Hot Rods Your quest/adventure for your first Hot Rod aka tin hunting stories

I'm sure there are other posts along these lines but there are always new stories. Ever been run off the property by a farmer with a salt gun in search of old tin or? If so I'd like to hear it...

In my youth every town had at least one "junk shop". These weren't "Antique" stores, "boutiques" or the "thrift" stores, we have now, but literally a garbage dump shoved into a building. The owners of these "businesses" were usually gruff unsavory characters who were such miserly notorious tightwads you couldn't pull a pin out of their ass with a tractor. Anything that you showed any kind of interest in had some sort of back story you had to listen to and instantly became worth a zillion dollars be it 1 ice skate, a lock with no key or a bald bias ply! Still you were intrigued by their JUNK

These days people like that are called hoarders but without them many of us would not have our hot rods or vintage speed parts, granted we had to wait til they died to prise it from their grips. Our town guy was mad as a hatter, though he literally owned an entire square block of the downtown core as well as many other properties, he chose to reside in the back of his store in squalor. It had once been the town's first Bank an old wooden building with huge plate glass windows and a flat front like in the old western movies. He destroyed that building by cramming it full of tons of junk, not selling any of it, instead relying on his pawnbroker business until constant robbings and beatings put him out of business. Deemed too unsafe to clear out the city knocked the whole thing down. I bet it was full of hidden cash....

On the other side of the river was a totally different character. "Crazy Dave" was an old hippy who had a piece of property beside the highway, slowly adding ramshackle buildings and junk until it burgeoned almost onto the road itself. Since this way of life was nearing its end Crazy formed a plan that would backfire later. He turned his Sanford&sons lifestyle into a "museum" with a "tour". People would pay for a tour through history in the form of cast off items from days gone by that were now a slice of life toys, tools, bikes, (it had so many levels and little rooms it was like a fun house) and often buy some antique, novelty, or trinket. One weekend for me it was.... one 1927 Essex tudor sedan body shell.
*Not actual car...no cell phones back then

 

Hell Dave ran for Mayor of Maple Ridge once or twice, made a pretty good run at it too! The garage that formed the Eastern half of his establishment originally belonged to my Uncle Alf, who did general Automotive repairs out of there. I remember staying overnight one time in the big old 3 story farmhouse behind it as a kid, we were there for some sort of family doo, I remember it because I woke up to the sound of a train going by during the night on the Canadian Pacific track across the road. I was probably 6-7?
The other side of the building was the old "Hoofbeat Corral" (@29bowtie probably remembers that) which was a honkey tonk. I would have to check with her, but I think my mom occasionally sang with a local C&W band in the "Hoofbeat" before she got married.

 

I had been away for quite awhile living in another area and came down for a visit. I had just missed a deal on what I had hoped would be my first real hot rod a '26 T coupe on an old hot rod model A chassis with a rusted flatty and axle behind spring front end etc. I was really bummed. News was around that the town "Crazy Dave" lived near had been incorporated and the "city" were trying to shut the last of the Mohicans down. Dave was fighting it all the way to the Supreme Court. So knowing progress and for shits I decided to go see Dave's World for the last time. When I pulled up in front the first thing I noticed was the cool old body shell, it sat in what appeared to be mostly original faded black paint and rust it had been a tudor with suicide front doors. It had a really cool grille with slats that opened and closed. At some point in it's life it had been converted to a truck probably during the war when gas rationing was a fact of life and you could get double the allotment for farm vehicles. They did this rather ingeniously by removing the upper section of the back half of car, with the lower tub section forming the "bed" then moved the very back section of roof up to the door post and covered the roof opening with galvanized tin this had all been brazed together farmer style, the rear panel was cut out and hinged an now served as the tailgate. I wanted it Dave wanted $350 but I lived hundreds of miles away so I went home shot down again. One day while expressing my disappointment aloud a friend's dad said just borrow my truck if you want so not even knowing if it was still there I took the 6 hour trip. Luck was with me it was there I struck a deal with Dave for $180. Now one young guy and two old hippies cannot lift a '27 essex up onto 3/4 t 4x4 by themselves so I was wracking my brain, remembering an old farmer I had viewed a truck at saying if he could ever help he would I called in desperation to see if maybe he had a cart or a trailer to push it up on? Two hours later I was back with a complete rolling early Datsun pick up frame....free! we somehow (that parts hazy) got it on the frame and rolled up into the pickup bed with ramps (but no winch)??and away I went...... I got it 3/4s finished with 302 c-4 a pinto front end, maverick rear and a set of field-found x brand roadster 1/4 panels tacked on before an emergency move forced my hand....sale price? 180 dollars.........*Not actual car...no cell phone back then

