50 Shoebox parked since 88

Got a call about a month ago from my aunt, lives in West Seattle.
Says they've hired a property management company to handle their rental property as its getting to be too much for them, and the company requested they remove the old car in the garage up on jacks.
Their initial reaction was FU, but after some thought decided it was time to part with her husbands '50 ford and wanted to know if I could help get it out of the garage and get it running to sell it for them.

Now as a gearhead I'm usually pretty nosy about anyone in the family who has cool cars, but I had never heard of or seen this car... Turns out it was my uncles dad's first new car. Purchased brand new in seattle in June 1950. Daily driven into the 70's when he sold it to my uncle for $1. My uncle rebuilt the motor in highschool shop class in '75 and continued to drive it as a toy until he was marries with his first kid on the way in '88 so like a responsible parent to be, he parked it away in their "extra" garage at their rental house across town, covered it up & put it on jacks. He said that he would go out every month or so and run it for 15-20 mins until it ran out of gas. Hadn't pulled the cover off since then.

Anyway- Long story short (too late) went out to their rental a week or so later and uncovered this time capsule of a car. Discovered brakes are non-existant, but otherwise well preseved. Zero signs of rodents in the car or trunk (also amazing becasuse lots of signs of rats in the garage & engine bay!)

I got it out of the garage and back to my place where I've begun to get it running again. Drained the radiator & removed the old hoses. Flushed the water passages in the block.
My dad is visiting and we fired it off for the first time since 88 last night with all new plugs, points, cap & rotor and gas down the carb. (and fresh oil of course)

Now that I can see that it runs, I'll continue to dig deeper- need to locate a carb rebuild kit, replace the t-stats and rad hoses and see if the radiator & water pumps will hold water or not, and start cleaning out the fuel system (which since he ran the car dry in 88 is amazingly clean already.

anyway, my plan is to take my sweet ass time getting it running and driving, then will put it up for sale for my aunt and uncle (they are in no hurry other than getting out of the rentals garage). So I'll kick around for a while and ask dumb questions and enjoy learning about flatheads for the summer.

Little video of our 30second startup....

 

MAYBE need to read HAMB rules and know what an INTRODUCTION is....

 

Love it! great story! Love the '50..............Cool narration by your Son. Don't tell him that I ratted him out!!!!

 

Nice looking Ford....and I even like the color! . Cool story!


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Great story. That's a sweet find!

 

Thanks for the comments guys. My son cracks me up. I thought I'd start with the story first, since thats the real reason I'm here.

Another friend of mine has a '49 tudor sedan that he just finished putting a SBC/TH350 in, so its wild that this thing landed in my lap. I'm already having fun messing with him by getting this one running in stock form on the cheap since he was insistent on doing the motor swap as soon as he got his. (wouldn't hear of attempting to get his cars flathead fired up). I'm going to be doing a full interior for his car this next winter.

I've been doing lots of reading and research in the background here, but thought I would post up and say hello.

Up till now most of my vintage car experience has been 60's muscle cars. I did have a 53 Chevy 5 window truck I pulled out of eastern oregon a couple years ago and got running/driving again. I currently own a 68 Chevelle 2door Post with a 454 & 4spd.

Anyway- I'll be hiding out, searching and reading existing posts- but I'll post up when I have some more progress to report. Carb rebuild kit & 6v electric fuel pump are arriving this weekend. Will be nice to get it to run a little longer than 30 seconds at a time. LOL.