What's the coolest thing you found in an old car?

Okay, so building on the first story I posted. My buddy and I are sitting there working on removing the rust from his body and frame when all of a sudden I hear him yelping. I run over to where he is and I am greeted by a 4 foot long snake, sucker must have found his way in there during one of the times we put the body outside. The thing is pissed off and coming at me and him. Lucky for us (because we didn't have anything to kill it with) his dad was in the shop with us, he grabbed a breaker bar and after a few swings he crushed the snakes skull. Well long story short we desided to call his ride the 1947 Ford Snake and we also have a design for the center of the dash, a 4 foot long vertically placed peice of snake skin.

We have officially disovered 5 snakes in this little coupe and this is a picture of the last ones skin. It is on his sisters photobucket so please excuse any problems.

 

4 kittens in the back seat of a '39 tudor. So cute. We put them in the next vehicle for the mother to find.

 

Cheap prick.

 

I bought my 54 ford 4 years ago.I guess they use to put spare keys in those magnetic key holders and put them under the dash inside the holder where all the original keys with a small advertisment card for a old nude bar in it

 

Bought an old Lincoln for $400 and found a mens ruby ring that would have embarassed Liberace appraised at $4200 20 years ago sold for $3000. Live racoon, it was not happy when I opened the trunk. Severed foot in a running shoe in the dash of a 1980 Camaro I bought for parts knowing it had been involved in a fatality paid a hundred bucks and it had a built small block. Funny thing was when I called the cops they didn't believe me. They changed their tune when I dropped the shoe with the foot in it on the counter at the detatchement. The desk Sargent almost pissed himself laughing and the rookie had to make a mad dash for the John to puke.
Oh and that Lincoln had a shoe box in it with dozens of polaroids of topless young ladies.

 

A ton of change (silver and otherwise), knives, tools (not as many as I've lost) rubbers, old bottle caps, quite a few fasteners the line workers dropped on the floor before the carpet was installed, a ton of build sheets (which I saved) Various dead and alive varmints, A human cadaver hand (bones were wired together), drive-in ticket stubs, church-key can openers, A trunk-full of old studio disco 12 inch records, watches, and many other things my watery memory can't dredge up. But one of the best scores was a 68 Chevelle I bought in the 80s. It had been towed in on a unregistered/uninsured, and had been sitting for over a year unclaimed. I garage owner sold it to me for 200.00 (it was pretty banged up, and I was going to use it as a winter car) There was no keys so I hotwired it, and drove it home.

It was cold already, and the heater ducts were jammed by something the fell down the defrost vent. Taking it apart, Low and behold, it was a set of keys for the car. But they had been lost much earlier in the cars life, as they were an original set with a dealer tag and all tarnished. Popping the yet-unexplored trunk yielding quite a surprise. A high end model mostly new cannon AE1 camera in a case, A bank envelope with about 200.00, a TON of assorted-states license plates (including MA OR ((Off Road)) plates that they got busted for using on the car), a small tool box filled with Snap-On tools, intimate letters (were they ever), and clothes. It was a good one (and I still have the cadaver hand hanging in my shop....)

 

Found a set of nunchuks in the trunk of this old chevy. Who really carries nunchucks with them?

 

eeeeewwwwww. i think i would've lost it if i uncovered that inthe dash. im sure it smelt real nice.

 

Oh it smelt like a slaughter house dumpster and the interior looked like one the only reason I was inside was there was a high end head unit in the dash. The car rolled about 20 times after launching off of a 50 foot embankment at about 100 mph. The small block and stereo were about the only useable parts. I cut the roof off to get in.

 

I don't know if this is cool or creepy!! I've got ROCKY"S old '41 Pontiac for a number of years now. I've got a photo of it on the salt flats(which I can't get onto my computer)-anyhow, in the backseat area(no backseat, business coupe), IN THE WINDOW THEIR IS A SHADOWY FACE. IT LOOKS LIKE A LITTLE KID, YOU CAN SEE THE EYES, PEAK OF IT'S HAIR, ETC, SORT OF LIKE A CASPER THE GHOST. SO ROCKY, IF YOU READ THIS, DID YOU HAVE A BLOW UP DOLL IN THE BACK OF THE PONCHO, CAUSE THIS PIC FREAKS ME OUT!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I know some of you guys have the pic of my(ROCKY's) poncho on the flats. Put it up here and let the rest decide. check it out need be with a magnifying glass-I don't know what the head is in the back??!!

 

bttt

 

A crispy 50.....

 

I found an unused matchbook for JFKs election campmaign in 1960 in my 57 Longroof.

Red, white and blue with LFKs face on the cover.

Rat

 

I was cleaning out my '57 Chevy wagon , and I was blowing out all the rat turds from under where the hinge bolts to the floor for the back seat , and found a old key chain , it was one of those that had the clip together chain , it was rotted beyond use , but , the fob was in great shape , I have it on my keys for my '51 Fleetline...

 

My wife...........

 

Bought a 61 Continental convertible from Tx that had been stored poorly since 1976. Ruff car but complete except for the hood ornament. When searching the car i opened the glove compartment and there was a NOS hood ornament in its original box with a Ford dealer receipt dated -76...!

