SPOTTED: UTE FEVER

I know it is Pickup/UTE season where most of old-timers are looking for a platform to start with, since OMG 2012 (Olskool Mega Gathering) is getting closer. Meanwhile in KL with heavily congested traffic Saturday night, this lucky guy made every oldskool enthusiasts out there envy, by driving around his Mazda 1300, which was sitting low on SSR Casablanca. Nice ride man!

SNAP: IN CONTRAST

Black or white, pick your Mango. Both on stock steelies.

TT EMBUN

It is Friday again and we had a usual weekly gathering, managed to take some professional photoshoot session by Asrol Ardi (KE70 Coupe). I really admires his awesome job and the sets look stands out even at night. Kindly take your time and enjoy these photos.

Credits to Asrol Ardi for the photos.

Primer!

I finally reached a milestone in the '62 Oldsmobile project journey:  It is officially in primer!  After many hours of stripping, sanding, filling, filing, cleaning, treating and masking, I was able to spray this car with generous globs of primer, opening the official painting stage.  The journey has been quite a pain; stripping the car properly, removing rust, fabricating patch panels, welding and metalworking and (near the end) dealing with minute surface rust pits that kicked my OCD into a frenzy.  But I am finally at this stage!  Now I simply have to block sand and address all of the high and low spots I couldn't see before I shot primer.  Simply block sand...and sand...and sand...

The process of priming involved prepping the bare surface with Metal Ready, a pre- primer POR-15 makes that is a phosphoric acid solution you spray onto the metal and keep wet until any minute surface rust is dissolved.  I found it to work very well with a thick scuffing pad; it seemed to take less soak time and still cleaned the metal well.

I then wiped the entire car down with wax and grease remover, making sure I cleaned a bit beyond just the areas to be painted so the masking tape would actually stick.  I hate starting the masking process only to find the tape not sticking where I want it to. 

Next I mixed up a quart of my LIC epoxy primer that Valspar makes.  It mixes 1:1, and after adding the needed reducer (25%) I had almost 1-1/3 quarts, enough to give the entire Olds a seal coat.  I then waited about 2 1/2 hours (tech sheet says 2 hours to topcoat) and then mixed up 2 quarts of 2k urethane build primer.  This primer is 4:1 ratio which I added about 20% reducer to so I could spray it comfortably.  I then proceeded to spray 2 coats on roof, jambs and door edges, 4 wet coats over body, and extra coats over any bodywork or filler areas.  Extra thick bodywork areas ended up with basically 6 wet coats.

The most frustrating part of actual spraying was the epoxy primer consistency.  It notoriously likes to run if you are not careful!  I found it to be this way when I primed the '54 Bel Air;  I mistakenly sprayed it on heavy, and huge sags would drop like sheets shifting down.  The sags also dropped unexpectedly after all of the spraying.  So I decided to be careful using the epoxy on this Olds, but it still dripped in two areas.  The epoxy stays wet far longer than the sanding primer, and I need to keep reminding myself not to spray it like sanding primer.

 So the sanding primer went on as I was used to, with generous wet coats and no sag.  Waiting time between coats was about 10 minutes and everything leveled well.  Also, my new 3M respirator worked perfectly; I couldn't smell the slightest solvent fume until I actually removed the mask.  I know now to keep the cartridges sealed when not in use, and to replace them after the recommended service life is over.

And the bottom picture?  I couldn't refuse showing this motor, a '64 Pontiac 389 that is the original (and rebuilt!) motor to my '64 GTO project car.  It was sold new in June of '64 just a few miles from my house, and is an original Nightwatch Blue 4 speed. I just couldn't resist a peek at something as Pontiac as this!

Muscle Cars and Trolley Cars... a potent combination

I was invited by a gentleman to come and view the Trolley Car facility in Kenosha, WI. I'm a fan of trains and trolleys, so I jumped at the chance to see the place. Also since the Tour was only a few hours long, it gave me plenty of time to go Barn Find hunting around the area.

The Vintage Trolley Cars of Kenosha are a real treat. The line loops around the downtown area and along the lakefront. The Lakefront once the site of an American Motors factory. It has all been redeveloped into a Museum Campus and lakefront homes. The Trolley Barn where they are stored is able to hold eight Trolleys on tracks, and 2 on the side. They do all the restoration and maintenance in this one building.

After the Tour I had no definitive plans, so I started running around looking for Barn Finds. Right away I found something special, a 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T in Plum Crazy Purple. It was sitting next to a lone house on an old cobble stone street on one side. It had been sitting there for a long time it looked like. I sat there for a second looking at the bullet holes in the windows and contemplated not going to the door and asking about the car.

Luck was on my side, the father of the owner walked out and was on his way to the store. I talked to him for a moment and he said he would let my son know I stopped by, but asked I not lift up the cover. So I thanked him, snapped some pictures from the road and went on my way. I have yet to hear from the son.

I continued on my way though, started driving around the area looking for a restaurant to grab some lunch at. When ever I travel on an expedition I never hit up the normal fast food fair. I always try to go someplace local. Not finding anything that really made me want to pull over for... I drove further and further away from Kenosha. On my way to eat, I discovered a 1970 Mustang Fastback sitting in a yard just off the road. Looks as though it had a cheap repaint. The Mustang did not look to be in terrible shape... from the road. Unfortunately nobody was home to talk more about the car.

Finally finding a nice restaurant in Downtown Racine. I made a loop to get back to the road home and ran across this 1968 American Motors Javelin SST. Definitely rough, but a good project for someone.

