an f-stop to work like that".

I have experience with a 1932 Greater Eight and in discussions with the owner we both agreed it is a "city car". Geared pretty tight and not a car to just jump into and head for Buffalo, 60 miles away.

I have three '05s, a Cadillac STS V8 RWD, my Silverado, and an Avalanche. I bought the full set of manuals for the Silverado when it was new and sold them about 12 or 13 years later without using them much. The manuals for the STS are still $500 on Ebay. ALLDATA.com offers a single car DYI subscription for $19.95 per month. I bought that for the STS just to read through randomly to get familiar with the car. They offered a year at $60 and I upgraded. For 20 bucks that monthly fee is not bad for any job that may be greater than routine, worth it for a single job. If anything big comes up with the Avalanche I will subscribe right away. Just a heads up to let owners know that help is available at low cost for the modern cars. ALLDATA is an Auto Zone product.

My nephew had one and I think he sold it to his brother. They were a 1960s military vehicle. It has been in the family for around 30 years and spent most of its time sitting in my brother's garage. The novelty seemed to wear off quickly. On the odd Jeep thing, at the grocery store this morning I saw the manager of our local Monroe Muffler shop. I asked if he had a new vehicle. He said yes, a Gladiator Mojave. I asked "Is that like something to commemorate spaghetti westerns? He laughed.

I don't think much about the period my cars were built. I don't name them either. But the variety could be endless. I have The White Car. The Convertible. The Riviera. The Silverado. The Avalanche. The Cadillac. I will be equally creative on the next one. The wife and the kids know that.

I read that article somewhere else and still can't relate to any of it. Often the news seems like an other worldly situation to me.

A lot of those young people going into WWII didn't have a clue what WWI was about. My dad didn't even know how to shoe a horse, growing up in the '30's, but that new Army Air Corps sure liked the way he drove a truck. . And my old father in law gave me hell for not winding an electric extension cord the way you would a horse harness. I still can't flip and extension cord over my fingers and hang it on a hook without a laugh and thinking "I really don't care" still today.

The second set of rear spring I bought for my '64 Riviera came from Coil Spring Specialties. It was too high with the first replacements of over the counter units. The sprung weight on the rear of Buicks I have owned is quite low. I figured my disappointment with generic springs was due to some guy coming to work and winding up springs for the masses. I always hear the "Oh, they are high when put in and will come down in a couple of weeks" story. I never happened that way, on anything. I had enough weight up front to use a set of MOOGs. I guess there was a fudge factor. The rear is sensitive. I chose the supplier I thought was going to do the more conscientious job. I am happy with the results.

Between 10 and 15 years ago a speed camera system was installed on a stretch of road adjacent to a large school. The road was 1/2 to 3/4 of a mile long and a known speed trap. Once the camera system came into play tickets came in the mail to many people. The grapevine spread to news and viewed it as a sneaky, Big Brother approach. It so enraged the locals that they were all forewarned and entered the area with great caution. Soon the flow of mailed ticket slow dramatically. The comptroller calculated a loss of nearly $1,000,000 annually in county revenue due to the camera system. The cameras were removed, income restored, and cars are still ticketed. A one on one encounter with the violation appears to be more acceptable.

I have been studying cars in general all my life and recognize the noticeable difference in the cars introduced in September 1948 for the 1949 model year. Since my birth date is September 26, 1948 I would say there is a very defining difference in the Pre-Bernie cars.