what cool car stuff have you found when not lookin' fer' it?

How about these, this is what demo derby cars used to look like, one that got saved, and one that didnt't. also a very complete chevy.

 

I'm curious what the record is for the absolute oldest thread to be drug back up is...

 

No Shit!!
July 2 2003 for the start???
Can you sort oldest to newest?

 

I got my 51' Buick 4 door for $500 from a junk yard, and found my 42' dodge 2-1/2 ton truck in a barn for $100.

Did i mention both ran the same day?

 

I think there is some statistics involved.. something about the lower the number of posts the older the thread.. What i don't understand is how you can even find posts from that far back.. do you just click on LAST and start working backwards?

 

They come up on google if you search with the right words, usually some newbie finds it that way and drags it back from the dead. Some boards they auto-lock posts older than so many months to prevent that.

 

Two summers ago I stumbled upon an add for 'old mercedes parts' posted by an older gentleman in his 70's out in a country part of Ohio. He informed me that his father used to collect and repair Mercedes in the 30s, 40s, 50s and that he had a decent sized lot of parts he would like to sell. I went out to the building..

The doors hadn't been opened in many years and inside were the Mercedes parts. A grill with a crank to start the car? That doesn't fit mine... The parts were from a WWII car his father brought back from the war and used to show at local parades until a fire in the building caused the roof to collapse on top of the car and they parted it out in the 1950s.

An air plane and other interesting motor-vehicles were inside aswell. I purchased the parts and since I had no use for them I tried to find someone who would, it turns out a collector that restores pre-war Mercedes answered my emails first and was the person who bought the lot. My second email came from a person who didn't even own a Mercedes at all, just saw my add and informed me someone he knew had a pre-war Mercedes and may be interested in selling it.

So, I call that person..... and next step after next step, here we are today where I am the owner of a WWII German Officer's Staff Car 1937 Mercedes-Benz with crank start, suicide doors, pop-out windshield. The car has a documented 1542 original miles and is all original. The cloth seats have no tears or wear, the glass is flawless, and the chrome is outstanding. The tires and tubes hold air and the body is fantastic aswell. I have all paper work including many Nazi war trinkets/currency found inside of the car.

The officer fled to Chile to avoid imprisonment during the war and after the war it was deemed an open reconnascence vehicle to the country. It was purchased with a 1921 Bentley by a gentleman in Maine USA to be restored for his WWII Museum however he passed away before completion, his sons split up his collection and sold them all. The car spent 15 years outside under a tarp, forgotten about until one day the deceased collector's sons located the lost titles and contacted the shop for the cars; they were unhappy about the storage bill and sold the cars to the shop owner. The shop owner sold the cars to two seperate people and here I am today, the owner of the Mercedes.

I have the Chile license plates aswell, apparently it had to be registered before placing into the shipping containter. I was able to find this car by word of mouth, it wasn't publically announced and is not known, I drove 12 hours to pick it up in the snow and it was worth every second of the trip. It was one of the most enjoyable aspects in my life and I hope to one day restore this car, until then it is in heated storage.

 

When I was 16 and working under my first car (an Australian 1960 Chrysler Royal, made up of lots of leftover bits from 55 Plymouth, dodge,etc) an old guy walks up the drive and says " This your car?", I answers "yep",
and he says "come for a walk around the corner!".
I follows him to his house, then to his shed, and he pulls out an original overhaul manual for my car and says "Here, you have this, at least it will get used again, I had one of those Royals 20 years ago!"
So I thanks him and leave with a big grin.Not a big score, but when your'e broke and someone gives you something that neat,it's like winning a million bucks.
And yep, I still got the book, 28 years later.

 

Was ferryin' a new helicopter to FL from CA and landed at Van Horn for gas. The deal was ya circled the town and the guy came out. Once there the gas hoses were in a box in the ground and when he got there he beat on the boxes to run the rattlers out of there .. Wasn't funny then, is now!

 

Any chance there a hood for a 1941 IH Metro there?

 

While on a service call some 2000 miles from home in Nova Scotia, I was telling a bunch of maintenance guys about my latest project, a 58 Chev Belair. One of the guys says he has something that looked like an alternator with a pump on it that may be from a 58 Chevy. He went home and brought it back. It was indeed a generator with the power steering pump on it. Sold it to me for 40 bucks...SCORES! Brought it back home in my luggage...a little heavy!

 

Around 1970, I was driving by a steel recycling yard, which was quite large
with stacks of metal awaiting re-processing, and on top of the closest pile
visible over the metal fence, was a Brand New Old Stock '40 Ford frame,
with the original shipping or ID tag still wired to it...