Restoring old cars
My husband has always had an interest in old cars. The first time I realized this and also discovered that he would like to restore one was just after a few months of marriage. As I have mentioned in other articles, we did not have a car when we married. We moved to Robstown, TX by train in September after we had married in May. He was having to ride to work with the crew until we could get a car, and then he would be able to drive on his days. The little jewel we found was a 1941 Ford, and to use the term loosely, it was in BAD SHAPE...but, we could fix it. Well, those were the early days, and I didn't know any better than to think that it would "be easy"... We bought it at "a bargain" and did drive it home. I am sure our landlady was not too happy to have it parked there. She lived downstairs and had a better view of it than we did.
First thing I did was to write home about our car. I did fail to mention the condition it was in. Not long after that, before we had time to do anything to it, mother let us know that she was coming for a visit...oops! Leland immediately approached one of the men he worked with (his wife and I had become good friends) and ask if he could bring it to his house and leave it there while his mother-in-law was visiting. Being the nice guy that Donald was, he agreed and so did Jean. Mother was expecting to get a ride in our car, but accepted our explanation that it was in "the shop"...wellll, I am sure it was parked close to some shop. I don't believe I ever did clear that one up with mother... After she left, we brought the car back home and started working on it...it needed everything. They did sell ready made seat covers, but Leland thought it would be fun...and cheaper...for us to make them ourselves. He convinced me. We didn't have a sewing machine, of course, but a good friend of his sister's let us borrow hers. We didn't have a pattern for the covers, so Leland used what was left of the seats to make a pattern. Believe it or not those seats looked real good by the time we finished. It needed a new headlining, and we had to put it in along with everything else inside the car. Of course, it had to be painted, so he found a shop where the man there showed him how to paint it. In fact, he painted the hood for him, and Leland painted the rest of it with the spray gun the man allowed him to use... We do still remember that the hood had more shine to it than the rest of the car, but it still looked great. The next time mother came, she got to see it...
Well, a few years passed, and he found a 1949 Mercury. It needed a bunch done to it too... One of us had gotten smarter by this time and we bought ready made seat covers. That was too easy, so he decided it would be neat for everything to be electric. I'm talking, push a button to open the doors, he installed a button in the glove compartment to open the trunk, one to open the hood... He somehow got all the holes welded in where he had taken off the door handles, trunk handle and hood latch, put little holes in the chrome strips in the door and put the buttons there. Oh my, those were the days that boys carried your groceries to your car and they all thought that was the neatest thing they had ever seen. Leland's excitement dimmed the day he was in the car and the battery went down, and he had to roll the window down to climb out... He was glad the windows weren't electric.
It was a fun car, though.
In 1955, Leland found this 1940 Ford convertible...wow. Now, it wasn't a beauty, but the style was really something. It was the only year that Ford made that particular body style. He drove it from Ft.Worth,TX to Colorado City, TX where we lived at the time. In fact, he had transferred to Hobbs, New Mexico, and he drove it back and forth to Colorado City on weekends until school was out and we moved to Hobbs. We didn't drive it anymore as the motor needed too much repair. With his job we did move a lot, and the car went with us, being pulled behind someone. This got tiresome, and he pulled it it Whitesboro...several hundred miles to his mother's...she was as delighted as our previous landlady had been with the first car. We did let it "live there" though until we moved here in 1959. It was parked here for years before we were able to do anything to it.
When we bought the farm, we just had one car for awhile, and we were in bad need of a pick-up since we had bought farm animals. We had to carry feed in the car, and that was way too inconvient...soo, we bought a 1959 Ford pick-up in 1962. That was pretty new for us, and it was in good shape. Our kiddos, along with a nephew, all learned to drive in it, and it did hold special memories, so we never sold it, even after it was driven way past its time. After sitting out for a number of years, it did get in rather bad shape. We wanted to restore it, but put that on hold for a number of years...along with the '40 Ford. They were both in the same building. Just wasn't time to work on them.
