Just got back from a day of iron hunting in the hills of western Iowa around where I'm from. Thought I'd share the story with you guys. My ex-father-in-law and I still do a lot of stuff together and about a year and a half ago he told me about an old sedan sitting at the edge of one of the fields that they were harvesting. He thought it was a late thirties GM, but didn't have time to actually go over and check it out that day and he kind of figured if it was still there it was probably wasted. Well, last spring he finally got a chance to go back out there and check it out and it wasn't half bad. After he was done checking out the sedan he went back to the truck and pulled along the edge of the field to turn around. He happened to look to his left as he turned and down in a ravine sat an old model T coupe. I've been wanting a hot rod project for a while and have slowly been accumulating parts for one, but hadn't gotten a body yet. He called me that day last spring and tells me about it. So I said, "Great, when can we go check it out?" The response I got wasn't what I wanted to hear. They had already planted the crops up there that day and he didn't want to piss off the bosses (He works as a part-time hired hand in the spring and fall since he retired from teaching.) so it would have to wait 'til this last fall. Well, fall rolled around and I didn't have a lot of weekends to make it back home and the ones I did, it usually rained or something came up and we couldn't go check it out. So, he goes to their Christmas party that the family throws every year and talks to the lady that owns the house that sits on the farm and she says, "Yeah, you can haul that stuff out of there if you think you can use it. By the way did you see the other one sitting in the pasture behind my house? I think it might be from the same year." By now I was chomping at the bit to get up there, but my ex-in-laws go south for the winter and they left that following week. Fast forward about two months and I've been dreaming the whole time about what I would find up there. They got back a week and a half ago and I was home this weekend so we planned a trip there for today. Well as you will see it was a pretty fun trip and now I have my next couple of weekends planned with a shovel, some come-a-longs, and a truck, trailer, and tractor. This is what greeted me as we pulled atop the hill. A '35 or '36 Chevy. Not too bad of shape except for some bullet holes in the passenger door and some missing grille bars, but that wasn't what I was there for so we drove on towards the model T, knowing we would come back and check out the Chevy later. We got about a hundred feet past and I was hanging out the side of the truck looking out into the timber and I spotted it. Don stopped the truck and I jumped out and headed down the hill towards the coupe. When I got there I found not only the coupe, but some miscellaneous Model T fenders and such and what remained of an old Plymouth coupe. The Plymouth was sitting on it's top and all the wood was gone so it laid in pieces on the side of the hill. Here's the Model T. And here's the Plymouth. The dash in front of the T is from the Plymouth.
Now it would seem that that was enough, but after we dug around I asked Don if there was anything in the other ravines and he said he wasn't sure, but he hadn't noticed anything there before. So I go off to the next ravine and holler back for him when I get there. It was full of random T stuff. Fenders, doors, body pieces, headlight bars. This is just some of the stuff laying down there. After digging around there for a while I went on the the last ravine on the property and was actually disappointed that all I found was a '49 or '50 Chevy four door buried halfway in the mud. I did take note of the steering wheel and will probably pull it this weekend. After searching the ravines I was finally ready to head back atop the hill and check out the Chevy a little closer. I was happy to find what I think was a '54 Pontiac frame since I found two fenders that were off a '54 GM vehicle, but they couldn't have been Chevy because the trim wasn't right. I might grab some pieces off of that for my '53 Chevy. I also found a frame for a T that had been turned into a wagon. Here are some more pictures of the stuff we found at the top of the hill, including a Spitfire motor that I thought was kinda' cool. Well, that's enough for tonight, I'll finish the story tomorrow. And yes we found more.
Very cool! I'd pull everything you can off that chevy, I parted out a 51 last year and got pretty good money for all the little bits, I'd like that speedo!
"Iowa finally gave the bottom two rows of counties to Missouri...it raised the IQ of both states." It took you over a year to go and get this stuff...sounds like you need to rethink your signature! Great find...I'd love to have the Chevrolet badges and such off of the 53.
That 'T coupe looks great-I wish I had more places like that around here to find stuff. Good luck, -Dean
Very cool iron hunting pix...........I will post some pix of Model A piles later on today from this past weekend. Chris Nelson Kansas
Think you could take some photos of the quarters and other parts on the Plymouth? I have a 33 Plymouth coupe that has had the back half of the body cut off,and am looking for the parts I need to piece it back together. If you don't mind,PM or email me with the photos and the prices when you get a chance. BTW,that looks more like a Dodge dash to me. Could be the coupe is a pre-33 Dodge.
Nice pics 53Chebby, I manage to fit in some iron hunting myself. I like it when I see a dream car in person sticking out of a river bed, or eroding out of a cliff....
MAN! I'd love to go to SD with a backhoe! Those are some cool pics, but why the hell are they using old cars as river banks??? Damn, that first pic is like "Wild Cars" or something. Very cool!
Hey Aron.....I guess its an ol skool way to the bank from eroding....there is a guy I know who is rumored to have one or two 55 chev's right on the edge...I know this guy well but I can never get a straight answer and I never can into his place I can barely spot em from the road whatever they are.....all I want is to just look at em before they give up ghost in the river thats to thick to drink and to thin to plow.
Yeah it was definitely a lot of fun. The coupe that is in pieces is definitely Plymouth because the dash was still attached and it has a Plymouth badge right in the middle of it. I will hopefully get more pictures this weekend if it stops raining back there. I live about 2 1/2 hours away so it has been impossible to get a weekend that worked for both Don and I to go out there and I pretty much have to go out there with him, since he's the one that works for them and they don't really let anyone on their land. Luckily Don has the next three weekends available so I will be making it back no matter what as long as it doesn't rain and we can still get up there. I will post more pics from the rest of the fields when I get back from work tonight.
Alright I'm back from work so here's the rest of the story. After we checked out the Chevy and the stuff on top the hill, we drove down to the lady's house to see if she was around. She was there and we helped her unload some heavy items out of her van and she told us how to find the other car that she had mentioned at the Christmas party. 15 minutes later we were hiking over the hill to her house and came upon the car. This is what greeted me as I topped the hill and walked down to the other side of the pasture. It was a early Chevy sedan at one time but of course the wood is gone and I'm not even sure how much of it is there since the grass was so high and there were metal pieces sticking out from here and there. I do know that the fenders were all there as well as the headlight bar and the doors were laying around the car. I wanted to take another picture from the other side so i walked around to take this shot. When I walked over to take the other pic I found this sitting on the other side of a small mound of dirt that I wanted to stand on to take the pic. Another early Chevy. This time a coupe and about as complete. The doors were laying randomly around it and the frame and all were there again. We finally decided to leave for the day and ended up grabbing a couple of T doors the dashes from the Chevys and the dash from the Plymouth as well as some other random parts and a front fender for a T. Today at work Don called me on my cell phone and laughingly asks if I want another T. He is having an engine put in his car at the local mechanic and was telling him the story of the model T and the old Chevy. The guy asks why he would want to haul one out of a ravine when he can have the one out back on his trailer for next to nothing. He just wants his trailer back. Turns out he had hauled the car out of a garage for a guy and took it to the Lincoln swapmeet a couple of weeks ago and it didn't sell so he had to haul it home and now the guy that owns it just wants it gone. I find out tomorrow exactly what year it is and the type, but this could be one of the best weeks of my life. The weather also seems to be decent back home so I think I might get to work on digging the cars out over the weekend and will hopefully have more pics to share.
Please keep me in mind when you go. I especially need garnish mouldins,a hood,headlights,and a grille shell. I might even buy it all in order to have spares.
The Jalopy Journal
