What have you ploughed up

[Vintageben]

So as I was working one of our paddocks today I noticed something in the soil it appears to be a mid 20’s Dodge hub cap (correct me if I’m wrong) and I thought I wonder what others may have uncovered when working the ground or excavating. It’s funny I haven’t found any other auto parts in this paddock and its not a regular producer of artefacts. In one of the other paddocks some years a go we found the remains of a 32 Harley Davidson why ripping it. 

So what have you found ?

[Restorer32]

When they put new sewer lines along the back of our shop they had to be 14' deep for gravity flow. The contractor unearthed the remains of a 1940's dump truck, complete except for the bed.

[Mikefit]

Not really auto related but while putting in a new drainage tile we found an old Bruder. (sp) house a manure loader a front push bumper lots of old bottles.  

[1937hd45]

I bought a 30HP Stanley Steamer rear axle from a fellow at the Bennington, Vt. swap meet many years ago. Carl Amsley wound up with it, guess it is a running Mountain Wagon today. Bob 

[Lahti35]

Sparkplugs, plow parts, various antique cast iron wagon parts and rocks.... lots of rocks!

[keiser31]

I found this 1930s Dodge Brothers truck crankhole cover the other day while working at my friend's new home build site. The site used to be a service station....

[keiser31]

Not really buried, but I found this Pegasus sign in an orchard. It was rolled up into a big ball by someone with a CAT. The orchard owner let me take it home. I donned two pairs of safety goggles and un-bent it as well as I could. Here is how it looks now....

[West Peterson]

That's cool. In my opinion, it holds more interest than one in perfect condition. Nice work.

I would hang it in my office.

[jrbartlett]

Friend of mine found a weathered '29 Packard "Sliding Boy" hood ornament in the middle of a field, lying on the ground. There was nothing else around it at all. Landowner had no idea how it had gotten there.

[keiser31]

I had to unearth my first 1931 Dodge Brothers engine once....

[R Walling]

"What have you ploughed up?"

 

 Not the spelling police, but I have made the same mistakes in the thread heading that you can not correct once  you notice it.

 Admi. take notice.

[Ronnie]

20 minutes ago, Roger Walling said:

"What have you ploughed up?"

 

 Not the spelling police, but I have made the same mistakes in the thread heading that you can not correct once  you notice it.

 Admi. take notice.

 

Administrators and Moderators could change the title but I really don't think he made a mistake.  The person who started the topic is from Australia, which was once a colony of Great Britain. Notice that he also uses the term "paddock" when he refers to the field he found the item in. I imagine that term is frequently used in Australia but rarely used here in the US to describe a field.

 

"A plough (UK) or plow (US) is a tool or farm implement used in farming for initial cultivation of soil in preparation for sowing seed or planting to loosen or turn the soil. ... In modern use, a ploughed field is typically left to dry out, and is then harrowed before planting."

 

[JFranklin]

I found an old set of cast iron muffler ends where the cable guys were digging. I have seen a lot of 1930s cars used for riverbank erosion control.

[JACK M]

I used to be a water ski guy and became very familiar with the Upper Willamette River near my home in Oregon.

When the river was very low in the late summertime I spotted a couple of engines sticking out of the beach.

I still know where they are but the water has to be very low.

These two engines are chained together, One is a flathead six of some kind, The other is a first gen Hemi.

I never did get out of the boat, but am sure these are not worth salvaging.

I also found where some poles were cut off at water level when the river was way low.

There are about thirty or forty poles  suggesting some kind of landing dock or the likes. Very near the shore.

The tops of these cut off poles are riddled with propeller marks, You can see where boats ran across the tops of those cut off poles leaving cut marks.

I did get out of the boat here and pulled out a couple of broken off blades.

 

There are stories published about the old days on the river, lots of shipping used to happen up and down the Willamette Valley.

Steam powered river boats were common, There is a bend in the river somewhere that is referred to by some old captains name, I guess his boiler blew up there and he landed in a nearby tree.

