Classic Hifi Care

With all the virus silliness now out of the way, car shows are springing up on almost every street corner in this part of the country. I am seeing lots more old cars on the road. Car shows were scarce last winter. I talked with a man in a Hemi-powered street rod that was thrilled to get 8 mpg burning $5.69 premium fuel, but he was all grins just to be driving his street rod. I need to get the Buick out of storage and get it cleaned and ready to go. There was a quarter inch of dust on the tarp covering the car cover the last time I looked, so a trip to Coolidge to wash the car covers is in the works. Maybe we can stop at Tag's for breakfast? Yum, yum. He makes the BEST biscuits and gravy on the planet....

This is the season when I start putting boats & cars away....

Chris Campbell

Speaking of car show season in AZ, how's Marie doing?

Bill

Bill, we didn't get a Christmas card from Marie last year, the first time in probably over 35 years. She is 94 and still alive as far as we know. I should reach out.....

She called you "the tall handsome guy from Michigan". Dave, the guy with the '38 Special passed a couple years ago. He was 97.

Thanks, Greg, I hope she is still OK. She was definitely a character.

Bill

It seems like Buick guys are a hearty lot. Dave was 97 when he passed. One of our former chapter directors is 87 and still racing Grand Nationals. We have a member who has a '28 Buick roadster who just turned 102. He doesn't drive anymore, but he goes with his son and grandson and they still show his car. I saw him last spring. One of the "kids" who joined a bunch of old guys in the Buick club turned 65 in May. He was just a kid working at a Circle K when he got his first Buick, a '66 Riviera GS. The guy with the '73 Riv GS in our Buick club died in 2013. I believe he was 88. He had white-letter tires on it, which I thought looked out of place on a Riviera.

Maybe some of you would remember Bernie Boback from the Wilkes-Barre area in PA. He had a '56 Century sedan in blue and gray he drove to every show for years and years. He was a body shop teacher. Nicest guy you'd ever meet.

Last I saw him was 8 years ago in Funk's restaurant in Indiantown Gap the morning of the Hershey show. He had suffered a stroke and his son took him.

Not sure if the family kept the car.

I'm not familiar with that gentleman, Walter. That story is being repeated over and over. Old age gets in the way sometimes. I have lost several friends who were in our local Buick club when I was the Director. I did two terms, Art did two terms as Director. We have two Directors who are gone now, the youngest of the remainder just turned 65. He was a kid working at Circle K who had just bought a '66 Riviera GS when he joined the chapter. He served two years on the Buick Club of America board of directors while he was our chapter Director. Dave, the man with the '38 Special, served as treasurer when I was Director. He tended to be a touch tight, so he was an outstanding treasurer. He was in the dairy business in New York state someplace. He still had his last Divco dairy truck, he was so proud of. It had the "big" six and Hydra-Matic drive. The Continental engine in his Divco was the automotive version of the industrial M-330.

I went to Hershey for Wednesday. Tuesday was a washout across eastern PA. The flea market shrinks every year. There were so many empty spots that it actually messed up the rows.

Show day is now Friday instead of Saturday because herco wants to keep the park open on the weekends. Well aging vendors and collectors plus internet sales plus a greedy landlord will not bode well for the future of the greatest car show on earth...

We walked over 18k steps in one day and knocked out 4 of the vendor fields. 10 years ago, that wouldn't get you through 2 and you'd have to wait in line to talk to the sellers...

