Best car related experience

Finished the first of twenty Formula cars and set it on the ground . As a kid like 8 years old, I saw a curved dash 1901 Olds in a museum and always wanted to build one. This was close and felt like a life long goal had been attained. Me left with dark hair ('98) white hair is can am legend Rex Ramsey. In car is Jacques Couture - friend and boss at the time - former Formula Atlantic champion and founder of Jim Russell Racing School in the USA.
Work with your heroes and it's not really work.

 

Oops pix

 

Lets just say it started out (I was 25) with my girlfriend and I when one late night we had to pick up her best friend when her car had a flat tire. It was the 3 of us alone in my '69 Bonneville ragtop on a country road. It took the 3 of us 4 hours to get the tire changed. The hood of my Bonneville was polished nicely

Does this count as a car related experience?

 

driving around with this thingy:

 

iwanaflattie,
Little kids are cool aren't they?

I had a chance to put my life on hold once and raise an 8 year old girl for a year. Got a lot of help from my club brother's wives, lived in a warehouse and got aquainted with my '46 Coupe that had been sitting idle for awhile. Good times.

 

How long did it take to get the taste out of your mouth?

 

That's pretty funny right there, I don't care who you are.

 

1) Circa 1993: Going 60 mph out across the Arizona desert while laying on the hood of my buddy's AMC Hornet with a smokin hot blonde right next to me.

2) Receiving road head while cruising 80 down I-80 East, somewhere in Nevada.

Those two are the most memorable.

 

Here's one that I always chuckle at when it comes to mind. I drove a '68 302 Torino GT for part of high school, and stock, it was a slow pig. I decided to take it out to the drag strip and run it anyway. The car was so slow---"how slow was it?"--- that after I launched, I had time to eject the current 8 track tape, reach in the back seat and grab the tape case, pick out a different tape, insert it and press play, put the old tape in the case, close the lid and put it back in the back seat before the finish line. Now, that's slow. It ran mid 16's, and now I think my low 10 second Camaro is too slow.

 

LMAO!!!

Very cool story, right there.

 

Mine had to be back in the 70's. Went to an auction in an extremely small town in our County located in Tennessee. To make a long story short I bid off a 57 Oldsmobile 4 door hardtop for $87.50. At the end of the auction the widow of the owner walked down the steps with an envelope in her hand to give to me. All the original paperwork, an extra set of keys etc. were in there. We talked a few minutes and she told me that she had bought the car new for her late husband in January of 1957 for his birthday. January 14th the same as mine; I was one year old the day she bought it!

I got a guy to jump me off and I drove it the 12 miles home. Wish I had never sold that one even though the paint was dull and it had surface rust here and there. I sold it to a neighbor kid about 2 years after I got it and he drove it to high school and then to college so it went to a good home.

48 Poncho

 

I have two many to speak of just one. hanging out with the older "bad" guys and drag racing on the local black top, to the experiences with the young ladies..Seager said "I used her and she used me"....... It's the only reason i'm into cars today

 

The best experiance for me was finding my Merc and working my ass off all last winter in the freezing cold to pay for it. I wouldn't change a thing and I would trade anything to go back and do it all again.

 

My earliest was in 1962 ...I was 8 years old playing with Tonka and Buddy L trucks when I heard a horn blow........I looked down the yard and my older cousin was in a 62 Corvette...top down....red on red.....her boyfriend had just bought it......they took me for a ride and I sat on the convert. top deck lid between the seats......it is a good memory. Later at 14 my best friend at 16 had a cool 55 Nomad......327 4-speed.....Red lacquer Ivory top...Chrome reverse........Impala buckets.....nice stance with no front bumper......we would criuse the local town being cool and drinkin' quarts of Ballentine beer........anyway first backseat experience in that Nomad......funny thing I can remember all about the details of the car but not the girl.......hmmm

 

my great grandpa's 51 2dr shoebox had been parked in my great grandmas garage before i was born. she never had a drivers license so it sat and she wouldnt part with it. it is really a giant part of what got me into cars, i would play in that thing for hours pretending i was driving it. well when she passed away in 95 the house had to be cleared out. my uncle decided there was no reason to tow it when he knew it ran fine 19 years earlier. so we got to work, swapped out the rotten tires, pulled the wheel cyls off and went thru em, blew out the fuel line with a hand pump- add some new gas and a battery and the son of a bitch fired right up. i thought the car died until i saw the fan spinning and i was standing right next to it with the hood open. smoothest running flathead on the planet and we didnt even touch the carb. so off we went on about a 15 mile drive to my uncles house. we only had to stop once for water because we were so stupified from it firing up we forgot to top off the radiator after we started it. coolest drive of my life.