 

In 1996, I bought my neighbors '72 Ford Pick up (that he drove off the showroom floor, NEW). In 2000 I was replacing the timing gears, chain and oil pump, in the well worn 360. There was an "ankle sock/tennis sock pulled around the oil pump inlet screen. It was black as coal from filtering oil all those years! Havent a clue what was going on with the engine builder, that day he built that 360 ! But it must NOT have been good! Had great Oil pressure from that time on !

 

I bought a 62 Corvette for 800 bucks from a used car lot in the early 70s There was a ball point pen under the seat that said..."This pen was stolen from Mable's whore house" I got a kick out of it. It was the first time I had seen anything like that.

 

My unHAMBfriendly 85 Crown Vic came with a few little trinkets from a little girl (I figure aroung 8 when she and the car parted ways) who rode in the back. Best one is a little arts-and-crafts bead bracelet that looks like she wore it for years (that still sits on the transmission hump) and a note in a weirdly overly-artsy font she most have spent a long time writing to a boy along the lines of "I am sorry i am meen to you but will you be nice to me again i will try to bee to" in a long run-on sentence on a post-it note. Very weird.

It also came with the all the original papers down to the pre-paid envelopes you could send in for winter tires and shop manuals, all in the original "Ford - Employee Involvement (wtf?) is Job #1" plastic bag.

Most of the older cars I've worked on have long been cleaned out.

 

In my '66 Studebaker's glove box was every piece of paper associated with the car including the dealer window sticker, owner's manual, oil change receipts, parking receipts from the State Fair from '66 to '82, when it was parked, and the letter (in the envelope) from the Studebaker factory notifying the owner that they were going out of business, but not to worry, there were plenty of parts around and the dealer would still service their vehicle.

Under the back seat was broken glass from a replacement of the window when a plumbers truck stopped behind the car at a light and a pipe slid off the rack through the back window.

 

Back in 1999, before 9/11 happened. In the trunk of a 65 Mustang parts car I found a handful of blasting caps. I didn't want them, so I called the local police to see how to dispose of them. Cops came over with 2 squad cars and 2 firetrucks and escorted the blasting caps back to the station. I closed the shop at 5:00p and was in my office doing some paperwork. I hear someone tapping on the door. "We're closed" I say without looking up. The response was "Sherrif's Dept Bomb Squad, open the door!".
No joke, they've got a huge metal ball container on a trailer that says "bomb squad" on it. I opened the door and explained the local cops already took the caps. These guys looked soooo disappointed.

Another Mustang parts car, when I got the trunk open there was a possum curled up on the spare tire. He must have had an interested ride on the tow truck on the way to my shop!

A different car, same story, but there was a mama rat and a bunch of babies in the trunk.

 

That rings a bell! I sorta remember Mouse ( the weirdo sweatshirt guy) having pens like this for sale in the mid 60's. If not Mouse it was one of the ten billion Ed Roth types that sprung up then! Or...I could just be insane.

 

A buddy of mine joined the Army out of high school and ended up stationed at Ft. Hood. Met a local girl (future wife) from Belton and they moved in together and all that jaz after he got out of the service. They had bought a used OT car for her to drive. One day she has a flat, the spare was also flat so they had AAA tow it to a service station, 10 minutes later the cops show up. Turns out the spare was full of cocaine. My buddy said they had owned the car for almost a year before all this happened.

As for me, about the only thing I have found was an unopened American Airlines wet nap advertising the New York Worlds Fair in a 65 Caddy. Have found all kinds of change, 8 tracks, small tools and that kind of stuff over the years.

 

2 things... both found in my 50 after I took the rat eaten interior out.. 1st was the original options punch card. and second was the original literature for the jager clock. it amazed me that the rats didn't chew them up.

 

your not alone there, back in the early 70's i worked pt for a vw junk yard. cutting up a rear engine vw van we found a severed off foot in a sneaker with the ankle, called the cops,they came and after checking things out,it turned out the owner had died in the wreak,they couldn't get the body out, so they just cut off the foot and left it there.

crazyest was in a brand new vw, customer said there was a rattle. taking the car apart we found the problem. seems some one in germany wanted to play a joke, the noise was a german beer bottle inside was a note written in german with a date on it saying "crazy american! what took you so long to find this?

 

bought a 35' buick sedan sight unseen that was sitting in the woods. Went to pick it and the interior was full up to the door handles with every kind 60's and 70's beer can you can think of.....sold the car still got the beer cans.

one more cool one. Bought a 41' plymouth dirt track car out of a junk yard, car ran back in the 50's you can still make out all the lettering on the trunk and doors anyway it had an old airplane seat in it for a racing seat and laying in the floor beside the seat under all the leaves was the freakin' tow bar they pulled the car with AWSOME!

 

E.I. or employee involvement was a program at f/l/m plants that allowed groups to get together and come up with solutions to problems within their team such as an ergo or health and safety issue. If a person came up with a big cost savings to the co, they would get a cut of the savings for 1 year also. How do I know? 17 years down, 13 to go!

 

When I was a poor college student I bought an old Dodge Diplomat cop car at a police auction for $800. The next day as I was cleaning it up and found a bag of pot under the rear bench. Some panicked kid must've stuffed in in there while going for a ride with The Man.

 

Thanks! that kind of makes it cooler knowing it wasn't just a meaningless platitude.