In the early 80s while stationed in Memphis with the Navy, I had just finished building mean little open-top T-bucket style Corvair powered dune buggy but had to leave it there for nearly a year after an unexpected transfer to Jacksonville. I took a Mac flight to Memphis on a long weekend, got her fired up and after a five mile shakedown, headed home to Jax. First hundred miles was beautiful - starting at 4 in the morning. First half of the trip (after sunrise) was 100* and 100% humidity. I wished it would get cloudy and cool down.... Then came the cold rains - for the last 300 miles... The body was designed so that the rear tires swept road water up and into your back, and the fronts gave you the same in the face with every flick of the steering wheel to the right... No need for wipers - both sides of the glass was soaked... I think it took me around 15 hours - I had to stop while it was raining so hard I couldn't see past the hood... Didn't have any breakdowns or problems - even with the alternator and distributor hanging out the tail. The motor was out of a wrecked airboat and had trick heads, huge compression, big cam, a holley 4 barrel and a 6 pound flywheel - a real handful to drive even when the road was flat and dry.... I think I had an idea of how Lindbergh felt when he landed in Paris...
i have alot of them kind of stories.but id rather try not to think to much about them as i will be going on a 400 miles break in ride with my wifes ot 67 impala we just finished.me being crippled up and in pain 24/7 this should be good..lol. 200 miles there and 200 back..god im learnin to pray alot nowdays. then if all goes well in late oct or nov. we will head for the west in it. going to travel highway 66 as much as possible then only 2 lane roads from there on.not interstate for us.only a trunk full of tools and fliuds.and my aaa card!!
EVERYONE needs to drive across America! I bought a 1956 Ford pickup back in 1976 in LA and drove it home in 5 days, I'd love to do it again at a slower pace. I should get the slides converted to a disk so I can post them. Bob
The trip didn't start out with any intentions of buying another car. The club reunion was planned to take place in Milwaukee and coincide with the Cheater's show. Circus Bear has a 71 Lincoln and I have a 31 Ford coupe with a 392 topped with a 6x2 and logs. We left at 4am on a Friday from Atlanta with 2 in my car and 3 in the Lincoln. Pretty comfortable for Amber who owned the back seat of the '71. Its a real long haul car. About 2 hours out me and Ed are doing 80mph on the I-75 North heading towards Chattanooga Tenn. Then things start getting weird. I looked at Ed he looked at me. With zoomies you can't speak so the look in our eyes was mostly - oh shit we are either being beamed up by Capt Kirk or we have a flat in the rear. That shouldn't be a big deal but running a spool makes for some odd handling. The slower we went, the flatter the tire got and the more it pulled. Well that pretty much ended my ride to Milwaukee with a steering wheel in my hands anyway. Gotta love Georgia, Tim's wife does dog grooming and was grooming a dog for a flat bed tow truck driver, so a quick call and the '31 was hauled off to Tim's. Then the next 9 hours were spent looking at the USA from the back seat of the Lincoln. Tim can tell some stories. His uncle had a Reeses Mcack or some kind of Monkey. We begged him to stop telling stories so we could breathe again. We were 5 deep in the 71 but it was a good time. We landed in Milwaukee at about 8:30pm. A long trip but we made it to the Cheaters show and it was epic!
So walking around the show without a car was really killing me. Gave it a best effort and failed. Hey wait - what is that? A 1956 Ods ? For sale ? No way. No car can just run 1000 miles without prep. Besides the guy would need to trust me for the money until I get back to Atlanta with the car. Who would do that? Oh then there is that thing called a wife. She rocks so that is the easy part. Just forget about it and drive the 1000 miles back to Atl in the back of the Lincoln - but damn that Olds is sweet - 40,000 original miles. Wonder if the guy would trust me for the $$ ......
Turns out the Hoodlums and the Sock Fuckers has a bit of mutual trust. Hoodlum Rocky trusted me for the money on Monday. What was that old cartoon? "I will gladly pay you tomorrow for a hamburger today" Woohoo! Here we go. 900+ miles to Atlanta in a 1956 Olds. Its 7am and I have been up since before 6. Circus Bear was the life of the party until around 4am. Tough shit . Checking the radar, there was a huge rainstorm coming in towards Chicago. This was a 3.5 day trip after all. We needed to be at work Monday before noon. We said our good byes to our Northern brethren, wiped the tears from our eyes and the Olds and the Lincoln pointed South. We hit rain in Chicago - tons of rain. Damn the toll roads. The Olds is a rare 3 on the tree car. Seems the automatic trans factory caught fire in mid '56 and some cars were fitted with manuals. Damn the toll booths.
Finally about 60 miles before Indianapolis we are eating up the road. The sun is out and all but an odd vibration is drowning out the sound of the 1980's cassette radio. then there was an accident up ahead. - whoa ! whoa ! the drums are not gonna stop for this so we stay in the right hand lane and slowly pass the highway patrol man standing next to the crashed car. I will never forget the look on his face. We didn't yeild left and our right front tire was hopping like a basket ball . He was pissed and in disbelief all at the same time. I am sure when he saw the trunk of the car it didn't help : Not my idea. The Hoodlums must have put his on the trunk ?
This is gonna cut into the drive time. Lucky for us there is a WalMart 9 miles down the side road in Frankfurt Indiana. Hallelujah they have the same size tires! Changed all 4 so we don't repeat this 3 more times. A belt let go or something. The tires were from the Pre Millennium Collection so they needed a break. We were running 75 to 80 for hours. The 324 Olds engine is stock down to the fuel pump and no optional oil filter. But it didn't burn ANY oil and hummed right along at 3100 RPM.