 

Speaking of 'Willamette" I was doing some gardening at my first house and we ran into an old dump site of sorts, Mostly junk. But I did pull out a cast iron marque from what I would guess was an old stove.

It was about 24 inches long by 3 or 4 inches high and it spelled out 'Willamette'. I put it on the tail gate of my pick up which was parked along side of the road and worked the rest of the weekend.

I live in a rather old country neighborhood and this being in the mid 1970s all of my neighbors were old and I often would see old folks walking the neighborhood.

Who would have guessed that one of those old codgers was a thief as I never saw that casting again.

 

[keiser31]

3 hours ago, West Peterson said:

That's cool. In my opinion, it holds more interest than one in perfect condition. Nice work.

I would hang it in my office.

It actually fit perfectly on the garage wall between the door, sill, corner and gutter. The hose rack was already there, so it fit just right in the space left over.

Edited December 4, 2018 by keiser31 (see edit history)

[JACK M]

22 minutes ago, JFranklin said:

. I have seen a lot of 1930s cars used for riverbank erosion control.

 

Yup, I know where many of those are.

Not on the big river but the smaller creeks that run high in the winter.

[JACK M]

I have seen Johns Pegasus.

Very cool indeed !!

[Rusty_OToole]

About 50 years ago I tore down an old garage (single car, beside a house). While jackhammering the poured concrete foundation found a pair of Model A axle shafts and a Model A bumper embedded in the concrete.

[5219]

I am the other side of the story.

 

In about 1987, I had a high mileage 1969 Cadillac convertible with a tired engine. I bought a low mileage 1970 Cadillac hearse and drove it for about a year. At that point, I swapped the hearse engine into the convertible. The job went well, except that I had a worn out 472 Cadillac V-8 sitting in my driveway.

 

Not knowing what else to do, removed the manifolds and heads to lighten the weight. The fluids had already been drained. I dug a large hole in my backyard and rolled the engine over into the hole and threw the other parts in after it and filled up the hole. I planted grass over it.

 

I moved out of the house in 1989. I am sure that the engine is still there and wonder if anybody has ever found it. This was in New Jersey, so I am sure that there would be a large fine for doing this.

[Joe in Canada]

Farm  behind me has a 1957 Chevy convertible buried in their dump in a gully. Been there from the late 60s. Some day when I get ambitious I will dig it out with my loader and make lawn art out of it.

[Vintageben]

Thanks for all the great post’s so far, I love the Pegasus sign what a great rescue. As for my spelling, I will take any corrections to my spelling or grammar in good humour as I know I’m not to good on the spelling but on this one occasion that was actually how I wanted to spell Plough 😁 as when I was younger I once spelled it plow and my teacher not so politely told that was incorrect so plough has stuck with me. But if I want to get technical I didn’t actually plough the part up as I was scarifying 😏. Anyway it’s all good fun

[wayne sheldon]

Oh, I have scrounged usable parts (fenders and such) from old dumping grounds out in the country. And one time, it wasn't me digging, but a utility company burying a pipeline dug up a brake drum and transmission shift gate mechanism. They both appeared to be '10s era or possibly earlier. Neither was in any condition to be restored, but I hung the shift gate on the wall for many years. Somehow, it managed to disappear some years ago.

 I did communication systems contracting for nearly thirty years. A part of that work included underground construction. I sometimes worked with trenchers and underground horizontal drills. They can often be mean and nasty as they yank the underground up to the surface. Not automotive, but the best thing I dug up while running a trencher, was a ceramic ink bottle. How in the world that thing came out of the hard ground by that digging chain and teeth, without a single scratch on it, I will never figure out. By the way, I still have it.

