Beverly Hillbillies, Part Deux

[m3a1]

You must learn to Embrace The Rust, fellas. Folks pay extra for that patina.

[Mark]

When I read this quote by Thomas Edison I thought of you-"To invent you need a good imagination and a pile of junk"
So I hope that you will take that as a compliment.

[m3a1]

Well, one person's junk IS another person's treasure so it doesn't matter what anyone calls it.

After the motor inspection, I fired the second salvo at the bandsaw today. I plucked it, ever so gently, from the trailer with the fork lift and deposited it alongside the driveway where there's room to begin the process of disassembly and detailed cleaning/lubrication.

Will probably do the guide rollers for the blade first since there are only four and their troubles appear to be chiefly as a result of hardened grease so that should be a fairly straightforward job.

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[Mark]

Yes that's true, very true.I can remember a long time ago when I went to the dump, I'd come back with more than I took out.Then the city stopped letting people do that, probably cause they was losing money maybe.

[m3a1]

That was the running gag in my family.

We only go to the dump for pick-ups.

[m3a1]

Speaking of going to the dump for pick-ups, I came home today with yet another fine tool which had been left on the ground to rot; a bench shear with a blade length of approx 4". Naturally, it's all locked up at the moment but the blades are sharp as can be.

BRING ON THE PB BLASTER!

I also culled a very nice little hand wheel that was formerly part of a sub-group of an ancient lathe (which was nowhere in sight). It is the perfect piece to replace the disreputable and wobbly hand wheel whose purpose is to set the saw blade tension on the big Dayton band saw. Thus, things are already looking up for Big D.

But today was chiefly a work day so we scrambled around the place pulling still-useful Melroe Bobcat buckets off of early Melroe skid steers (now decades long dead) and getting those buckets out of the way of the scrappers who will probably be on-site before the weekend. We gathered up still-useful sections of scaffolding and marched them, stick-man fashion, to the safe zone and did the same for a surprising number of ornamental iron-work pieces for use in turning one's home into a veritable fortress.

I found yet ANOTHER ripper for Earl; this one a single point hitch with a hydraulic depth-setter. Earl couldn't be with us today as his adult sheep are busily popping out lots of baby sheep one after the other, which is what happens when the bucks get to visit the ewes all pretty much at the same time. Predictable results, as they say... Somehow I envision Earl squatting there dressed like a catcher behind home plate with baby sheep coming at him from every direction. He'll sleep well tonight...after counting all those sheep.

We also cut up some synthetic web strap from a bucket elevator in order to salvage the almost 70 cast steel buckets made by Moline which will become clever, hangable planters once they're all removed from the web strap. The Nice Lady will soon be in negotiations to sell them to a local business that makes its money by selling re-purposed stuff to folks who have more money than brains; like artsy-fartsy people who live in 'Lofts'.

People who live in Lofts are 'complicated'. Lofties are folks who love industrial and linear aesthetics and large undivided and uncluttered areas where one setting, such as a kitchen, has no discernible limits. Go a step too far and, suddenly, one finds they're out of reach of the kale and are now in a living space, or a bedroom, or some other space where kale serves no useful purpose. One might even wander into a NOOK, which is generally defined as a small, cozy space. Again, this goes contrary to loftiness which is predicated on large open space but, Lofties want you see them as deeply complex folk who are living a simple life of uncomplicated Zen-buzz in order to achieve balance in their universe by doing things completely bass-ackwards.

By way of example, in a Loft, one can repetitively bounce a ball against a completely barren wall (a loft-sized version of handball) while their bored mini-insert your favorite breed here doggie sits this one out on a $4000 couch. Even their DOG is complicated. If you can't see the yin and yang in that, Dear Reader, I can't reach you.

It's all very confusing. They choose bamboo flooring, which is tough like a floor should be, but Bamboo looks too simple, too sterile and lacks the warmth and home-like charm of other American hardwoods with depth and color and complexity in their grain. Straight lines, square corners and barren landscapes dotted with little spheres of light as far as the eye can see.

WooHOO! IKEA! Here we COME!

These very same people cannot tolerate the odor of machine oil and prefer to bath their senses in citrus oils or patchouli, which has a musky-earthy scent (yeah, I had to look that up) which alludes to a natural setting (such as the bottom of a squirrel nest or the armpits of the flower-children of Woodstock) which goes contrary to all those darned LINES and industrial aesthetics such as unfinished ceilings where all the pipes show...even the sewer pipes.

==============*blorp-flush-gurgle-gurgle-gurgle*=================================

How charming...

Lofties (not squirrels, not flower-children) live in spaces defined by light and divided by lack of light. Those spaces are illuminated by microscopic little chromium plated spot lights suggesting snooty affluence, warmth, faux intimacy and womb-like comfort which goes contrary-wise to all those big, airy, undivided spaces. It's all completely bonkers...but their money is as green as the next guy's dough and they WILL buy those little buckets..and probably grow herbs in 'em. So, in some small way, I am facilitating all this madness.

Meh! It's what I do...

Cheers,
TJ

[m3a1]

Wow. Stuff has been coming at me so fast, and from so many different angles it's tough to keep up but I am slowly but surely getting a few things off my plate.

The most pressing matter has been that of Señor Bill's pickup truck which became damaged when we unloaded the Holmes mast. One of two things happened. Either I bumped the end of his tailgate (which was down) with the tip of one of the fork lift forks. By the way, Bill was responsible for spotting for me so, all this is his fault....