oh yeah, thats my then 3 yr old son in the very same car in my avatar

 

I've had many memorable car-related experiences: participating at the drags, car shows, swap meets, national and local events, etc., but some of the best experiences were the times spent with friends in garages working on a variety of car projects or bench racing and swapping lies over a pizza and beer.

However, one that is among the best-of-the-best is the time that Gray Baskerville gave me a ride in his '32 roadster. I was living in the Midwest in 1980 and a friend in Los Angeles had built a hot rod that was a pretty big deal at the time (magazine features and covers, etc.). I came out to L.A. to visit, hit the Pomona swap meet, do car stuff, and so forth and one Saturday we were wandering around Pasadena. My friend knew Gray and we stopped by his house to say hello. I had met Gray several times before at the Street Rod Nationals and at the HRM offices. I was grateful for the chance to see his roadster and as he was showing it to us, he asked if we would like to go for a ride. Not being complete fools, we jumped at the chance. We just cruised around his neighborhood and the Rose Bowl, but it was my one and only opportunity to ride in a deuce, much less his famous roadster. Even though it was over 30 years ago, it's still a vivid memory. It was just another "day in the life of" Gray, but a very big deal for me. He was a great guy, unique storyteller and one of the funniest people I've ever met.

I've included a couple of pictures that I took that day. The shot with the feet and peace sign is of Gray, of course! The roadster was looking good ... Gray told us that he had repainted it a year or two earlier.

Good times....

 

yes, beaner, i do remember. that was, indeed, a very good year at the drags. as you mentioned, we could write a pretty good book based on that weekend. BenD and i rolled into joplin in clarence after a week at the salt flats. if i'm not mistaken, my avitar pic was taken that year. t-man or zeke need to recount their adventures with the pig roast.

hrlc's very first drag race was against me at those first hamb drags. she smoked the hides nearly all the way down the track and all i could do was stare at the smoke while she drove away from me. denise and i try to race each year. of course she blows my doors off every time. i keep trying to get her to pull 3 spark plug wires before we race. even down 3 cylinders big olds would still have a larger engine than clarence has. this year she back pedal'd down the track doing the homecoming queen parade wave to the crowd and keeping just a couple of car lengths ahead of me. don't you just hate it when a girl plays with your heart like that?

bob k and i race occasionally at the drags. his 6 cylinder chevy even has a larger engine than clarence's 283. he kills me every time too, but it's always fun.

someday i hope to get abone to run me and give me a 7 second head start. he'd still probably win, though.

i believe it was at the hamb drags a couple of years later that the hotel management ragged on ryan about "his people", and ryan said he didn't even know that he had "people".

and, of course, who could forget the mini-bikes making laps around the host hotel for hours on end?

or (at the same hotel the year it rained after the drags and a couple of hundred close friends huddled under the entrance canopy) of one our our distinguished hamb members saying "kma" to another, to which the reply came back "ok, bare it", and of course it happened. somewhere i've got a 35mm pic of that too. names of the two parties shall remain confidential to protect the guilty. note to anyone who wasn't actually there: this was all in fun, there was no animosity involved. both of those people (and dozens of others) i like to think of as my good friends, even though we see each other only occasionally at hot rod events.

and then, there was the year (at the same hotel again) that another semi-famous hamb member passed out on the couch that appeared in the parking lot. there's a collection of short stories right there. that same hamber (in the same inebriated condition) at an early SK-500 left a divot in the host hotel parking lot doing a burn out that, like the energizer bunny, just kept going and going and going. the resultant hole in the asphalt was approximately 3/8" deep. consider how long a tire must spin to dig a hole that deep! that might have been the year that the same hamber knocked on the door of the high school girls' motel room and was greeted by a girls father. ooooops!!!

