Autopendium :: stuff about old cars

After landed in LA on Thursday night and picking up a hire car (Ford F150 truck), Martyn and I left his place around 11.30 pm for the 14 hour drive north to Oregon as that's was where my ebay purchased 1953 Mercury flathead engine was located.

We had all sorts of weather from sunshine and rain to sleet and snow on the trip North. We arrived around midday on Friday and met with Bob Stewart the owner, he met us at a local gas station in his black 50 Mercury (now with a new 327 Chevy engine place of the old flathead).

The flathead and transmission has had about $1200 spent on it's rebuild, and with only 10,000 miles on the engine and 3,000 on the trans it will be ready go once in the car.

The three of us did the usual introductions and chatted cars for about an hour, plus a quick look at the hot rods he's working on, Bob very kindly threw in an overdrive cable with chrome handle. So after loading the engine and transmission on the back of the truck we started the long journey back to LA.

After about 5 hours we had to check into a Motel 6 as we thought we might grab a couple of hours before getting something to eat...both of us slept through and didn't wake up until 4.30 am, so by the time we hit the road again it was 5.30 am.

Only stopping for breakfast we arrived back in LA early afternoon and nipped into a local Pep Boys to buy an engine stand, before heading to Martyns garage to get it out of the back of the truck and to put it on the stand where it will stay until it's ready to be painted and go back in the car.

I'll take a day off to get over the trip and jetlag, but as I have a free day on Monday I thought I'd take all the sheet metal to the shot blaster and pick it back up again on Thursday. This way we can se what we have left of that secondhand floor I bought a while ago.

With Martyn working on a 58 Buick Convertible almost full-time now, it takes the pressure off me to find the money to give him to work on the car, as I've just paid the tax man so I'm broke for a while.

Will post more photos later this week or during my stay over here.

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