 

I was 14 and my buddy, Ken called me up..said come up to his house, he had something to show me. I had been given a 28 ford coupe and needed a few parts for it, like engine and trans. Ken's dad had given him a 37 ford standard 4 door with the 60 HP motor and a tube axle so Ken was looking for stuff too, mainly an engine!.
I walked up to his house and he said he'd found a few old junk fords on a hill side....let's go see what we can salvage!
The rusty cars were sitting down the hill in the weeds 100 yards from a big-dollar house ..obviously they weren't connected to the house's owner. We were pouring over these treasures and we heard a "tink"...then another!
I looked up the hill to see some dude shooting at us! The smallish bullet holes said it was a .22 but it was enough to make us run like hell while the guy was waving his arms...too far to hear him. We ran down the hill to where our bikes were stashed and rode off like the wind!
I'd like to say that was the last time Ken and I scrounged through junk piles and old abandoned cars but we made a career of finding and exploring them..got run off but never shot at again.

 

Hell I remember that Essex sitting there for a LONG time. I think my Uncle Alfs garage shut down in the early seventies, the Hoofbeat Corral continued on a little longer after that, maybe to about 1975? I remember the Hoofbeat closed its doors when I was 15-16.
I cannot for the life of me remember if Alf owned the property or what transpired between then and Dave ending up there sometime in the eighties, I should ask my mom.

 

Thanks Falcongeorge thats a cool piece of local history! The tour ended up being Dave's undoing, so many people were stopping there on weekends parked right up to the edge of the highway the city decided it was unsafe. They came in and cleaned the whole front of the property off with dozers. This pissed Dave off and against court order he filled the whole place up again so the Supreme court gave the authority to remove the entire thing house and all....pretty sad day for freedom to live life as one wishes in my opinion that whole way of living is gone now and any neighbour or "solid citizen" can now pick up the phone and make your life hell with "the man" but that's another story https://www.mapleridgenews.com/news/daves-world-comes-to-an-end/

 

Yes, I remember that all happening. A lot of locals kind of thought the traffic thing was an "excuse", and it REALLY happened because he had run for Mayor, and got a lot of votes. At that time. Maple Ridge had a town council that was dominated and controlled by the real-estate and land developer lobby, Dave had those guys pretty shook up! It was around that time that property prices spiraled and Maple Ridge really changed a lot, and switched from being a rural area of predominantly loggers saw-mills, farmers and small "main street" type businesses into an expensive bedroom community of Vancouver.
Guess I shouldn't complain too much since my brother and I inherited 2.5 acres of river front property there and its worth some $$, but it changed my home town a LOT.

 

Ha ha I always wondered if there was a conspiracy involved! It was a cool part of finding that car.... I really miss going to places like that as much as the old junkyards and farmers car/equipment piles that are gone now too...

 

Ha ha @Rocky that's awesome great story!

 

When I was 14, 15 years old (mid 1970s) up at grandmas and I already had the old car bug and this fellow grandma knew and was eluded to be a bit of a nasty fellow had a property with all kinds of rusty projects dotting his country property. I wanted so bad to be able to check out all the tin around there...

I was snooping around near the fence line along the road to the lake perhaps a 1000 feet or so from his place one day and saw an old cowl and fenders and was just starting to check it out and looked up and there he was looking right at me. Yeah I had visions of getting an ass full of buckshot or who knows I had the fear factor and choose to exit stage right and peel on through the bushes back to grandmas.

