Hot Rods See the USA...in a Hemi-Powered Model A.

Jealousy has reared it's ugly head once again!
I have been on that ride to that area of the USA my self several times, but never in a beautiful looking hotrod like that. You rocked it like it was meant to be.

 

Outstanding post, thanks again for taking us all along with you.

 

Definitely one of my favorite threads!! I will have to use this as a guide if i ever take my long long over-do trip. Glad you made it back without any major hitches, and thanks for taking the time to post.

 

best thread ever

 

Agreed, best thread ever.

 

One of the coolest threads on the HAMB, EVER. Thank you so much!!!!!!!!!!!!1

 

Thanks for the trip Brian, Greatly enjoyed the pics and the story. Having done several solo trips over the years I can appreciate where you were at. Great job with sharing !!

 

Now that is some funny shit!!!!!

 

Wow! I just read the whole thread start to finish in one sitting. Fantastic! Gotta love a road tirip story, I hope this thread inspires more like it. Magazines can never cover experiences like this.

Thanks

L.P.

 

What a great trip. Your pictures are really good. Thanks for sharing.

 

I'm tired just reading your posts for the last 16 days. I wish we could have met up in Tacoma WA but you never seemed to be around your car. When I started taking pictures of your car, thats when I heard that this was the car that drove from Texas. You get the iron butt award . Thanks for having us all live our dream through you!!!

 

Love this quote, haha.

 

What are the tail lights off of.Awesome car

 

Well thanks for lettin' us ride along..............

 

Awesome trip. Awesome thread.

 

Iron fucking man. Glad your home safe. Do you have an idea what the next trip will be.

 

Do you have an idea what the next trip will be.[/QUOTE]



If Brian heads east i will put him up with a place to stay

 

Brian, nice talkin to you at the Hop Up party. I had the same good experience with my Cokers. Ran 70ish speeds out and back , no troubles.

(BTW a big Thank You to the Hop UP crew for a great party at the bend)

 

What an awesome adventure!! Thanks for taking us along the past 2+ weeks. Your photography was awesome as well ( the picture of your car and the bnsf locomotives will be set as my background for a long time....)

 

Brian, I have lived in Colorado, washington, and california, been through Utah and the flats. I am 70 and wish that I could do your trip, but know that I am a little old to do what you have done. SO I have enjoyed your adventure through the great pictures and verbage, and wish I could have done it by myself

 

Awsome....

 

Thanks for taking us all with ya.

 

Again, awesome trip, glad you got home safe.

I have to comment on some of your pictures, they are awesome no doubt, but in some of the rolling ones where the camera is taking a side or forward shot, I must say that you have some super long arms!!!! I sat in my A and tried to reach out like that and don't see how you did it. You are of super human material.

And in honor of your bad ass trip, I would like to contribute for some new tires so you can make another trip!! PM me your info

 

Brian, like many have said, YOU ARE A RULER!!!!

you have brought us one of the best threads in the history of the HAMB! I can not wait to get my truck built so that I can do a trip as awesome as this!

You are an inspiration to us all!!

 

Brian, even though it is still early, but did the salt do much surface damage to your "raw metal" car? I think that I read that you used Gibbs and from most of the pix that I have seen of the coupe, it doesn't look like it is "covered" in salt........Just a crazy question and wondering about "Gibbs", I have been delaying for a bunch of years about ordering some.

Thanks,
Chris

Oh yea, it was great to have the "virtual" adventure of your trip.

 

^The bare metal looks so dang cool...

...but it would drive me batty not having some DP90 on it.

 

Quote Of The Year.

Thanks again for taking us all along on your amazing trip.

 

That train shot on post #488 is super-cool. Great thread, thankful that you documented it so well! Thanks for the inspiration, and glad you're home safe.

 

Well, I've had a little over a week to get back into my daily routine and try to get caught back up here at the shop. Even though I was only gone just over two weeks, it feels like I was gone for a year. I hadn't been away from the shop for that long since about 2004, so it was a little hard to readjust after being on the road.

Things are back to normal now though, and fortunately the heat has died down a little here in Dallas...so I'm actually making some good progress on my projects. I'd like to thank all my friends and customers for being patient and understanding while I got away for a bit.

I think if I'd had waited a couple more days to clean the car after I got back, it would have been a lot harder to get it back to where surface looked good. When I got home late last Wednesday night, the car didn't show much surface rust at all....It still looked pretty clean.

I didn't go into the shop on Thursday and spent the day recovering. But when I opened the door and saw my car on Friday morning I was shocked. Just a little over 28 hrs in the Dallas humidity, and the car was turning brown. It was rusting mostly where there had been salt sitting on it or where people had touched it, but there was surface rust starting to show on pretty much the entire car due to the salty air it was exposed to out on the salt flats.

This is how it looked when I started cleaning on Friday morning...



The first step was to metal prep the car, and you can see where I'd started using the metal prep on the driver's side in this pic...



I ended up taking the taillights, license plate light, license plate, and spreader bar off of the car to clean under and around them. I still need to pull out the quarter windows and clean around them too. After the metal prep, I sanded the majority of the car with the D/A sander, and finished it up by hand.

The grille and headlights still need to be cleaned also....but this is what it looks like today after a few days of cleaning.




I'm not done yet, but I was able to get all the salt out from what I can tell. The whole car needs to be scuffed with Scothbrite one more time. Looking underneath the car, the bottom of the frame and bottom of the body seem to be unharmed. I don't think much, if any, salt got under the car since the wheels are outboard and couldn't sling any up into the nooks and crannies.

The other thing that helped is that I didn't intentionally get salt all over the car like I saw some guys doing. I think keeping the salt that was getting on the body to a minimum had to help. The Gibbs oil did a good job in my opinion...especially in the rain...but I don't know if anything would have totally prevented what happened when I got the car off the salt and back into the humidity we have in Dallas.

I should also add that the car is going to finally get painted sometime in the next 6 months. So if I missed any salt, I'll find it when I blow it apart for paint.

Thanks again to all of you who followed along with me on my trip...I hope to do it again in the not so distant future.

-Brian

 

My god Brian get some sealer on there, you are giving me an ulcer hahha!!! Car looks great once again but I'll sleep better once it's painted.