New here, I feel old rl but maybe it's just because my kids are teens. Or something.

Howdy folks. Let me tell the story of me and my hokey ass hobby.

I started with my first 1955 Ford when I was 15 back in the '80's. My dad had started his hobby before I was born with something like a '37 Chevy he bought for $200, and allegedly his hobby was sustained by fixing up a car, selling it and using the profit to get the next one, and so it was self sustaining until I came along.

For my part, by first '55 was sold somewhere in the late '90's. I picked up a '55 Mercury Montclair from a junk yard in Pontiac, somewhere in the early '90's I picked up a '55 Mercury Sun Valley which is kind of my ultimate goal among fully restored hobby cars.... Somewhere also in the '90's I picked up the station wagon I have as well, and I picked up a '56 4-door sedan with a 352 FE block installed.

Also along the way I went to college in Florida for a year in 1990 and came back with a 1956 Nash Metropolitan from a junk yard that I ended up selling for about the same price I bought it for and a 1955 Ford Fairlane 4-door sedan that got me back to Michigan then the engine seized up. My dad ended using that as the bottom half for a Crown Victoria he pulled out of a garage in Detroit. I don't seem to have inherited his talent for actually finishing projects LOL.

Then in 2001 I got married to my now ex-wife and we got a house in Clawson with a 2 car garage and 2 spaces behind our fence for the other 2 projects. The '56 actually got far enough I put a bunch of aftermarket stuff, mostly bought at Ramchargers, and got it painted and on the road a few times for the Woodward dream cruise, but somewhere along the line I decided I'd rather go custom on the station wagon and use the 352 in it, so the engine came out and the car sat until my dad suggested selling it to a friend of his who needed a project.

The first wife phase of my life didn't have that much hobby time. We had a couple kids and moved to Indianapolis because of work (most of my career has been an engineer in the automotive industry, but in 2006 I was working for ASC who went under at the start of the economic downturn) My son liked climbing around on the cars, and I decided to splice the Sun Valley roof on the Montclair hardtop body so it would be a more viable project. The Sun Valley frame would end up getting stripped down, sand blasted and powder coated just before the divorce- but that's as far as that project has gone and now it's just parts being moved from one place to another until my life allows me time to do anything - which I assume is probably some time after the kids are all moved out. Hopefully that point in time comes before I'm dead and/or crippled or in some state of limited mobility. Anyway, due to the amount of chrome and my belief the Sun Valley ought to be restored with an eye towards show quality, it's the last one I plan to work on in my master plan.

Anyway, after the divorce, I got a house with a basement that's not quite tall enough to stand in and a garage that wasn't quite big enough to put a car in, at that time I was down to 2 55 Mercury projects and the rolling '56 Mercury that ended up with my dad's friend. Some got stored in Ohio with my parents, I got remarried, that added another kid to the family of similar age to my own 2, the house needed work so a kitchen remodel, adding a bathroom, remodeling the old bathroom came before building a proper 2 car garage. And my dad died so I took on a major rehabilitation project on the family farmhouse in Ohio which as of this writing is still ongoing.

Now I've got the 2 car garage, a son that's 15. From my dad's inventory I've taken on a 1960 Plymouth Valiant which at one time in my childhood was our daily driver, this car had originally belonged to my great grandmother. It's been sitting more than it should, so it's a little hard to start but it runs - it ran a bit better after I put in new spark plugs. Slant 6 as I understand it is a fairly robust engine... I probably need to drain the gas, but at the time of my dad's passing a brake system rebuild project was started and it felt like a good learning opportunity for my son. He's watched some, but my own skills are rusty and the parts were a mix of correct parts and newer self-adjuster parts, so it's taken me some extra time to sort it out. Now that car is down to sorting out steel brake lines, I'm hoping to have it drivable by Woodward this year. This car is at the front of the line. My dad had also acquired a headliner and a front left fender. It's got some rust, it needs to be repainted. I told my kid this car doesn't get modified or sold as long as I'm still alive.