Fast forward to a year or so ago. Cecil's passed on years ago and me and my sis talked to his son in law (great guy and also a friend of Grandmas) about visiting the property and taking some pics of the old rusties (what was left). Here's some of what we saw...The first couple of pics were the car I saw when I saw Ole Cecil and took off. (I as a young whippersnapper and thought it was a 32 ford... but it wasn't). The rest were some that were left up until we took the pics. Ole Ontario isn't kind to her metal specimens...




























Here's a good one...I stumbled across this and thought you know the RR thing and thought all this stuff is vintage mid 60s and older and these guys surely weren't into this stuff and it dawned on me they ran a store and it was a display stand whew glad that's what it was...

Anyhow moral of the story was My ass was spared of buckshot and the old cars rusted away and away and I wasn't seeing things that day and it is still there a memory of my distant past.

Another thing I thought was Ole Cecil was probably not going to rip me a new one and I should have went and talked to him about the old cars and perhaps I may have got some cool stories.

There Ya go @Nailhead A-V8 and those who like a little reading with they're pictures. I did post a series of Rusties near the Perth Ontario area I stumbled onto in my travels on the rust in peace thread...

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/...-picture-thread.330573/page-338#post-11201994

One other time I hopped into Grandpas buddies ole 59 Chevy Impala derelict and opened the ole glovebox to find some goodies and I found it full of buzzing angry friggin bees and well lets just say I broke an Olympic record for exiting a old rusty that day. It must have been something to see...and not a sting that day...whew...

Have a good night all...​

 

Thanks Stogy great pics and story. I had a few in my day that I couldn't get near enough to or offer to buy and always wonder what happened to them if the elements just reduced them to bits over time like these....2 of them were '36 3 w's :-(
ps.....are you sure someone couldn't use that '30's cowl? lol

Hey wait a minute @Stogy you never mentioned that one of them was a '55 Chev 2 dr. post tucked away in a log barn! there is an old abandoned speedway near there Perth Speedway there is a cool youtube video somewhere on the property is another '55 2 dr sedan ex race car

 

I almost got my first hot rod on a tin hunt....well, actually my dad and I were fishing up Mill Creek and we stumbled on a 27 ford coupe body. My dad was really pumped! A logging crew had come along and dozed a bunch of dirt over the cowl and there were 6 inch trees growing up through the middle.......and it was 50 yards from the gravel road. The ol' man had an axe in his 60 ford pickup and we [he] chopped the trees out of the middle and shoveled the dirt off the cowl. We jerked it around by hand 'till it was loose from the ground and the ol' man ran an old rope down to it. We jerked and jerked with the pickup and couldnt' get enough traction to move that damn thing. We were gonna get it for free and it wouldn't move! It was gonna be my very first car!
We left in disgust and my dad's distant cousin gave me a 28 ford coupe a few weeks later as my very, very first car. [it never made it home with me]
I forgot all about the T coupe till about 8 years later when my cousins and I rented a house together on Mill Creek about 10 miles from the stubborn T coupe. One day I came home from work to find this 27 T coupe body sitting in our driveway! My cousins had found the T and borrowed their dad's Toyota Land Cruiser...drove it right up to the old body and pulled it up to the road with a chain! And no, they never bothered to find the rightful owner as it was on gub'ment land.
They sold it for $250 which was a LOT of money back then for a raggety model T body! By then I was rockin a 64 'vette and had no interest in a rusty ol ford.

 

that's a dream come true for a lot of us @Rocky so is being given a '28 coupe!... at least it was rescued maybe it's still out there rolling around

 

I never got shot at hunting old tin, but I did get stalked by a cougar once digging antique bottles.

 

I once went deep into some southern backcountry to buy an army surplus Kaiser truck. I thought Bigfoot was a Pacific Norhwest thing, but the woods are so deep in this particular corner of wilderness, that they have Bigfoot sightings down there, too.

Wasn't I surprised when the Kaiser parts shared a barn with a pretty nice Pierce Arrow. The Pierce Arrow was being restored in a barn with only two walls and a dirt floor.

I was glad to get home from that adventure, even though I came home empty handed.

