60FlatTop

C-body.

I showed this picture to a waitress in a diner up south of me and told her I thought it looked like her. She asked who it was and I told her. She said "Oh, my Mother used to watch that show!" The place in the background-

Very bad is a pretty good description for the interior. But you never really know. I described a car on Ebay last year as being in very bad condition, for parts. The buyer contacted me and wrote that he didn't think it would be as bad as it was. I wondered if I should have described the car as "very, very bad condition" I guess perception varies... or maybe very's. Oh, that buyer sent me two emails prior to purchasing. The first was and offer of a lower price. The second was an offer not as low, that I accepted. Maybe he wasn't "very" diligent. Bernie

Well, I piped one in over the weekend. You can bet your Fruit of the Looms we ain't doin' that again! Bernie

"Would you like to clean up in my garage?" I think if someone bought that from me they would rephrase it to "I bought this towel rack from a dirty old man..." Lucky it wasn't the continuous cloth towel. Bernie

I used to drive down to the Atlantic City auction every February for a break from winter and something car related to do. There was always one car that I thought was a good deal and stood out in my mind. Other than buying an under priced car from an owner who had been all hyped up by the auction house why would anyone go there to purchase? I think there was dealer and collection activity to create a little off season cash flow. Being a cynic. I would really like to see where the actual folding money ends up. I worked for the old Eastman Kodak at one time and we used what we called Kodabucks to pay for projects; inflated imaginary money shifted between cooperating departments, kind of like a bunch of car dealers putting on a buy/sell show hoping to rope in a sucker. Kruse don't do auctions anymore do they? I think last year I asked if any of the forum members could share buying and selling experiences from these big publicized auctions and I don't remember any replies. This is a very representative group of the car hobby. How have you done? Scored real big? Or waved good bye to an old friend with the consolation pocket change? Bernie

Haven't aged a bit! Just a thought, how many people were snaking the chassis out from under any 1964 car to do the mechanicals in 1994? We had painted it in 1980, but a decade later the springs were pretty saggy, the suspension bushings were oval, and the body mounts were squashed down to a quarter of the height. I guess it was due for bue paint and a little more. Bernie

No, non, no, I meant the City of New Orleans job. Bernie

That might be Tommy Ivo's car. I hear he had a nailhead rail job.

Since I started looking at Craigslist I have been very entertained by the pictures of cars the sellers post. (My kids say I am a little too easy to entertain.) I keep seeing picture and thinking "Couldn't you just move that car three feet so it's not sunk in the ground?" Then I get to wishing I had saved some of the sunken treasures or the interiors full of trash and garbage. October 2nd I created a folder called "Sunk In". Thank you! I have added another picture. Bernie Sunk In contributions welcomed at bernie@berniedaily.com

Oh, Rusty helped out, too.

You have to get into all the nooks and crannies if you are going to do it. Here's Mike helping me out around 1994. Bernie

I have always wondered about the credibility of those incredible reports. One old timer at the general store was telling about the hard times when he couldn't buy toilet paper. Claimed he just rolled up a Sears catalog and stuffed it into the filter housing. Must have been a long time ago because when they went to the colored pages they lost all their absorbency for human use. Incredible story. Bernie

I'm not that nice and I always put high prices on parts. If I sell parts for too little people might not appreciate them as much as they should. And sometimes I give things away. Looking back over the years I believe the people who paid the high prices had more appreciation than the ones I gave stuff too. Go back to my first sentence. Bernie

The '50 Super is really appealing to look at. Then looking at the curves in the deck lid my thoughts kind of sewered in this direction. Integrated into the structure would have been neat, applique, not so much. Wood don't bend like that. One step more and it could have been convincing.

Slide stream flows are really hard to make work. The fluids aren't usually smart enough to turn away from their inertia flow and travel off to another destination. The reason those old guys found particles in the filter would be that it created a low velocity area and the stuff in suspension just dropped out the way it does in any of the oil passages when you shut the engine off. Try the equations again with everything that is an assumption removed. You won't have much more than the + or - whatever at the end. A 3,000 mile or semiannual for our cars is just as effective, probably better. And those octogenarians sitting around the cracker barrel; don't trust them for a minute. It ain't just crackers they are full of. Bernie

From that angle of the picture the car probably looks like this.

Could have been worse. At least you got home to make the video. Some made all their videos at the scene. Bernie

"My roast turkey drumstick tasted a little funny, too."

I probably would have had the inside door panel off and tried pushing it out by hand by now. The painless dent guys are best with the characteristics of thinner metals from the 1980's and up. If there is a crease in your door they can't massage it out like the newer tin. The dent guy told me that. I look at insurance as a legal requirement I carry for the sake of "the other guy". Unless my car is totaled I'm not picking the phone up to ask for money to fix anything. On the comment on general workmanship today, I rarely go out looking for commercial services. I have officially been in the hobby since October 1959. What I can't fix myself can be done, if needed, by one of my circle of long term friends. A couple weeks ago I was at a friend's garage while he was mixing four colors with a eye dropper to repaint screw holes left from an unwanted visor. "Shops" where one takes insurance claims are kind of outside the scope of my hobby. This hobby was a social network before they thought the term up. I guess there is a kind or rhythm or tune to the hobby and insurance claim sounds discordant to me. Bernie

"I want to sell my really nice car and buy one not so good." Stay after and write that on the blackboard 500 times. Bernie

I did an audit down in Jamestown in the spring of '11. The third picture is for the applications engineers. Bernie

Just a closer look at one in the row.

Today's looks like one of those garden variety Buicks. Up in these parts they plant them in rows. Bernie

People tend to buy what excited them as a youth. The buyer of a 1930's convertible sedan was probably infatuated with the all weather convertibles in the salons and advertisements of the 1920's. Once the car aged to collector status the exclusivity of the cars gave them appeal. And then in the fact it was that model. I know of very few convertible sedans who would put the top down; at least the second time. In the early 1970's a man in my town owned a 1939 Buick convertible sedan. He wanted to upscale it to a dual sidemount car. He bought this car from a collector car dealer in Wisconsin. This series 40 had dual sidemounts. He swapped the front clip to his convertible and put it, plain fendered, in front of his house for $1,000 . That's me, 23 years old and the car was 34. It was originally a kind of special Special. Along with the sidemounts you can still see the streamboards. And just make out the Century stainless window trim. The car is out there and restored somewhere. The current owner may or may not have seen the sidemount attaching bolt holes in the frame. Someone has probably questioned the window trim. Back to the convertible sedan owner, the person I bought the DSM sedan from was willing to reach pretty good to make his 30 year old car just a little more special. Bernie