50's Baby

 

Laura and Me on my 50th birthday

 

That's the license: "50s Baby"   J59S101750 was born December 4, 1958   (Laura and I were 50's babies, too)

And she's lived an interesting life. She has only 22,000 miles (but done 1/4 mile at a time)

I have a cassette tape I'll have to dig out, and it has two previous owners discussing the car's past. I'll get it all together, but here's a few pieces:

The first owner was a 17 year old farmer's son from Flint Michigan.. He promptly blew the engine and traded the soft top for a replacement. At other times she sat in a barn in Ohio for nine years, and later had a tube front axle and a 427 installed (see picture below). Her original colors were white with blue interior, the current paint job was done in 1969. I bought her two years ago from Ron Linville in Oceanside, Ca, who purchased her from a car lot in Carlsbad, Ca about 10 years earlier. He replaced the tube front axle and scooped hood. She currently has a 350 engine with dual quads, TurboHydro400, 4.11 rear end. I recently found a tag that states that the 350 was installed in June 1980 at 17,639 miles. I still have to get the carbs jetted correctly to see what the potential is, but even in it's present state she's pretty fast. She has a lumpy cam, loud exhaust and gathers a lot of attention, a really fun driver.

Click here for a short ".mpg" file to hear how she sounded on the day I bought her.

One of the local NCRS gurus says that a particular set of tapped holes for the air intake indicate that she was originally fuel injected.

Obviously she'll never be Bloomington Gold, so I don't have to worry about decreasing her value by making a modification. My long term goal is to put a C4 or C5 suspension under her and getting her to look as stock as possible otherwise.

 

Our Baby in a previous life

 

When I first looked at her, she had an unbelievably bad camber problem on the right front, as seen above. I figured that I could fix something like that fairly easily so I made an offer that took that into account. It turns out that the previous owner had cut a notch in the front crossmember for radiator hose clearance (which wasn't necessary) and it had weakened the crossmember, allowing it to bend. I replaced the crossmember with one I found on eBay and the front end aligned perfectly. (Therein lies another story)

Bringing Baby home

Baby's new Plates

And 35 year old paint