probably my best memory of '11 is the supper after the hamb drags that i shared with about a half dozen people i now consider very good friends, most of whom i have met through the hamb. we caravanned out to Undercliff, a very cool restaurant about 10 miles south of joplin.

i just remembered, thinking about the ramada canopy, the model A dash that folks signed for hambandy one year. makes me sad that i never got the chance to meet him and that he never got to make the pilgrimage to "the drags". hambers from all over the world contributed parts and ca$h to make andy's dream come true of driving his very own flatty powered hot rod. for a long time i had that pic of his rod at the only car show he ever got to drive it to as my desktop pic. i think i'll put it back up again. and i think when i find it i'll post it here too. hats off to everyone who helped in any way to make that rod happen, and especially to the newfoundland rodders that actually spent many hours putting it together. the more i think about it the entire hambandy saga just might be my "best car related experience" ever.

 

That first year for us was just exceptional. I was standing with a fellow HAMBer @ about 2:00 AM when one of the mini bikes went zooming by. there was an older couple standing there taking in the circus and the lady said what was that? My friend said in a matter of fact sort of a way, "that was a Mexican." I still chuckle about it when I think about it.

The HAMB Andy car I haven't thought about that in a while. I signed that dash.

 

My first perfect S curve - the hard brake at the limit of traction which morphed into a four wheel drift to the right, the smooth transition into the left four wheel drift, and the smooth application of throttle at the very edge of traction going into the straight.

I miss driving that school bus.

(just kidding about the bus!)

 

I've included a couple of pictures that I took that day. The shot with the feet and peace sign is of Gray, of course! The roadster was looking good ... Gray told us that he had repainted it a year or two earlier.

Good times....

[/QUOTE] my second "most favorite 32 ford" and first favorite hot rodder.

 

I have no idea what you are talking about Atch!!!

 

5'10" Sandra, in the front seat of my '72 Lincoln MkIV, on top of the Pier 39 parking garage, 2pm Sunday, in 1986. Gotta entertain the tourists somehow

 

I was giving this thread alot of thought and dang, a person usually has a shitload of car-related memories , so how do you recall the best??

Here's one. A friend called me a couple years ago and wanted to know if I wanted to go with him to some Shelby/Cobra event at Infineon Racetrack (the old Sears Point). I knew my friend used to work for Shelby and set-up and drag raced one called "The Dragonsnake" so it could end up being a fun day.

I picked him up early in my OT truck that morning and he said " I sorta thought we would be going in your vette." I told him I didnt think it would be appropriate to take a vette to a AC/Cobra get-together. He said that would not have been a problem.

So anyhow we get down there and the guy at the gate recognized my friend and sends us to "will call" ... there they give us all these passes and meal tickets, gratis. All because of my pal's history.

We go through the paddock and see all these ACs and Shelby Mustangs and my pal is explaining all the nuances of each, and as we are roaming my friend is talking with all the owners and such .... and as Jere is talking to one guy he calls me over from a "survivor" I was checking out and introduces me to the guy he is talking to "Peter, this is my friend Randy. He is a Corvette guy." "Randy, meet Peter Brock" ... for those that dont know, Peter Brock was attributed with the design of the split-window 63 vette! ...... Dang, I was floored.

The introduction of the 63 split window was such a large influence in my growing love of cars and here I met "the man"! ... forget all those other ford products I spent the day looking at! LOL

Anyhow it was just a fun and memorable day for me and something I will never forget!

 

It was really interesting and pretty awesome! Still thinking of my own experience to post here. There's just so many.

adult driver training Minnesota

 

Kinda wondering who your pal is- as my little buddy Tony drove the first "Dragonsnake" and worked in the factory and on the race teams

 

the day i was born riding home from the hospital in my dads 1962 chevy nova

 

People: people I've never met before talk to me for an hour because of my car .I wont see them for a year or two and they run in to me again and we talk like best friends .All because of a kinship and similar love of old cars . Friends all because of cars, people I never would have met or known.Broken down on way to shows its a given a fellow old car guy could be headed to his daughters wedding hes gonna stop and offer 2 minutes of help or advice and use of his garage or tools after the reception.

 

This thread has got me thinking a little bit. With as many car experiences I have had, which one would be the best? That's really hard to say. I mean besides the obvious things like losing my virginity in the back seat of a '64 Olds Dynamic 88.