Popping out back on the main street, out of the corner of my eye, behind a busindss there sat a row of cars, mostly Dodge and Plymouth vehicles from the looks of it. I called the number on the building, but no body answered. So I snapped a few pictures from the road and headed back to Kenosha.

Back in Kenosha, Brad the Trolley engineer had brought out another one to move some stuff around in the barn. And just as he did, a couple came up and asked to take some wedding pictures in it. So they did! I pulled up just as they were finishing up.

Parting company with my friend, I went and followed up on another yard full of cool cars in Kenosha. I had visited the yard on another expedition, but the owner made it very clear by a large sign in his driveway not to step foot on his land. So I took some pictures from my car of some of the cool stuff he had lying around, turned around and headed out of town.

On the way home, not expecting anything special, I found some of the coolest finds of the day. Sitting next to an old repair shop in I don't know where Illinois was a Pinto station wagon, a 1970 Dodge Coronet and first generation bug sitting in the back of a truck. And just a little bit down the road was more cars sitting outside another old repair shop.

So sad to see so many good projects sitting out there rusting away. Hoping for the day when someone brings them home and restores them.

Star Cars Going Under the Charterhouse Hammer

A brace of classic cars offer two very different options for owners looking to go classic car racing, rallying or just having fun in the sun when they go under the Charterhouse hammer in their auction of classic and vintage cars on Sunday 22^nd April “It is almost a David and Goliath scenario.” Commented Matthew Whitney. “Ready to do battle there is a delightful Austin 7 Ulster TT Special which is closely followed by a Healey Silverstone, the likes of which raced in all the tops events such as the famous Mille Miglia.”





Charterhouse have been conducting specialist classic car auctions for over 10 years and the market today and have firmly established themselves as one of the top firms of auctioneers who sell classic and vintage cars. Despite the recent downturn in the market for a number of items, the classic car market is currently particularly strong with Charterhouse achieving very high prices. The 1934 Austin 7 Ulster TT replica with its tiny 747cc engine was re-bodied by Rod Yates in 1994 with a very pretty boat tail aluminium body featuring a particularly fetching Brooklands exhaust, and is being offered for sale from a West Country deceased estate.


The 1951 Healey Silverstone features a 2500cc twin cam engine. It was previously owned and raced by Chris Berens who was the Association of Healey Owners Club Race Secretary, and re-bodied in 1989, which is not unusual for cars that are fiercely campaigned around the race track.
To enter a classic car or vehicle into this great auction, or for more information regarding the sale, please contact Matthew Whitney, Head of Classic Cars at Charterhouse, The Long Street Salerooms, Sherborne 01935 81227 or via email on www.charterhouse-auctions.co.uk.

Captions:

1934 Austin 7 Ulster TT replica with its tiny 747 cc engine £8,000-10,000
1951 Healey Silverstone with its powerful twin cam engine £30,000-40,000Quick Links

Highlights of the Classic Car Sale

Forthcoming Sale Previous Sale Sale Preview

Tel: (01935) 812277

For further information regarding this article, please contact Richard Bromell, Partner

Cars & Coffee - 3/10/12

Orange you glad you came to Cars & Coffee? Lots of orange cars today, highlighted by the Rosso Dino Enzo and Rosso Dino and Black Veyron of Gerald Barnes. So many other great cars, unfortunately the place was so busy it was hard to move around. Apparently somebody decided it would be fun to print C&C in the Register as a Thing To Do this weekend, complete with map. Douche. Anyway, enjoy the pics.

Finding some Fiberglass

I have a fondness for Dodge Travco Motor homes, especially ones built between 1962 and 1973. Travcos were the first Class A Motor home, they had a fiberglass outer body with a inner steel skeleton that rode on a Dodge HD truck frame. They had everything from the Poly-spherical 318 cubic inch V8 to a 440. When I talk to people about them, I relate their design to a Twinkie on wheels.

For a while now I had been looking for one. Trying to find a clean one is not easy here in the Midwest. One day last fall a 72 Travco was listed on Craigslist not a far from my home. So like putting a carrot in front of the donkey, I had to investigate it. With my luck, when I got there, it had already been sold. But the guy still let me look around and view the Travco and his other project.

This Travco was a 270 model, which meant it was 27 feet long. It had the “High Performance” 413 cubic inch Dodge V8 big block, with a HD 727 Torqueflite automatic transmission. In the back was the Onan 6500W generator that are still made to this day. She was in rough shape, had been well used and put away wet. It would require a lot of time and money to get her road safe. The interior needed to be redone as well.

Sitting next to the Travco was another of the owners projects. A 1971 Dodge Charger drag car with a fiberglass front end. There was no VIN on the dash or fender tag to see what the car was was originally. And I wasn't about to start tearing off the remains of the tarp to get at other locations with VIN numbers. But it looked like a nice project that I hope he finishes, or someone does. Before it is too late for the old girl. (Notice the sweet Caprice sitting in the driveway?)

Afterward I didn't think much of the Travco, looked at other projects and future barn find trips to spend my limited funds on... and then there it was on Craigslist again! The same damn Travco, and it was even closer to my house. It was even on my way to work. Was it sheer luck or fate that would draw us together? Unfortunately the new owner wanted too much for the old girl that I found out didn't even have reverse. So I passed on it and soon she disappeared.

Every once and a while my mind drifts back to Travcos... Imagining how cool it would be to travel around the country looking for Barn Finds in a classic old Dodge Motorhome. I really can't think of anything else more fun!