 

Hello,

We first went directly to this overgrown side yard near our house to find that Model A coupe. We had seen the older gentleman driving around the whole neighborhood for years. Then all of a sudden, we did not see the Model A at all. So we knew where it was located and went to find it. After a few passes we stopped to talk to the old lady that still lived there. She said that, yes, it was for sale and that if we immediately got it out of her yard, she would take any offer. Well, my brother, had 5 dollars in his wallet and offered that amount. She said that was fine, but it had to be gone, today! (the total was $2.50 each, wow.) We immediately drove home, got our long fat rope and went back to that lady’s house.

Jnaki

Getting it out was ok, but towing it home was an exercise in surprises and foul language. Once we got our stuff together and rolled it up into the backyard, the dreams started pouring out of two happy brothers ready for an adventure.

FROM THE FIRST CAR THREAD

Hello,
I bought my first car at age 14 for $5.00. I split it with my brother, so, for $2.50 each the junker was ours. It was an old Model A coupe, sitting in a lady's back yard all covered up with weeds and an oily tarp. We saw this car because a friend lived near by and we could see it in the back yard. We offered $2.00 for it, but she wanted $5.00. We tried to start it there in the weeds, but it would not start, so we towed it home. My brother hooked up a thick rope to his 51 Olds and i got to steer the Model A. At home, after thoroughly cleaning out the motor, new plugs and new gas, it fired up for a quick spin around the block. I drove it around the block. It was cool... We had dreams of modifying this car for the drags and started slowly cleaning up the whole car from front to back. This project started us off on the road to the drags.
We had to sell it, because we could not afford any insurance for the car and the parts were getting expensive. Awwwww... But within a year, we had paying jobs and found a 40 Willys to start our real build.
Jnaki


FROM THE TOWING THREAD

JNAKI, OCT 29, 2016 EDIT

 

Ha ha ha great story @jnaki.... $5.00 Model A coupe!

 

Was the cougar good looking?

 

Back in the 70's I heard some sketchy information about a 1931 Ford Vicky but the story came with a phone number so I called.

There was 2 dissembled body's and a new wooden subrail already assembled and no suspension but the price was right and I bought it sight unseen and he said he would deliver it to me the following Saturday.

Early Saturday morning I hear a truck pulling up in the yard,imagine my surprise when I walk out the door and see a dump truck,I thought I had just threw my money away but when we started unloading the cowls,door and the unmistakable Vicky rear sections I realized they were rust free and must have been stored inside for years.

I kept them for several years but sent them down the road and both are now built and on the road. HRP

 

Nice! @HOTRODPRIMER what a score!

 

I drove my sister (actually made her drive the car as she was learning to drive) down to her boyfriend's house one summer day in the 60's and he mentioned that there were some old car bodys and parts out back in the brush.
I was back there and decided to flip a body over to see what the bottom side looked like and That woke up a rather pissed off rattlesnake that had been napping under the body. That ended my snooping around in the brush there that day.

 

In my 20's I took a job at a wrecking yard I was a fairly skilled mechanic but my apprenticeship had ended suddenly when the lead mechanic at the dealership I worked had a heart attack long story short I suddenly found my self on the track of being a glorified lot boy and I hated doing undercoating! At least now I was outdoors.....the owner had a '56 ford once shown in Street Rodder which was cool but on the wall in the office hung a picture of a crazy looking guy dressed like an old hill-billy standing beside a Model T that looked like it had just come out of a field after 60 yrs!... all rusty, dry cracked wooden spokes, grease caked engine, rock hard rubber tires etc.....I was enthralled and came to learn this was actually a recent pic of a former employee and the car ran and drove in that condition! on a sunny day off, armed with an address, I drove several towns away to track this guy down and have a look at this ancient "gow job". He owned a shop with a small junk yard around it and turned out to be a super nice guy we became fast friends after work he took me to the back of the property where he had recreated an old western town out of old sheds and barns with a "main street". Packed into every one was model A and T cars and sheet metal but most exciting of all several were "complete" (but not "restored") this might be difficult to explain but what this fella was doing is completely unique in that he was reassembling model T's in unrestored condition! Yes in the dry part of the country you could still find old tin with some bits of dry rotted wood still clinging and so these cars and parts were basically just greased, checked for condition, and reassembled! T motors sitting in mud for 50+ years were treated to a solution of trans oil and diesel and left sit til they freed up and ran! turbo 350 trans bands were installed in the trans.,bodies, frames, old cracked wooden spoked wheels with rock hard rubber 60 yrs old were collected from various swap meets or found in ravines and bolted back together to make running jalopies! Not restored T's not "hot rods" but true jalopies like the kids in the '20's-'30's drove! One crisp fall evening we took old "Earl" for a spin on the public roads (uninsured of course) Earl was a '23 touring, no doors/fenders and got up to a top speed of maybe 35-40. I've been in some fast cars over the years but i'll always remember the sound of old wooden spokes clicking and crackling and the old rock hard glossy rubber (that didnt require air lol) tires wumping along looking out the doorless body at the road whipping by..........

