Projects A late introduction-Junior Conway coupe build

More grounds.

 

My wife and I and most of our family are 3 year old Texans.


Leaving an area that you've lived in for over 40 years means that one of the major sacrifices are friends.
It was very heart warming to be around and witness the relationships that Bill and Jean have with this large number of friends.
Bill is a retired body man that has done very well. The majority of their friends that were there were involved in the hot- rod, custom car culture. There were over 65 cars there.
Another look at Texas. Very cool indeed.
This is Bill's shop (play pen).

 

More shop.

 

Here's a look at the cars that were there.

 

Hey, my wife has dragged me off to Richmond Va. to visit her relatives. I've loaded some pics up to continue the narrative but don't know how to post them yet. We're going to D.C. (going to try and clean up this mess) tomorrow. I will post tomorrow.

 

Great story and pictures Jerry. Bill and Jean sound like great folks.

 

Here we go. More cars.

 

More cars.

 

This is Bill's hideaway upstairs in the house. Your lookin' at many issues of car mags and some of these trophys were made by Darryl Starbird's dad.

 

Bill still has the first car he ever owned.

 

Bill's driveway is about an 8th of a mile long and gravel. We were late because our GPS was malfunctioning. We pulled up in the trailer and asked Bill were he wanted the car. He said "right there". Unloading in front of God and everybody else was not an endearing moment.

 

Here's Bill and Jean. Most of the folks were in thier big beautiful home (that Jean designed). When we got home we realized that we didn't get any pics of it. Please forgive us Jean.

 

We went to a H.S. parking lot show a couple of weeks ago. About 20 miles each way. Freeway and boulevard. Drove home in the dark. I'm unable to access pics from my lap top. They will have to wait till we get home.

 

Lets do a little house keeping before we go forward. These are the remaining pics from "the thing".

 

OK, H.S. parking lot show.

 

These are going to be some random shots as the day progressed.

 

If I would have known that nobody wanted my hood open at the GNRS I could have saved alot of money.

 

Dark clouds to the south. Uh oh.

 

Time to think about heading home.

 

Here we go.

 

OK, I don't want to string everybody along. There's only one picture taker, and when he's driving the car the pics don't get taken. I'll try to get some night shots. We're getting ready for the Houston Autorama thats at the end of next month.

Definitley will have a video presentation to tell what this car is and from what era it's from.

Mom and I will be lookin' for some help to set up. It's a pretty simple straight forward deal. Our sons won't be able to help. Any body that would like to help let me know. PM me please.

 

Well, I've redone this hood for the third (and hopefully last ) time. I wanted to get a pic of the pin striper doin' this hood and now he's gone and I forgot to get it. Damn!
The problems I was having were bubbles at the scoops. My theory is that the stretching that happened to the crisp outlines (with the rubber hammer) made the stressed metal act like a sponge anytime there was water present (wet sanding). That water was sucked up, primed, and painted over. Later in the heat these areas would start to rust and blister.
This time I cut all the material build up off with a DA and a straight line sander. There wasn't any water used until I had all the base/clear on it. I then cut it with 1500 wet paper, flooded it with clear and lots of pressure with my clear gun. It looked almost flat. Very little 3000 wet action after that.
This should do it. No problems around all the reworked/welded/modified areas, just the hood. Any way, a pic of the hood being re-striped would have been cool. Sorry.

 

Here are the pics.

 

If you remember back to before the GNRS we were ready to install the skirts after the car had finally been lowered to the correct height. They had been painted and we had assumed (there's that word) that they were ready to go. After installing them we found out that there needed to be some adjustments (posts ).

John Soko, one of the last owners of the original car had checked in and eventually sent me all of the Junior stuff that he had (posts 390). In this batch of stuff were many individual pages (copies) out of all the mags at that time. Each page had a note denoting which mag it was out of. I have gotten every mag listed and they are very interesting. In one I found out the origin of the skirts that I purchased thinking that they were OEM. I thought you might find this interesting.

We're getting ready to go to the Houston show next weekend. I'm going to have a video that has a three minute introduction about the origin of this project and all the build pics with a music and radio ad overlay (1957-1958) that runs an hour and then repeats. This would give the fan a taste of what would have been coming out of the coupe's radio back in the day. It will feature some of Sharon's (Conway) favorites. Junior plays only country/western at the shop. I thought that might have carried over to what they (young Jr and the future Mrs.) listened too. Junior says that all changed when Sharon came on the scene. This will cut down some of the clutter that I needed to communicate what this diorama is all about.

 

Here is the pic.

 

Well, we're gettin ready to head out for Houston. 500 entries. The biggest show that we've been to since GNRS.

 

See you this weekend

 

Be safe, have fun and Good Luck!

 

Hey! We just got in. Gotta gather all the pics together and post tomorrow night.

 

Well, we finally arrived in Houston tuesday about 5:00. We unloaded and went to the hotel to rest. I'm using moms phone camera because I've reconfigured my little digital sure shot to take larger pictures at higher resolution to find that they won't upload here.