Annual Pilgrimage to Hershey AACA Old Cars Show and Flea Market

I went with three friends to Hershey, Pennsylvania, last weekend for the American Antique Car Association Fall meet.  Saturday is the day to see the show cars on display, and there were a ton of nice ones again this year.

Sadly, a lot of the flea market vendors are now packing up and leaving by Saturday, so the shopping for parts and automobilia is a lot less fun.  I did score one cool item though -- this vintage Hot Wheels bedspread!  My one friend usually drives up the night before from Richmond and stays with us, so I promised him the next time he stays he'll get the hot wheels bed.

Here are a few shots of what we saw on the show field and in the Car Corral, where hundreds of collectible cars are offered for sale.  It was a cold morning with frost on a lot of the car corral vehicles.

The show field was full of cars, and big crowds too.

And here's a link to the rest of the album with more than 90 photos.  Enjoy!

Vintage toolbox gets kinda flakey

I'm fighting off a cold, getting ready to fly to LA for work this week, and while I've kept momentum on several projects I don't have much ready for a complete post, so here's something I photographed weeks ago and never got around to posting.

I've had this toolbox a few years. In profile you can see it has sort of a mid century vibe - definitely more interesting than the standard Sears Craftsman rectangle or a plastic box.

The plan was always to clean it up and paint it something other than grey, and use it to carry survival tools in one of my old cars for when I need to do some maintenance on the road.

I got it cleaned, sanded, and primered, and after looking through the rattle cans of paint I now keep in an old metal cabinet, I settled on Retro Red Metal Flake, which should be a good base for eventually adding some pinstriping or stencils or decals.

I masked off the handle and latch before starting with the primer, and kept that masking tape there for the final spray.

The inside looks pretty good so I decided to only paint the outside of the box.

Before I start to spray primer, I like to wipe the metal down with some mineral spirits to get rid of dust and anything left over from sanding.

The primer went on pretty fast.

 This is my first experience spraying metal flaked paint.  It definitely does not have the depth that you'll see in a professionally painted car covered in metal flake, but it's not bad for something that only costs about $5 a can.

Despite masking very carefully, I still got some paint on the handle which I still need to carefully remove.  There's also a tiny little bit of gray behind the latch where I couldn't get any paint (the latch is riveted on, and I hate to drill out an original rivet because it's very hard to duplicate the rivet and have it look original.

Since I didn't paint the inside of the box, I decided to use some leftover adhesive-backed cork shelf liner on the inside.  That should keep the tools from making a lot of noise when the box is riding in the trunk.

I'm thinking some white, gold, or silver starbursts would look good over the metal flake red, and it would be cool to stencil some lettering on the box.  Any other ideas?

Old cars need fixing

Happy Mothers Day to all you Moms out there.

I've been fooling around with the Comet this weekend, and it's been a bit of a roller coaster, but unfortunately, no ride.

When we last left the Comet, it had gotten a new head and exhaust manifold, and as usual, I had to install that heavy mass of parts three times before I got it right.  Except the car would turn over but made a terrible clanking sound.  Oh crap.  I walked away and pondered what it could be.  And pondered.  For months since it was winter.  Finally figured, if I bent some pushrods I would see by pulling the valve cover.  Pulled it and the pushrods lookd fine.  OK.  Pondered some more.

I have a trickle battery charger on the car to keep the battery charged.  Decided once the weather got nice that I would try again to start it.  Same clanking/grinding noise.  Researched some more, and finally slapped my head - must be the starter!  If it was not engaging or disengaging, it would grind and make that kind of noise.  A starter is a lot easier to replace than an engine.

The old starter came off in about 10 minutes, lots of room under the hood with this six cylinder engine, and the starter mounts high on this engine, so I didn't even have to crawl under the car.  It looked like the starter gears that spin to start the engine had been worn down pretty badly.  I may just be on to the solution, I thought.

Picked up the new starter and installed it.  At first the key wouldn't turn the car over at all. Grumble grumble.  There's a way to leave the key in the ON position and with a thick wire or pair of pliers you can jump the ignition at the solenoid mounted near the battery.  And doggone if it didn't start on the first try and ran nicely.  Woo hoo!  Except there's an ignition problem and I'd rather not have to raise the hood and start the car this way every time.  But I thought, maybe I can get that resolved and be driving this baby soon.

So, I'll spare you the rest of the frustrating details, but after several hours of troubleshooting, I no longer can get the starter to engage even from a new solenoid.  Argh!!!!  More troubleshooting to do, and I HATE messing with a car's wiring system.  So, I'll have to do some more research and try to figure this out.  I know I'll get it, but there may be a lot more wrench throwing that happens first.

Old cars in my blood Part 3 - 1964 Mercury Park Lane convertible

I've done some earlier posts here and here about my past and current old cars, all projects in different stages of incompletion.

Earlier posts covered my 1967 Mercury Cougar XR7, aka "Barncat,"

 and my 1963 Mercury Comet station wagon.  I'll be developing pages for each of these cars as I get time. Now for the big kahuna, my 1964 Mercury Park Lane convertible.

