60FlatTop

We were in the low 90* within the last 10 days. But we have a whole range to work with.

Do you like Buicks? All these comments about Ford products and wanting to work on them makes me think your desire to leaning to work on cars might overcome your dreams. I am not lazy but I drive Buicks because they require minimal routine maintenance. There is a subliminal warning on those Merc's when you use your left hand for the ignition.

I had to go back and see what this topic was about. Placement of advertisements. Facebook could meet the needs. Just yesterday I responded to a Facebook post on 1958 Cadillac by mentioning I had just finished taking pictures for a '58 Cadillac convertible I was going to list for $105,000. Just slipped it in there all nonchalant and innocent. Might use that technique somewhere else as well.

I posted two comments. The very pragmatic list of pre-purchase questions is still there. The devil made me write the irreverent one that is gone. That Jr/Sr stuff will follow the car with any owner. It would be like the car I own and just stay away from the aficionados with. Take a nice ride an solitude. Dita Von Teese sold her 120. Probably too many humorists said "Here comes the Donut Lady". Funny the first time but it gets old.

Old cars have been my hobby throughout my life. Since I was 22 years old I have always had at least one hobby car licensed in addition to my driver, many times insanely more. If I took the actual hours worked for cash to buy the cars plus the dollar value of the "swear equity" I added the total value as a ratio to my income has pretty much stayed the same. If I valued my sweat equity at shop rates Hagerty and I would probably agree.

I always liked those high end '56 Fords. Never did get one. Glancing at the topic, Crown Vics and Chicago immediately made me think of The Blues Brothers. Even though the movie predated Ford's Panther platform.

I usually look at the "What's it worth" question as a veiled advertisement implying an unknowing seller. Said the spider to the fly.

Discuss each of these questions with the seller. It will give you a very good idea of what you are going to have to do once it is yours. I have used them faithfully on the last four cars I bought. Very telling. Car Sale Questions 1. Do you own the car and have legal proof? 2 Is the paperwork clear and free of liens, unbranded? 3. How long have you owned the car? 4. Is the car currently licensed and insured? 5. Can it be driven on the road, legally, today? 6 Is the car in storage? If so, how long has it been stored? 7. How many miles did you drive it during the last 12 months? 8. Have you done any major work on the car since you have owned it? 9. What and when was the most recent service or repair? 10. If you decided to keep the car what improvement would you consider important?

Probably shipping out of Port Elizabeth. Shipping is pretty straight forward. The company I used to ship to Gutenberg was something like E. I. S. or similar. Great people in the office, minimal paperwork. I think the guy at the warehouse was Tony the Russian. He was never happy but he growled and barked a lot. I sent about 20 cars over to Sweden up until I incorporated another business and didn't want a trail of overseas hobby money. Well worth it and establishing a contact for future. We were doing two cars per container for $3,000 up until 2010. Yarl Hedlund in Tidaholm was my contact but he passed on about 5 years ago. Drop the name, might do you some good. PM me if you get the transporter info. I can help.

1" biased whitewalls without rally wheels. Correct wire wheel covers. And an incorrect aftermarket vinyl top that little old ladies will run across a parking lot to tell me is wrong. Bless their pounding little hears.

I was a Car Life subscriber in early High School. My first introduction to the Riviera. Ten years later I bought a '68. The mailing label is still my valid address. The magazine is in the garage.

I can't remember a time when I did not firmly believe in "The cost of ownership". It goes back to my early days. Right or wrong the concept has helped me enjoy my hobbies much more than many I have observed.

I have used another company since 1974. My problem is that the rates are so low they remove one of the big deterrents to buying another car. 26 years old in 1974 with my first collector car insured car. The interim list would be a lot shorter without the preferred rate. Imagine health insurance if they caught me with two cigarettes at a time.

Back around the turn of the century I had a lawn mower gas can on the cowl of my '56 Willys pickup gravity feeding a freshly installed Hurricane 6. It spit back on me and I saw the yellow glow through the floorboards. I jumped out, grabbed the can and threw it as far from the garage as possible. Into the house and grabbed the portable phone, running and dialing 911. The momentary yellow flames were gone before I got back. Back to work as usual. About ten minutes later the village police pulled in the driveway. I looked up and thought "Oh, no, what did my son do now?" I walked to the door to greet them. "We got a 911 call from this location and no one spoke." "Oooohhhhh! That was me. Sorry, I forgot about the fire I had ten minutes ago." "Just checking. Everything OK?" "Yep. Thanks for checking."