Now the sun is setting and we keep the hammer down. How much farther? The GPS is in my '31 in Georgia so God only knows but adrenaline, Taco Bell and 5 Hour Energy drinks are flowing. We keep going. At one gas stop a discussion is made about sleeping somewhere and going on in the morning. "Its only a few more hours". Then Amber says "It takes an hour or two to fall asleep." Wow what a waste of time a motel would be ......
The rest is a blurr. My wonderful wife dropped 2 spare tires at Tim's and when we got to his house at 4am, we swapped on the spares - spool - need 2 - then we woke the neighbors and hauled on - 2 hours to go. Ed drove the '56 and I drive the '31. At 6am we pulled the 56 into the garage. Ed and Amber had to drive another hour home from my house, Circus Bear was probably home by now. Damn ..... Who's idea was it to drive 1800 miles to a car show on a 3 day weekend? Wouldn't trade that experience for the whole world
Had a blast, wouldn't change a thing! That Olds was ROLLIN' on the way home, motor never missed a beat.
I love my brothers..... you just can't make that shit up, and the stories, fun had...wish i didn't have to stay here...
Found a link to this thread on the Sock Fuckers Car Club social group site, read it all and then asked my fellow club members if they thought my trip in 1955 was relevant and they said "Hell Yeah", so here goes. I was 18, home was here in Griffin, GA, but like a previous poster I was out and away enjoying a mispent youth working in the oil fields in Odessa, TX. Family and girl friend @ home convinced me to come home, but I had bought an almost stock '30 "A" roadster for $130, and I decided to drive it to GA. That old car had no top, a windshield frame with no glass and fair 16" tires on artillery wheels. Motor ran real well, seemed faster than any other "A" I've ever driven or ridden in. Poor idle, so I suspect reground cam and shaved head. It was late Nov. so I bought an army surplus field jacket, but no liner, and obtained an old pair of plastic safety goggles because of no windsheld. First night I had planned to drive awhile after dark(old US 80, no Xways back then), but when oncoming cars headlights hit those scratched up goggle lenses, it was like a million spider webs, couldn't see shit. So I stopped at a small Mom & Pop "Tourist Court" for the night and was up and away East bound by daybreak. By opening of business hours I was in Big Springs, TX, asked a cop for directions to a glass shop. The shop owner quoted me a $30 price to install a double strength safety glass windshield, and I had to decline, telling him that if I spent that much I wouldn't have enough gas money left to get to GA. He then said if I was leaving TX and wouldn't tell anyone, he would install single strength glass for half price, so I went for that.
An all day drive got me to IIRC, Shreveport, LA and another small tourist court stay(cheap). Intent next day was to drive through to GA without another night in a motel, as money was running low, even with gas below a quarter per gallon. Crossed the mighty Miss. river @ Vicksburg, MS on a very narrow 2 lane bridge that had scrape marks all along the rails from trucks, glad to get across and off that bridge! By nightfall I was in AL. A stop for gas had a friendly station attendent telling me of a short cut on a paved county road that went straight across the top of a "U" you could see on a map for US 80. So I took the short cut. Moon was bright, traffic non existent and the old "A"'s starter was having increasing difficulty turning the engine over for restarts after stops. The car had sealed beam conversion lights that were a heavy current draw for the weak generator that came on an "A". So I decided to turn lights off and drive by moonlight till I saw lights oncoming or coming up behind me to charge up the battery. When I saw lights I'd turn mine on. Chugging along 45-50mph driving by moonlight when all of a sudden lights came on right behind me and a motorclcle who had also been driving by moonlight ran up behind me about 25 mph faster than me and swung out to pass me and switched on his lights. Scared me shitless!
Kept chugging along till I got to Phenix City, AL where I made my final gas stop at a little all night station almost on the bank of the Chattahoochee River with GA on the other side. It was colder'n a well digger's ass in that open roadster with no heater and with only an old surplus no liner field jacket in late Nov. so I went inside and stood in front of the old gas radiant heater while the guy pumped my gas. Couldn,t make myself go back out and get in the "A" and drive on, so the guy let me warm in front of the heater till the sun came up, then back on the road thru Columbus, back in GA at last, 90 miles to home! Began to get antsy to get home and sorta sped up a bit. In fact the last 30 miles I made in 30 min. even though there were 4 towns with speed limits and cops on the way! An unforgettable trip I'll never do again! Dave
Sorry Tony, no idea where that old field jacket went! I sold the "A" about a year later when I bought a '32 3wdw "East Coast Style"= fenderless, channeled, but not chopped, 24 stud flathead 221cid stock. Paid $250 for it, put tires and a battery in it, cranked it up and drove it home! Even had shiny paint and a seat with good upholstery on it and the door panels! Later on,a buddy and I stumbled across the old "A" out behind a barn about 10 miles from town. He bought it for very little money, wound up reselling it and I have no idea where it went from there. Dave
Didn't buy a car but 4 of us went from victoria BC to Monteal in a 67 firebird. This would be like going from Seattle to east of Detroit Did this in 1970 in Feb because 2 of the guys were going to Europe to travel around and we didn't have anything else to do so we said "we will take you to the Monteal airport. Decided to go by way of the US coming and returning. Met a lot of good people and had some good times in the evening. Lots of icey snow and rain and bloody cold, lots of beverages and no dramas with the car, all we had to do was take the battery for the car inside for the night to keep it warm.
The Jalopy Journal
