Antique & Classic Cars Blog

In northern climes, as winter grinds on into March, males of the species often leave home to provide help with car repair.

Replacing rear struts can be a perfect opportunity for such a gathering. On this Golf, my wife’s, they are secured with one bolt below and one nut, plus locknut, above.

Required tools include garage, heater, spanners, sockets and drives.

Bonus items, such as floor lift, group of friends, beverages, and televised hockey game recommended.

Best practices require one person to position strut while the other fits necessary hardware. One or the other holds work light, or a second wrench. Additional males follow hockey game, reporting on scoring, consuming beverages, telling jokes, and periodically checking on auto repair as needed.

I can report (for the benefit of all spouses concerned) that last night’s emergency gathering at Tim’s Pretty Good Garage for fitment of struts was a complete success. Thanks to all present. We couldn’t have accomplished it without everyone’s participation.

This beautifully homely creation sat in a junkyard for many years before the right eyes recognized it as a marvelous piece of innovation and craftsmanship. Today it runs and drives (rides).

It is a motorcycle, in that it has the familiar characteristics of one—a motor and two wheels and an upright riding position and handlebars, fork, driven rear-wheel—but its genius, no doubt intentional on the builder’s part, is that it uses virtually no motorcycle parts. Only the twist throttle–perhaps not the original piece–appears to be from a motorcycle. Even the handlebars are cut down tubular table legs. Every other part comes from a car (wheels, engine, gearbox, frame members, headset) or a home (cut-down radiator) or something else non-motorcycle. Seat looks like small tractor.

Engine and gearbox are Chevrolet, frame pieces Model T, headset a Model T wheel hub. The tank across the top is coolant; fuel tank is below handlebars, which, as you note, do not connect to the fork directly, but through shafts like some of today’s most “innovative” show bikes. (Chrome pipe “above” headset is actually behind the bike and not part of it.)

This playful invention was crafted in 1939. The farmer who built it is pictured above it, astride the beast. (It resides in a private collection within 12,450 miles of the Twin Cities and belongs to a Mr. A, or a Ms. Z, or someone in between.)

A reader emailed on the Marquis deSoto, ruminating on whether the complete Mercury was still under there. This prompted a little detective work on this cool car. The NYT piece describes it as a ‘98 Mercury Marquis blended with a ‘57 deSoto and 10 other classic cars.

Here’s what I see so far:  it looks like the interior, top, front doors, mirrors and rockers are (mostly) Mercury. The center of the hood looks Mercury too. Then what do we have?

‘58 Lincoln headlights

Dagmar portion of a ‘56 Caddy front bumper

‘57 DeSoto fins, lights, back bumper and trunk lid

‘57 Buick bodyside chrome trim and portals

Anything else stand out for anyone?

You gotta see it to believe it.

The Marquis deSoto (and other inventions from a New York artist). Check the slide show. Fun stuff.

“Wouldn’t it be cool if….” How many inventions get underway with this simple inquiry?

Because most cars today are not handmade but mass produced by the thousands or millions, the car-loving driver is always on the lookout for ways to make the 89,452nd one produced look unique.

Wheels are one obvious way, with “big” being the operative term in recent years. The wider the rim, the lower the tire’s profile until eventually you can’t really tell one type of tire from another… until somebody at Michelin said, “wouldn’t it be cool if…”

Their see-through tires have a bit in common with a spoked wheel in that there is ample space to look through when the tire is still. Set it in motion and the open spaces blur together, all but erasing the supportive components from view.

Will also be cool when someone makes a tire the other sort of see-thru, where we look directly through a translucent material, rather than between tire components–i.e., a tire of translucent rubber. Tire chemists will no doubt come up with one, if they haven’t already. The trick will be making all of the tire’s components in look-through material.

These Michelin meats were developed several years ago. Haven’t seen any on the road yet, nor some searching on their site pull them up. More R&D must lie between “wouldn’t it be cool” and market release.

(Thanks to jb for bringing up these unusual tires.)

When the aisles get crowded, it’s nice at a big show like World of Wheels to duck into one of the smaller displays. Few in the gearhead camp didn’t build a few models before the bucks and the space came along to wrench full-size.