The station wagon is ahead of the Sun Valley in line because I intend to make it a fun car. Somewhere I picked up a couple 390 blocks because that extra stroke just seems like what the FE block wants. The 352 was originally out of a 1960 Ford Galaxy as was the f/m trans it came with, I was never happy with it because it felt so sluggish. But I'm back out in the junkyard collecting parts I'll eventually use with the station wagon, I'm looking to do the '70's full size ford front spindles for disc brake conversion and I've got my eye on a Ford Ranger rear axle with LSD and 4.10 ratio.

Then came a Facebook ad for a 1956 Mercury 4-door sport sedan. This is the lower roofline, I always felt the lower '1955-6 roofline looks good on Mercury, so I bought it for $200. I didn't let the fact the seller didn't have title disuade me, after all it has fenders that aren't rotted out and that alone is worth it... For that matter the money from scrapping it should be worth it, as is the crank from the 312 motor that has been sitting out without heads, and some other pieces... Even the seats weren't beyond usable condition.

The '56 also is potentially for my son. My vision was that I'd drop the engine from a 2000 Mercury Grand Marquis into it along with anything else I could get to fit... The concept has turned out to be a bit more complex, the rear sump on the modular engine may present an interference problem with the original behind the crossmember steering linkage so I've got the bright idea to go with a M II x-member and see what I can pick up from the junkyard for original components. My eyes are on a '78 Pinto wagon donor.

My son... oh boy, he's gone down the mental health problem road over the last year, but taking him to the junkyard has kind of started a spark. Not the same way it does for me, not at this point, but it gives him something to explore and he likes that. I've gotten him to turn some wrenches, but mostly he likes watching. His generation has regrettably been poisoned against anything hobby related. I just hope I die before they kill off gas stations.

So, that's my story so far. I've been on hotrodders.com since 2004 but things don't seem as lively as they used to over there, so I'm hoping there's someone here to set me straight about what I'm doing gathering parts for my projects... I might not change what I'm doing because it's just fun (to me) climbing through a junk yard, taking a pile of metal to the guy that owns it, having him stare at it and eventually say $100 no matter what it is.

 

Welcome to the HAMB from Illinois.

Love your project history. Just a word, this is a traditional (pre-1964) site. Mod motors and MII are not allowed in the discussion here.

Welcome!

 

Welcome
If you were 15 in the 80s your kid around here.....

 

I was born in the 80s soooo what does that make me

 

Unlucky................???

 

Before I got married, my dad and I used to go to breakfast every Saturday morning at Rams Horn with a bunch of car guys and he was one of the younger guys, and that was in the '90's when he'd been in the hobby for over 2 decades and he was one of the younger guys. So if I'm in the kind of position he was in, I feel like being here is probably where I want to be and I thank you all for having me.

 

By no means do I dispute the definition, in my way of thinking I look at it as taking what I have sitting around and making something out of it. My dad once was plotting to subframe a Bronco II under a '40 Ford Coupe, but that's just because we had one that was my sister's car until my mom totalled it. In this case, I have a Grand Marquis donor car but none of the kids want to be seen in it let along drive it (that would be a good reason to make it their first car, but their generation doesn't have the appreciation of being able to drive themselves these days, so they'd just end up not driving)

It does bring to mind a little bit of a story. When I was starting in the hobby my dad was in the Ford and Mercury Restorer's Club (former president) and at the time club vehicles were pre-1949, so my interest in 1955 didn't really count as club vehicles. Somewhere along the line they changed it to follow historical license plate rules and it was any FoMoCo 25 years old or older.

All I ask is please let me die before the "traditional" designation gets applied to these Japanese tuner things.

I'm starting to think that maybe I should either keep the Grand Marquis frame and change plans to put a truck body on it (which I don't have) or otherwise rework a frame without a body and swap frames later, and just do a second disc brake conversion with a Y-block or FE using the unaltered '55/6 Mercury frame.