 

As Paul Harvey would say I got to hear the rest of the story lol tell me u didn't sell that for a 180 bucks? Surely u found a place to keep it until u got moved? I'll bet someone on here near u would let u keep it at their place until u got settled in us hotrodders have got to stick together like bikers do or we will be gone with the wind lol, roll on brother, hotrod harry


Sent from my iPad using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Ha ha lol unfortunately yes I did lol (this is all leading up to a third story i'll touch on briefly).... so the aforementioned model T guy gave me a tip about a little old widowed lady who lived in the same tiny town (pop. 800-1000 people) who had a shop she might rent.This is where I assembled my Essex and stored a whole shit load of 1915-30 sheet metal body parts found in the dry southwest (that's the other story) when I found out about my emergency move I arranged to continue paying her with the hope of retrieving the car some day this went on for awhile but on one visit I noticed she was acting a bit off repeating herself and whatnot. A little while later I got a call from her family asking if I could come up and clean up the property to get it ready for sale. Sadly Nellie had become senile and needed to be moved into a home for her own safety it was a real bummer I looked at her sorta like an adopted grandma. This was a tiny town in the middle of nowhere and I had to get shit done in a weekend so I towed the Essex over to model T buddies place in exchange I gave him a '23 T roadster body skins and 1/3 of the pile of body parts, 1/3 I kept (all T) and 1/3 I donated to the family to be sold by my friend the proceeds to go back to Nellie's family. A little while later I got a call from my buddy saying someone was really interested in the car, being a tiny town middle of nowhere there wasn't much market so I took the low offer and received $150. of it. I waited and waited some more finally I started to hear sob stories about how this guy had moved his family there didnt get the job he was promised yadda yadda yadda. I took the winterfront grille as collateral (but they went on private property and stole it back) eventually I got another $30. the same amount I originally paid for the body shell.......

and I gotta say @butchcoat1969 , man it's really cool to hear your team spirit!... god how I wish over the years I had a good car buddy with property!....this exact same scenario played out years later when my landlord sold his house I had to sell two cars and put my model A in pieces in a trailer

 

Hello,

After our first experience with a Model A that we cleaned up and sold, our true first search of a car to build was looking for a 40 Willys that was supposedly hidden in a back yard about a 1.5 miles away from us, near the Lions Dragstrip. Since we did not want another Ford,Chevy or what ever, my brother was insistent on getting that 40 Willys near us. After driving on our neighborhood streets for weeks, up and back, looking at every overgrown side yard, we thought we found the Willys. Our neighborhood was neatly divided into rectangular blocks and it was easy to go up and down each street and alley.

The Willys coupe was, again, under a tarp in the overgrown side yard of a house that was actually ½ way to Lions. Those houses had larger yards and a smaller separated garage in their backyards. For some reason, we had smaller yards, but the garage was a two car vs that lady’s single car garage. The coupe was almost hidden under weeds that covered the wheels and almost to the top of the fenders. The tarp did the rest, but we could tell there was a coupe underneath.

This time, towing was done with a tow bar attached to the frame and the bullet proof trailer hitch on the 58 Impala. Bringing it home was a snap after the jury rig tow bar attachment. As far as steering, all I had to do was to sit in the old, dirty Willys and just watch the brake lights on the Impala. When my brother hit the brakes, I also put some pressure on the Willys brakes. He pulled his car right into our regular garage and then we unhooked the tow bar, pushed the Willys into the 2nd back yard portion of the yard and onto the concrete pad in front of the old Rumpus Room.