After a little review, I realized that some of the best times weren't big moments...they were just little ones. Simple pleasures that I look back on fondly. For example, cruisin' with a friend of mine on a rainy day in the late 70's - Foreigner was playing on the 8-track. I have a perfect snapshot of that in my mind. It wasn't extraordinary. In fact it was the "ordinariness" the makes the memory nice. It was a typical day.

Now, to get to the story I think I'm really after to tell. My Dad was a machinist and a hell of a mechanic but we weren't really that close and about the only things that I can remember that he taught me, that were car related anyway, was how to drive a stick, how to clean spark plugs and set points. In 1977, when I was 17, my Dad passed away. He was 71 years old, so you see, I was born late in his life and I never really got the chance to learn all that much from him. Although I know my Dad loved me, he didn't seem to know what the heck to do with me. Every once in a while, when I was a kid, we would stop to look at an old car and check it out. I loved it when we did that! But, while my Dad had hopped up Model Ts and raced motorcycles in the 1920s, by the time I came along all his passion for that stuff was long gone.

I knew this though, inside of me was a little spark that had been smouldering for quite some time. I had been building plastic models for years and gazing at books and magazines. By God, I loved old cars and hot rods (any old machinery, really) - I didn't really know a bunch about how to build one, but man, I was going to find out!..and I had inherited all my Dad's tools and garage! Dad wasn't there to tell me something couldn't be done so I set out to learn on my own without a whole lot of real knowledge, but with some common sense and plenty of passion. I started taking things apart and putting them back together. I was beginning to figure out how things worked and why. I also subscribed to every car magazine from Street Rodder to Hot Rod to Hemmings to Car Craft and Cars and Parts.

Within the next year, I bought two old Plymouths from the guy next door. One was a '46 Four Door - original paint, no rust, original cloth interior - All there, except no engine. The second was a '47 Coupe - full of rust but it had an engine that supposedly would run but hadn't been run in a long time. I think I paid about $500 for both.

In a leap of faith, I didn't even try to start the engine in the coupe. I built a tripod out of some old pipe and using a come-along I pulled that old flathead 6 out of there. I left it hangin there while my sixteen year old girlfriend and I rolled the coupe out of the way and rolled the sedan into place. After a few hours we had that engine bolted down and everything hooked up. I put some fresh oil in it, a battery, some straight water in the radiator, some gas in the tank and a little gas down the carb.

Next came what I believe to be the key transformational moment in my young life. I turned the key and pressed the starter button...the starter ground for a few seconds...and I'll be damned, holy shit, that thing fired up and sat there purring like a kitten. I was like freakin' Dr. Frankenstein or something. I brought the freakin' dead back to life!

It was this moment when I believe angels quietly opened the gates and let me sneak in with all the real car guys. To me, it was a miracle. Not one of those jumping with joy, flipping out and dancing around, miracles. But a very quiet, satisfying, grinning ear to ear, miracle. With all the seeming possibilities that could go wrong, for all the things I didn't know, here was this greasy 1940's flathead six idling away out back of the barn and I did it all on my own.

What's the big deal? To me it was a big deal. I was 17, I had to figure it out for myself. I had no one to turn to for guidance but I thought old cars were cooler than shit and I wanted to be part of that.

When I reflect on it, I wonder. Perhaps every wrench that I've turned since then has only been an attempt to recreate the feeling of that experience. I dunno. I do know that I've been hooked ever since.

That may be my best car related experience.

 

Was walking around the Honest Charlie booth at NSRA Louisville a few years ago. When "Honest Mike" says " Hey kid, you've been walking around here for a while being good not bothering anything. You look like a good kid, come here, sit in this car." He then went on to explain the history of the car. Talked with him for a good 30-45 mins.


Also the very first start-up of my 49. After a year and half build, that first turn of the key was the greatest feeling in the world. The first ride around the block was just the cab, no doors, no fenders, no glass, open headers, and using a big spot light for headlights since it was dark out. It may have been a bit redneck, but it was the best feeling, the first drive of my first truck, and a memory with my dad that i will never forget.

 

Yeah I think Tony lives in your neck of the woods and Jere in mine ..... they both shared driving as I recall and Jere did the chassis set-up and and Tony did the engine work. They are both in contact ..... alot of history there.