Around here, at the local shows, I have the only stock Buick on the field. Occasionally, you will see a Regal with "juice" and 32" wheels, but that's about it for Buick. There is another older man who shows a '66 Eldorado and another with a '62 Imperial, but that's all the original old cars you see. The rest are '62-'65 Chevys with LS6's and street rods. There is one man with a '66 Impala SS that still has the 327 and spinner hubcaps. IT seems really odd that as many of those cars as they built, you hardly ever see one, particularly a stock one. Lots of old car guys are replacing their carburetors with Holly fuel injection. You can't get a carburetor professionally rebuilt by a carb shop anywhere in this Valley. All the carb shops have closed. It is so expensive to have an engine rebuilt, it is cheaper to put in a crate LS6 along with the requisite electronic hardware than to have the 327 rebuilt. The best show around here is in Florence. That whole little town's main drag is covered in classic cars. More of the original cars are there than any show around. Nobody cares about driving a car with no seat belts, no air bags, drum brakes, marginal or no air conditioning. I drive a black, air conditioned Buick without turning on the air, just roll down the power windows. That's what I did when the car was young. The air conditioning evaporator would ice up and start throwing cold water out the vents.

In an effort to cool down the 62 cadillac, I had the radiator recored. Drove it 120 miles to Wayne, NJ. Just picked it up yesterday. Plan on installing it tomorrow. 2 week turnaround and a total pleasure to deal with.

There's nobody left here who does anything. We do still have an old transmission shop but I think the guy who did my 57 retired so may as well count that out too...

I've rebuilt 4 carbs already... Carter and Rochester. I taught myself. Friend can do quadrajets. We both can do radios!!! If you can't or won't do it yourself, get another hobby.

I used to do Quadra-Jets and AFB's and liked them. People who cuss Q-Jets don't understand them. The main problem with a Q-jet is the metering rods would fall into the bottom of the carb and make the engine run rich, with horrible fuel economy and boggy power. Putting them back together was a little tricky not to bend parts forcing it back together. If the lid didn't fairly fall back on, something was wrong. The idle jets on an AFB would get gommed up and cause a horrible, stumbly, stall-prone idle. It would basically starve half the engine for fuel. And you are right. If you can't work on it yourself, you might have trouble finding competent and willing help. Auto repair shops don't have time for old cars. I'm trying to find a shop to put a new turn signal cable in the steering column of the Buick. Nobody has ever heard of that part....... Every GM car with a tilt wheel up thru 1968 had one. They are all semi-basically-sort of interchangeable.....

I have no room anymore to do it. I just have to keep looking. Good luck with the radiator on your Cadillac. Keep us informed of the progress.

electra225 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 08, 2022 6:45 pm
I have no room anymore to do it.

There's the problem--work space! Especially well-lighted work space. Long,long ago, I had a college roommate whose dad had an old gas station in the small Ohio town where he lived. My roommate's interest in cars went as far as where you put the key in. The rest of us were jealous. We drove up once to use the hydraulic lift to put glass-pack mufflers on another buddy's '64 Corvette convertible. Now, an old gas station is either a liability because of leaking underground tanks, or a valuable development property on a well-traveled road.

Chris Campbell

I have a friend who has a well-equipped shop at his home who has offered to let me take the Buick up there and work on it. I just hate to impose and it's forty miles from here.

This weekend is the Northwood College Car show In Midland Mi. , they have some pretty cool stuff I.E. experimentals , and all the newest ideas kinda like a small SEMA ...

Sounds like fun! Will you be there, and, if so, can you share some pictures?

hermitcrab wrote: ↑Sun Oct 09, 2022 8:24 pm This weekend is the Northwood College Car show In Midland Mi. , they have some pretty cool stuff I.E. experimentals , and all the newest ideas kinda like a small SEMA ...

Ouch. I want to show up at something in my Chevy, and Midland is right down the road. It's where my brother blew out two tires at once on the Chevy on the freeway when he had a GF in Midland. But the Chevy is sitting in the transmission shop's pole barn at the moment. I did get a late-season sail in today, on a boat from the same year as the Chevy--1961.

Northwood started off as a training center for car dealers. Then they expanded.

Chris Campbell

The dealership I work for is just a mile away from northwood , we drive a few models down to display every year... we also supply courtesy cars and passenger vans to the LPGA tour that comes to Midland every year...although we got our 12 passenger van back this year with damage to one side... the driver of the van sucked at judging distance around her ... general manager was not amused ...