Jnaki

The extra Rumpus Room that we turned into another garage was all ready set up and waiting for the first drag race car build.(including a new lift up garage door.) This Willys was in much better shape than that first Model A we found a year earlier. There was enough space in front of the newly formed hot rod garage to disassemble the Willys and wheel the rolling body into the waiting work space inside, when necessary. The fenders,hood, grill, and doors were taken off and lined up inside. The car was outside being turned into a skeleton. But eventually got covered with a huge canvas tarp that we were using for an outdoor shade structure.

Now, the work began like true, backyard, hot rod builders…until August 13, 1960.

 

jnaki,

I do hope that you are going to tell us the rest of the story?!. What happened on August 13, 1960?

 

Hey Thor,
Here is a shortened version of what took place with our 40 Willys. It has been written in various places on the internet, especially here on the HAMB. The exploding clutch threw metal parts all over the cab and the Moon Tank exploded, causing a gasoline fed fire.

Hello,
Our 40 Willys interior fire caused by a blown clutch damaged everything. The motor was fine, but the resulting crash did a number on the rest of the car. If it were today, there were parts that could have been saved, rear fenders, trunk, rear bumper, etc. But, the feeling we got after we saw the wrecked car wedged into the fence was disheartening. The doors, toast, as were some of the body panels. There were bad vibes all over that dragstrip scene.

When we got the wrecked car back to my friend's (Atts Ono) backyard, it looked promising. My friend (Atts Ono) was in the early stages of building his Willys race car and could have used many parts off of our Willys. But, he kept mentioning that everything gave off a bad feeling that he did not want on his car build.

From his hospital bed, my brother said to salvage the motor, trans and all running gear. Those were not damaged. Everything else could go to the wrecking yard near Lions. The more time my friend and I were taking everything apart, the more we did not want anything off of this wrecked Willys. But, my brother was insistent. So, we ended up taking the shell of the 40 Willys to the scrap yard. But, all of the remaining parts left were sitting at my friend's (Atts Ono) yard, covered, for months.

When my brother finally came home from the hospital and recovered enough to be able to go see the remaining salvaged parts, he decided that everything had to go. We were not going to put those parts into another build, ever. Every remaining part of our first, full race car was sold 6 months later, by January, 1961. Midwest racers, someone bought the 671 SBC motor and took it back East. There weren't too many SBC motors with 671 supercharger set ups back then, so that would have been a rare sighting.
Jnaki

JNAKI, NOV 21, 2016

 

jnaki,

Yep, I have read your account on the clutch explosion in the past. I didn't make the connection about the date in your earlier post. Thanks for the clarification.

Thor

 

Wow @jnaki that is a crazy story ! Do you have any pics of it? Amazing your brother survived but a bit sad that a bad clutch (which was the real culprit) put the heebie jeebies onto the coupe though I guess you could say it really gave you the "willies"....maybe if the junkyard was near lions some other racer found the shell and fixed it.........love the old stories guys! keep 'em coming!

 

Hello NH,

I wish I had still photos of the Willys. I did take some movies at Lions in 1960, but that was my original search parameters here on the HAMB back when I first started. I am looking for someone that has photos of the Willys at Lions. Those movies were last seen by my brother and my mom, just before he passed away at age 52. Somehow they were misplaced or just lost. So, I am still searching for those photos, any photos that someone may have taken in the pits, racing in the time trials, and in the eliminations.

RRUSS here on the HAMB just happened to have some random movies of our Willys that he had taken in 1960. We have come to believe that we were standing next to each other filming the same cars on the same day in 59. But, one day he filmed a primer 40 Willys blasting off of the line in 1960, that was us. THANKS RRUSS FOR THE CLIPS.

Jnaki



two boys with a friend watching the drags in 1959.




our 40 willys off the line

p.s. Back in those days, a lot of people would go to these scrap yards or auto wrecking yards near Lions to get parts for their cars. It is hard to believe that someone would buy anything off of that burned out wreck of a car. But, you never know.