History Remember the first car you worked on?

It does have the intake cast with the head. Mount the intake, drill some holes and there you go. I thought I had a pic of the engine but don't see it. This is the intake and carbs. I have a finned Edelbrock valve cover to match.

 

In 1956 my salesman Dad was provided with a 56 Chev. company car. Soon after at nine years old while snooping around the engine compartment I noticed that most of the orange paint was coming off the valve cover.
My self assigned "work" task was to remove the remaining paint.
It's called detailing now.
The "customer" wasn't too upset. Not sure about his supervisor though.

 

Our family car was a fire-engine-red 62 Valiant Stationwagon. Hated such an in-cool car as my ride at that time. Now wish I could have it again.

 

My Dad's 1948 Packard,which he purchased new and I still own !

 

My Dad wasn't a car guy, he carried his vehicles to a shop for most things, although he would change plugs and points and sometimes his oil. I had to hand him wrenches as he did the plugs on the 71 Chevy pickup, I was around 14 or so. At 16 I was doing the same on my 67 Mustang. When I was about 19 or 20, he needed brakes put on the 71, I told him I'd do it, and did. He asked where I learned how to do stuff like that, I told him all that reading I was always doing was car related. No internet back then, I can't imagine what I could have learned had there had of been, I was always reading car mags and books, many of which I still have today. I did a lot of his car work for several more years after that, but as he replaced vehicles with new ones they didn't need as much to keep them up, so he again carried everything to the dealer. I've never been one to carry anything to a shop unless it required special tools or was just beyond my knowledge, just couldn't afford it, either. Now I don't even change my oil anymore, just easier to take it to the quick change and 30 mins later it's done. I think I've gotten lazy as I've gotten older, LOL!

 

That’s cool, I bet kinda rare. A guy I know welded bosses right on the manifold.

 

The first car I did any real work on was a 1965 Ford LTD 4 door hardtop, faded burgundy with a shredded black vinyl top and shredded interior. My grandmother had bought it new and my sisters and I grew up riding in the back of it. When my older sister (one year older than me) turned 16 (1979), grandma passed the car on to both of us to share. Of course I couldn't drive it for a year or so until I got my license. Even after I got my license, it was driven mostly by my sister, since she had an after school job and I didn't. It worked out for the most part that the car was hers when it was running good, and the car was mine to deal with when it had a problem. I did all the maintenance, clumsily fixed a bunch of minor problems and bought a bunch of $20 recaps for the front (never occurred to me to replace the bad front shocks).

The only major thing I did was replace the head gaskets. I had help from my buddy Scott Halberg ( he was enrolled in auto shop classes) for that one. Man, the intake manifold on that 390 was heavy.

I replaced the left front fender and headlight door after I smashed them up.

The last time I attempted to work on that car, My sister had moved out of the house and was using the car to commute to her job as a telephone operator, I was still living at home. She brought the car over to my parents house and told me the front brakes were making some noise, I told her I'd take a look at it. She borrowed my parents' '72 Country Squire and left. I had never done any brake work before, but I had a shop manual and I was confident that I could figure things out. I jacked up the front of the car, removed the left wheel and left front drum, but something just didn't look right. It took me a minute or so to realize that the brakes had gotten so bad that the drum was cut all the way through right down the middle and the back half of the drum was still sitting on what was left of the brake shoes. I put every thing back together, called my sister and told her to tow it to a mechanic and get it repaired on her dime, which she did.

Not long after the brake deal, the transmission started slipping. My sister bought herself a '73 VW Beetle and left the LTD parked in front of my parents house. By this time, I was out of school and working at JC Penny auto center, I had my own '71 VW beetle, but I didn't have any extra money to fix the transmission in the LTD. My dad started complaining about the semi-derilect LTD being parked in front of his house, so I sold it to a guy that I worked with for $50. He pulled the rear end (9") out of it to use in his '59 Ford pick up, and then scrapped the car. Kind of a sad end for that machine.

 

64 Sunbeam IMP

 

My 52 Chevy


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