[Spinneyhill]

During the '90s I lived in Wellington. A fellow in the Vintage Car Club had a friend who worked at one of the city dumps. He pulled a complete Studebaker 6 engine from the waste stream. Rather than see it scrapped, I said I would take it, identify it and see it went to a good home. It was a 1950 Champion and I gave it to a fellow with the appropriate car and it went in the car, without a strip down and I believe was in pretty good condition!

 

In this area, Tauranga, I was designing a tied back or anchored retaining wall to hold up a state highway over a slip. I needed to know what the slope below was so I sent the lab. out to do some auger holes with Scala penetrometer tests. It was all good with the expected volcanic ash. When they came to clean up the slope before construction, they found a lot of '30s cars buried on the site! The tests had missed the lot and gone between them! The client was very unhappy as one would expect. It turned out there had been a wrecker next door on an unslipped part of the slope and that is where he disposed of the left-overs.

[J.H.Boland]

Back in the  sixties, my brother and I tobogganed down a steep hill near us. We had to avoid one area because it was strewn with Model T truck parts. They were never removed and lie buried under the dredgings of the cleaned out stream at the base of the hill. A metal detector would go wild down there.

 

Not buried but submerged. A friend was told about a car chassis that had been pushed down a hill into the river. He checked it out and retrieved it. Turned out to be about a 1929 Stutz. The differential gears were still serviceable after all those years in the water.

[Dandy Dave]

From working in the excavation business for years. Found the remains of an early 30's LaSalle roadster while grading a road. A bumper from a mid 20's Chandler on an old farm dump. A fuel tank for a 30-31 Model A Ford while clearing land around an old barn. Other car stuff I can not think of at the moment. Also tons of stuff not car related. Especially while digging and repairing septic systems around old places when burying discarded building material and other stuff was common place. 

[oldcarfudd]

I live in a small private community of what was once weekend and summer houses.  We have a lake and 95 houses on small lots, surrounded by a very wealthy area with 3-acre zoning.  Last spring a neighbor's boy was playing in the woods about 50 feet behind his back yard, and found this.  We decided it was probably from a '20s Chev.

[Jim Skelly]

When my grandmother retired in the late '60s, she moved back to the family farmhouse that had been rented out for close to twenty years.  My brother and I spotted what we thought was an old car in high weeds near some weed trees.  We ran up to it, and Dad caught up to us.  What a disappointment as he told us it was a manure spreader!  I did find a rusted out tailgate with the Ford script on it.  I also found a crank handle, which I took home, cleaned up and painted.  I still have it and wonder what it came off of.  

 

 

Edited December 5, 2018 by Jim Skelly
not sure if tailgate was from a T, A or another model (see edit history)

[capngrog]

5 hours ago, Jim Skelly said:

  I also found a crank handle, which I took home, cleaned up and painted.  I still have it and wonder what it came off of.  

 

If you post a photograph of the crank handle, I'll bet someone on this forum can identify it for you.

 

Cheers,

Grog

[knee-action]

Years ago, I bought a load of "finely sifted loam" to start a new section of our front lawn. Had it all spread out, flat as a pool table. Over the next several days, a circle began to appear in the "finely sifted loam" just outside our front door. Turned out to be a VW Beetle rim.

[Jim Skelly]

On ‎12‎/‎5‎/‎2018 at 11:37 PM, capngrog said:

 

If you post a photograph of the crank handle, I'll bet someone on this forum can identify it for you.

 

Cheers,

Grog

I'll do that, Grog; thanks for the suggestion!

[chistech]

The land my house sits on is behind my garage. The garage was built back in the early forties and operated as a repair and tire shop until the early seventies then went idle. My dad bought the property in 78’ so we could use the garage to service our family business vehicles. I later ended up with the land and built my house behind the garage, leaving the garage up close to the road. Well along the back edge of my and my neighbors land, originally it was all owed by the same guy, there’s tons of old car and old truck parts. Pulled most of the truck parts out as they were all Divco parts and were in good enough shape to sell yearsback during the Divco milk truck restoration craze. Still got more parts in and sticking out of the ground.