I've had this 1964 Mercury Park Lane convertible a few years now.  It's a really solid, almost-totally-rust-free car.  The Park Lane shares a lot of body parts, interior design, and mechanical parts with the 1964 Ford Galaxie convertible, and the interior also looks a bit like the interior of an early 1960s Thunderbird.


 Read the rest here on the Park Lane page, where I'll keep any updates to the restoration.

Old cars in my blood Part 2 - At the Sign of the Cat

Getting back to my history with owning old cars, here's some more on my Cougar obsession.

In an earlier post I showed a photo of my first Cougar, a very rare 1970 XR7 convertible with a 4-speed close ratio toploader transmission and 4-barrel 351 cleveland engine.

A very cool car that was just too far rusted out for me to restore myself.  It's in the hands of someone now who I hope will one day get it back to it's former glory.

Here are a few others:

Nitcat is the blue car on the end.

Nitcat - I bought this 1970 Cougar to use as a parts car, but it ran and drove and I quickly decided to license and insure it and start driving it all the time.  I had a lot of fun, learned a lot, and spent a lot keeping it on the road.  It got me up and back from Pennsylvania numerous times, although it also left me stranded lots of times too.  Eventually I parted it out because of all the rusty rot underneath the car.  It was worth more as parts than as a whole car, and I sold many pieces to members of our local club, the Delmarva Cougar Club, and sold other smaller parts on that auction site.

Yeller - This 1969 Cougar convertible came to me in 1999, and it was a lot of fun.  I drove it on sunny days and took it to some car shows and Cougar club events.  The paint and interior were not original to the car, and I eventually got tired of it after the engine and then the transmission gave out, and sold it a few years ago. When I got the car, it had all the chrome trim blacked out.  Over time I realized how awful that was, and changed the bumpers and some other pieces back to chrome.

This is one of my favorite shots of my daughter with Yeller soon after I got it.

 I sure wish the digital camera at the time had given me a higher resolution photo,

 she really looks cute in this shot.

I got on a stepladder to get this shot.

This was us arriving for a car show in 2000

This is what the '67 XR7 looked like the day we picked it up.

Barncat - This is the only Cougar I own now, and it's a fun car.  A 1967 Cougar XR7, it was built late in the first year of production, and is pretty rare because it is an XR7, the more plush model, but it has an optional 4-speed manual transmission connected to the original A-code 289 four barrel engine.  Most Cougars were sold with automatic transmissions.  This car also is rare because it was ordered without air conditioning, and also without power steering.

So far, I have rebuilt the front end of the car and lowered it a little by drilling new holes and repositioning the upper control arms, commonly called the "Shelby drop."  I also redid the brakes, put in a larger 1970 Cougar fuel tank and reinforced around the tank inside the trunk, scraped and cleaned under the car and painted those areas, installed a new hood and spoiler and trunklid, pulled the old carpet and cleaned and applied a brush on sound deadener to the floors of the car, installed Tri-Y headers and new side-exiting exhausts, and smoothed out the roof and door dings.  There's still a lot to do, but some day...

Here's the artist's concept of what the car could look like when I get it done.  

I found a guy online who drew this for me based on some photos I sent him.

So on one hand, it's got the luxury trim (XR7 included leather seats, burled walnut finish on interior trim parts, tachometer and different gauge cluster than in the standard Cougar, different door panels and overhead console which was really little more than a roof-mounted pair of map lights and some idiot lights).

On the other hand, this luxury car is missing not only air conditioning and automatic transmission, but also missing power steering, and it originally did not come with the center console (I've since acquired one from a good friend).  It's a great car and the four-speed manual shift makes it a lot of fun to drive, except in traffic.

I call this car Barncat for a couple reasons:  one, it has a real mangy look, with some surface rust and wear, some transplanted parts, and a dented rear quarter panel.  Two, it spent about 21 years of its life in a barn near Olney, Maryland, untouched!  I bought it after the seller got no bids two different times when he had it posted on that auction site.  The car has about 87,000 original miles on the odometer.  I went and looked at it and was amazed that underneath the car it was not all rusted out and rotten.  We settled on a deal and soon after that I sold off the 1970 Cougar convertible to make room and keep SWMBO from mutinying!

I referred to this cat as mangy, and I have some validation - when our club hosted the eastern Nationals for classic cougars in 2005, it got third place in the "Mangy Cat" division.  Yea, I was bummed it didn't get first place, but now I consider finishing 3rd even more cool!

I keep postponing plans to get the body work done on this car, but I really need to finish it.

Plans are to use a Trans Am racing color scheme that mimics this silver/red scheme used on the Bud Moore Cougars that barely lost out to the Mustangs in the 1967 Trans Am racing series.  It would be great to find an old car hauler like this to use for my Cougar.

I want to keep the XR7 interior close to stock looking, but do some mechanical, suspension, and paint modifications to make it look like a racer you could have bought off the showroom floor if it had ever been offered that way.  I would like to use the silver accent paint and combine it with a shade close to the Nordic blue the car originally came with.

So there you go, a quick run through of my love affair with Cougars.

 Maybe some day I can be like Dan Gurney or Parnelli Jones or David Pearson, who all drove Cougars in the Trans Am series.  Uncle Atom would look good painted above the driver's door, don't you think?