Here’s a few samples that were onhand in St. Paul. I like the road dust on the windshield of this tow truck…

The old-school design of this hot rod (reminds me of the hobby-store offerings from the 1970s)…

This collection because it’s got a number of nice models within…

And this assortment. (It’s a cool accident of the photograph that the vehicles in the background, left, look like real cars.)

New Old Stock parts are great–parts made at the same time as your classic but never fitted (and which sat on a shop or garage shelf for many years unused before surfacing to claim a high price from collectors). A 215 V8 bellhousing is a rare piece. I’ve had two for the four-speed gearbox over the years. One I sold–dumb–so I had to find another.

Bloodhound internet tactics led to the second but unlike the first I scored, from a junkyard on the West Coast, the second one did not have the clutch/flywheel inspection cover that bolts to the bottom. The stock piece was stamped steel. I hunted around a lot, including much lost sleep in eBay, without finding one.

Luckily, this rare part is back in circulation, thanks to Steve Schroeder of San Diego. He found a 215 posting on our site and got in touch. He told me he was planning to make a cast aluminum cover and now has done so. He also makes the four-speed bellhousing–including offset versions for Chevy gearboxes. When you can’t get new old stock, new “old” stuff will do.

The cast part looks great. The one I have could stand a little flat filing for a dead perfect fit against the bellhousing, but the stock stamped ones didn’t fit perfectly snug either–there’s no need, since this isn’t a fluid-filled chamber. And the best part about the new one is that you don’t have to clean 45 years’ worth of grime out of it. This part is so hard to find and Schroeder Enterprises as yet has no web page, so I offer the phone number here as a service to readers with 215 V8 cars. Because of this engine (and its Rover successor’s) light weight (320 pounds) and good horsepower (185 or so in stock, high-compression, 4-bbl form) it is a very popular swap still. Just look at the British V8 website.

People hunting 215 V8 4-speed bellhousings or the inspection cover can contact Schroeder Enterprises at 619-423-3523.

A few days ago, we looked at the start of a homemade gasket endeavor for the license-plate light on a TR6. Most people with sense and a roll of greenbacks would have binned the whole assembly and bought a new one, plus gasket: the pot metal base was bent up, broken off at both ends, the gasket was cracked and tattered and the chrome cover was bowed along the back edge.

But the sensible and this enthusiast part ways often. Plus, 250-odd dollars is more than I want to spend for something that bolts to the bumper. Besides, making and fixing things is more fun than clicking a mouse, opening a box, removing an imported reproduction part, and then trying to get all those statically charged styrofoam particles off your hands, shirt, floor, cat.

Stage one was straightening the metal (and calling pot metal, metal, is a compliment. As the name suggests, pot metal, a cheap automotive raw material, is part metal and part pot, or toilet. It distorts easily, straightens hardly, and cracks if you torque it anywhere near as much as you want to.) I used a vise, which worked some but it’s still a little warped. Once bolted down it should sit square. JB Weld, filed flat at the periphery to accommodate our gasket, now holds the mounting bolts on each end. I’ll bolt it down slowly and evenly with those bolts plus a couple sheet metal screws with a washer on them between the lights. The base just needs to be snug, not torqued down like a cylinder head.

The gasket itself is cut from cord-reinforced rubber mat from Amble’s Hardware–taken from outdoor shelves that house all kinds of secondhand goodies. Given the choice, I’d have preferred no cord, but it does make the rubber extremely tough and also helps prevent distortion.

Getting the outside edge right was a simple matter of outlining the chrome light cover, with a little apron for good measure. The rest of the cutting required a template. I used the lightweight cardstock cover of a law magazine sent to my wife that I had previously used under some parts I apparently painted silver. Mark, cut, fit, mark more, cut more, fit more and eventually you get about exactly what you need the gasket to look like. Cut too much and you can use masking tape to reshape the hole.

I used a utility knife to cut the rubber mat. This is slow going and requires a scoring pass, then successive passes till you cut through. I put a junk 1×6 plank under it and pulled carefully, never directly toward the hand holding the mat. (No matter how tough you think your hands are, a hard-pulled utility knife that slips will do ugly things instantly.) As with the template, there was some enlarging necessary to get a good fit. The final task on this piece was cutting grooves to accommodate a ridge in the pot metal base so that it will sit flush on the gasket. I had it darned-near esthetically perfect but I made one more pass before I took the photo, leaving that deeper cut in the middle. Dang.