I have always been aware of Hagerty's policy of constant communication with the hobby. They will spew forth an article about anything to keep their name in front of the hobby. I read this current article. Basically the prices of cars over $250,000 has decided at auctions. Thank you. On the same page of the Hagerty Media page there was also a link to the 12 odd ball weird cars at the 2024 Monterey auction and a sign up link to get my "Daily Dose" of Hagerty news. The county just south of me has a greater dairy cow population than human. We know what fodder is. Yawn.

Many years ago I figured out every $4,000 a person spends on refurbishing/upgrading a car will add about $1,000 to the selling price. It may be a little less today. Expenditures of less than the $4,000 are usually negligible. With 60 years of experience I have found that the best old car deal is to pay a premium (like limited to $10,000) for a really clean, well maintained 15-20 year old car or truck. I like to think of that Duesenberg sitting in a back row used car lot in 1951 for $450. It's my mind. If I want to think I repeated history and it makes me feel good, it's going to happen.

Yeah. Next topic.

I had one incident where I was called a cheat and a liar for flipping a car I bought from him. I really like Studebaker Avanti's. One had been sitting near behind a house on a side road up south of town for a few years. I always slowed and looked at it when I used that road. It was a 1972 Avanti II. no interior, engine lying in the bay, unbolted and resting (binding) the steering linkage. I decided to stop and talk with the long term owner. I told him how much I liked the car and that I honestly wanted to bring it back. I bought it for $1,000. When we picked it up we found it infested with 1,000 wasp nests. And they didn't like us! I was hesitant about putting it in the garage. It stayed in a far corner of the yard while I exorcised the families and hoped they didn't move into my house. Once I did get it inside I discovered the previous owner had primered the car. In the process he removed the gell coat. The fiberglass had weathered and the strands blew with the breeze. It needed a prep and complete gell coat. An unexpected roughly three grand. And real Avanti's aren't so expensive. Unexpected and more than I was ready for with the known list of work. I think I got $1800 for it, towing, jiggling the engine around, killing wasps. And I was wearing the black hat. Learned from that experience and I still don't know much about fiberglass bodywork. And my wife shows no sympathy for my frustrations.

I like this one best. Buyers and sellers play that one. "Conniver" is a word that has fallen out of use in today's language. And rightfully so, I do a lot of buying and selling still and I am far more willing to trust a younger person, under 50, than I am one over 50. The older they are the more I distrust. And I am an old guy. Some of my big scores have been letting an old goat thing he was cheating me out of an item. They project their values into the other. When I was a kid working in the tie shop in the early to mid-1960s those people 10 to 30 years older than I drove around with their trunks loaded with stolen stuff from their workplace, construction sites, factories, you name it, pilferers, petty thieves. I don't see that in young people today but I bet there are still some old guys hauling stuff around that they will never use. They just took it. I have a sledge hammer out in my garage that a 90 year old gave me out of a locked box on his pickup. I was having coffee and mentioned I needed to buy one. I told him I was not giving it back because he was too old to be swinging it, if he ever had, and that he probably stole it off a construction site. Should have seen the big grin on him that morning. Morals and ethics.

X some large exponent. I laugh every time I see it and end up with The Rodeo Song stuck in my head the rest of the day. "Go get 'em Johnny!"

That is a lot of engine for not much car. I wired one that was on an MG chassis with the MG 4 cylinder engine. It was a competitive vintage racer at the time. What is the current drive train?

"Sold on a title" has a Nigerian ring to it. In any context the use of an uncommon term where the common term is straightforward will make me question the meaning. Overly explicit descriptions can be equally suspicious. Nothing more deceitful than letting a person make their own assumptions.

Reminds me of a story. Phil had a Packard Twin Six that never ran quite right, seemed to lack power. Ed was a pretty well experienced carburetor man. One day Ed drove out to Phil's house and they thoroughly attacked the carburetor issues. Phil was amazed at the results. They took the car out on the nearby country highway and the car went like never before. They arrived back at the garage with the big tourer top tied back, partially in place after the leather straps holding the top above the windshield gave up at speed. Be sure to "check your leather".

Stuff left in someone's head. My wife recently made a comment on my good memory. I told her there is lots of information stored there. But the thoughts are quite shallow and everything is right near the surface for quick retrieval.

"In other words" the regulator requires a diagnosis prior to the start of work. That is the flawed logic a shop or mechanic has to follow before they start the job. My 420 code is one example of many, many codes. Each could be discussed at great length. The problem is that a rule called an "Act" is a law. And the law implies that the shop or owner act in ignorance of full knowledge of the diagnosis. I would not be willing to work on anything under those terms.