Leland did retire, and we were going to start on the restoration, but a lot of other things were to do to so we did not get on those projects as early as we had planned. We joined a car club, and all of them had their old cars restored, were driving them and having a lot of fun. Ours were far from being driven, so we decided to buy one to drive until we could get ours restored. Beth saw this 1966 Mustang one day and told us about it. We then contacted the owner and bought it. It was white with turquoise interior. The seat covers did have a coupla small tears on them, and we decided to recover those and change the color. This led to one thing and another, and we ended up painting it, too... This took a lot longer than it took for me to write it, but we had our car to take to the club and drive. We kept it for quite some time and enjoyed it...going to car shows, etc. Wayne and Beth took it to a 50's party once, and Mark took his girl to the prom in it. Shauna and Jeremy also took it to an outing. Later, we knew we were going to need the garage space and decided to put it up for sale. We put it on Craig's list, and a man in Sweden saw it listed. He had a buisness partner in Frisco, and since he was coming to the States anyway, he ask his partner to look at it for him. So he came up. He liked it and recommended it to his friend. He e-mailed pictures to him, and the fellow bought it. He came later to the States and was really proud of it. He drove it, I believe, to Michigan first and then on to New Jersey where he put it on a boat to Sweden. Last we heard, he was real pleased with it...
Leland said he thought it would be better to restore the pick-up first; it didn't need as much work as the '40, and then we could really get down to business on it. Our son, Wayne, had retired by now, and he and Leland overhauled the motor first. One night while trying to start it, our grandson Mark was here. Leland had us pouring some gas in the carburetor while he tried to get it started... Can't really explain how it happened, but somehow the bottle we were pouring gas from caught on fire, and we had a little excitement there for a few minutes... Mark loves to come visit; he never knows just what will take place here. With the motor overhauled and an extended amount of time spent installing turning signals on it (They did not come on it originally. You stuck your arm out for signals as to the direction you were going to turn), we then needed to take care of the upholstery. Well, this time we had really moved up in the world... We took the seats in and had them covered instead of making them or buying ready made ones and putting them on ourselves. Soon after we bought the pick-up, Wayne made welded frames for cattle racks for it and also did the boards for them (this was an AG project he was doing in school). After it was restored, we used the same racks and put new boards on them, and it now looks like it did when we were driving it. Instead of being green, it's red. Leland had painted it, and then Wayne put the finishing coat on it. Mike gets out of all this work because he lives in Texarkana instead of down the road from us...
Now with the pick-up restored, it is time to start on the '40... I imagine there was speculation on the part of the family if we really would ever get it finished, as it was something that had been a dream for so long and talked about so much... I remember at one point when Sharon was really young, she ask Leland "if he would have it fixed by the time she was 16." He told her, "I might." He didn't... Years went by, and Sarah, Sharon's daughter,asked Sharon "Mom, do you think Grandpa may have the car fixed by the time I am 16?" Since Sharon could see there had been so little improvement on it since she was 16, she told her "not to count on it." When Mark was nearing that age he was told "not to even think about it." The other grandchildren knew it was out of the question for them too...
There was a mind boggling amount of work to do on it. They started working more on it, and the more we looked at it the more there seemed to do to it... One day, we visited a shop that we had heard about and talked to the man about it, and he came and looked at it. He said he could get to it in a coupla months, so on 9-11-07, we took it to them. We had them to do the body work since they had the experience and tools to do it with. We brought it home from the shop, and there was still so much left. Leland and Wayne overhauled the engine...no easy task...and then worked on the car, and it seemed we had an endless job of ordering parts for it. They seem to put an exaggerated price on everything... We, of course, needed new seats, so we ordered new springs and got our beautiful uphoulstery from LeBaron Bonney that has the pattern from Ford for these seats. We were able to get the panels and all that was needed from them including the top. Incidentally, they do not carry them in stock... they make them for you when you call in your order. We, with Wayne's help, installed all of it - the door panels, side panels and the carpet, except we did have the seats covered and the top installed.
Now where were Mike and Sharon when all this was going on??? Mike was in Iraq on a job for the year of 2008, less about a month...Sharon, I don't know...ha...
Anyway, on February 6, 2009, at 11:03, Wayne drove it out of the shop. That's the first time it's been driven since 1956...and boy, was it fun!!! We plan to go to car shows that will be starting up in the spring...Hopefully we will be able to show off trophies that it will surely win.
As you can see, we have had our "fun" restoring old cars, but it's been enough fun though, and we intend to drive this a lot...
God has blessed us more than we can ever put into words. As we look back and see the things He has done for us over the years, it is more mind boggling than the work that was to do on these cars... He has been faithful when we have not. I know this scripture in Ecclesiastes does not really apply to restoring old cars, but I think it is very good.
Eccl.7:8
The end of a thing is better than it's beginning.
God bless each of you...Esther |