The rubber-mat gasket was the tough one, lying between the light base and rear bumper. The stock gasket is cut out with internal lips that allow it to seal both between base and bumper, and base and chrome cover. I’m not that good with a utility knife. My homemade approach requires that gasket, then a second to go between base and cover. For this one I used an anti-slip stair tread from my local hardware store. It was the right thickness, is very pliable and, hallelujah, can be cut with scissors.

The template from the first gasket still had enough “meat” on it, so a little more marking and cutting and masking tape yielded the correct outline for the final piece. Trace onto raw material, cut and voila—or nearly voila. Because it’s a stair tread, it has ribs on it. I put these pointing up because the cover contacts the gasket with much less surface area than the base. Before I bolt it all together on the bumper, I’ll mark where the cover touches the gasket and then remove just enough rib with a sharp wood chisel for everything to sit flush.

Here are the pieces. They fit together well, but I’ll have to wait till bolt-up to show you because I couldn’t hold it all together and take a picture at the same time. The rubber mat cost six bucks; the stair tread was two bucks and change. I spent a couple hours and had fun.

(**This title is poached from a cool record store of my youth–Plastic Fantastic, in West Chester, PA.)

Where there’s a will there’s a way. If there are also stubbornness, playfulness, reckless optimism and a digital camera, there is probably another way too….

My ‘72 TR6 has a license plate light that bolts to the top of the back bumper. It was in bad shape. The potmetal base was bent and the captive anchor bolts at either end had snapped off–they were still with the car only because the hideous cracked, split, warped, bowed, gasket held them there. The lenses were dirty and the bulbs were rusted in the sockets–but still had filaments.

To replace the housing and gasket is over $200. Too much. This car’s a driver so spending a couple hundred on something outside the car that I can never possibly view while driving ain’t happenin’. So I thought maybe I just replace the gasket.

Amazingly Mark Brandow at Quality Coaches in S. Minneapolis didn’t have it. Not even Moss had it! But Victoria British does, for something like $22. It’d be a cinch to order it. But it would be a lot more work and hassle to make one myself, so why not give that a try?

First stop for that effort was Amble’s near Franklin and Cedar in Minneapolis. Amble’s is a like a hardware junkyard. They have old tools, machines, motors, wheels, sheet metal and all sorts of other odds, ends and raw materials. The owner pointed me toward the back door, and there on metal shelves gathering snow, was a piece of rubber mat that looked about perfect.

This job will be a few days in the making but this post shows what’s come so far. Captive bolts reattached with JB Weld. Housing straightened with small wood piece, clamps and then some two-thumbs fine-tuning. Rubber mat washed, marked with a Sharpie and cut to initial shape.

Still have some figuring to do to get it all to fit and look nice…because really, I need two gaskets–one between the base and bumper and one between the base and cover. “Every problem is an opportunity it disguise.” I’ll chip away at it in the coming days. Stay tuned….

The BOP (Buick, Olds, Pontiac) 215 V8 is lesser known but not little known–especially if you’re into British cars. Its Rover-developed successor variants went in many cars, from the MGB GT V8 to R V8, to the TR8, the Rover P5B, P6, 3500, Range Rover… It was used by TVR, Ginetta, and many hot rods.

As to the original Buick, Olds and Pontiac variants, the Pontiacs are pretty rare. Lots of ‘61-’63 Specials, Skylarks and F-85s turn up with the aluminum V8, but the Tempests seldom were spec’ed with it. A GM history book I was reading once had a number for the 215 Tempests and it was about 200-something (should have written it down–and if I did, should have remembered where). Curiously, Wikipedia’s estimate is 3,662. Not sure where they got that… I’ve paid attention to the 215 cars for 15 years and over that time, I’ve maybe seen two 215 Tempests for sale.

Anyway, an eBay seller says he has one from a ‘61 Tempest. It’s very complete, though also stuck and with rust-through on things like the valve covers and a pulley. Obviously it needs a complete rebuild and it’s not a 4-bbl. Not advocating anyone buy it. If I was restoring a ‘61 Tempest, however, I’d want a V8 in it. How cool to get one that was really from a ‘61 Tempest.