DO YOU HEAR ME BILL?!! IT'S YOUR FAULT!

...or, Bill got in his truck and bumped it before he drove away from the fork lift. The fact of the matter is, it has been so long since this indignity that no one can really remember how it all went down. Either way, Bill was there lending ME a hand with the recovery of the Holmes kit with HIS truck, since MY truck decided to crap out on me a day or two before. I am beholden to Bill for his help so I will be the one to fall on the sword.

Pssst! It's still his fault.

Bill and I live in a small (but growing) community and sooner or later, everyone in town has seen the Bill & TJ Show in some form, or some fashion. That includes the local State Farm agent with whom Bill and I both do business.

We are part of what some folks would call 'The Local Colour'. Pardon my French.

So, when we showed up at their office arguing with each other like The Bickersons about who did what to whom, another Nice Lady sat us down like she was the school nurse and told us to tell her all about it. We came prepared, armed with an estimate from the local body shop, and when all was said and done, my home owner's insurance would make things right without any deductible.

Niiiiice.

Don't ask me how that works but I'm glad that it did because Bill and I had already agreed to split the deductible since we simply had no real idea how things went down. Before we left, I assured her that I would make sure Bill didn't squander his payout on beer, scratch-offs. loose wimmen and cigarettes.

I'm rather sure she was happy to be rid of us, especially because we each helped ourselves to some candies from her desk (I love those tiny, individually wrapped. soft mints), some very good looking free pens and a few of those little peel & stick calendars like the ones our parents always had pasted onto their car's dashboard. I'm sure many of you remember those dashboards. All metal. None of that namby-pamby padding on the dash. And no safety belts either. Back in 'the day' we all died like Real Men when the car crashed.

Anyway, if you put free stuff in front of me, and I'm gonna grab it. That's all there is to it.

Back at the ranch, things are just about to get rolling at the flea market so, Bill and I have been up there prowling through the weeds, marking the stuff that is not to be scrapped (yeah, we're STILL doing that) and still finding stuff that nobody knew was there. Yesterday, since I finally had Longfellow back, we got busy pulling ancient and uncooperative farm trailers out of their graves. Some people call them pole trailers, others call them bale wagons, or hay wagons. The commonality is, they all consist of a steering axle up front and a straight axle in the rear with a simple pole connecting both halves which can be attached at nearly any length making a one time trailer purchase a very smart buy since it can become nearly anything Farmer Bob wants it to be.

MURICA!

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The Nice Lady didn't even know she had those trailers. Truth be told, I really only knew of one. The other two we just kind of tripped over...literally. They have a nice old timey vibe about them and I suspect they'll sell well but will probably never, ever do another day of work. People just buy this junk so they have something to mow around, I reckon. Or, they're trying to imply that they're good, old school, salt-of-the-earth folk who have been there since there were nothing but trees to be cleared and fieldstone fences to be thrown up and wild red injuns to be dealt with (no offense to Elizabeth Warren). Before you beat me up for even mentioning indians let me just say this. At one time, that area of Ohio was filled with the minor tribes of the Iroquois who were generally friendly, unless provoked....which would have been just about every day, the way some settlers behaved.

But, surprisingly, most folks managed to get along.

Let's face facts. If a person's mailbox is mounted on a broken wagon wheel, but the family lives in a doublewide (even if the wheels have been removed), they probably haven't been living there all that long. Having junk in your yard is meant to send a message even it's not an honest message but, counting the number of dead washing machines on the front porch or yard is a bit like counting the rings of a cut tree. It MEANS something.

Or, it doesn't mean doodly squat.

I grew up in a house built in 1823. It was one of the first homes on Strong's Ridge Road, colloquially known as Ridge Road and it was the focal point of a very large farm, with everything run by horse power, with real horses (Percherons, to be exact), no electricity and no indoor plumbing to begin with. There were no other homes between that farm and the next. Eventually, that homestead farm was sold off in bits and every house in our immediate area was on land that was once part of that farm. I learned of this at a very young age. My father, a young lawyer, had done all the title work on every property and most were sold just a few years before I was born.

BUT

We didn't have rusty, junky old farm equipment in our yard. Nope. The neighbors got it all, including the barn (which we all know is the center of the farm junk universe). WE had to go out and get our own junk, elsewhere. Phooey! What a gyp. And the ONE THING that galled me the most about all that was hanging from the rafters in that original barn, right next door. it hung there year after year and most years it never saw the light of day. It was just the prettiest horse drawn sleigh you've ever seen with seating for two. Bright red and VERY Currier & Ives. Our neighbors (who had horses and a real honest to God boarding stable) took pity on me and let me ride in it. One. Lousy. Time.

Crud.

But I digress...

We began our day today by liberating the southern half of a northbound mid-to-late-30's Ford pickup from its cage. Someone had cut the truck in half, grafted a tongue onto the torque tube and made themselves a trailer out of the bed. Then they junked it after beating the tar out of it (instead of putting it in their own front yard). Eventually, trees grew up around it and some genius then pushed an oilfield sledge against it and well, you know the story. It was pretty well trapped (understatement of the year).

We wanted the 'wide five' wheels and to get at them it took cutting a big chunk out of a tree, jacking it up (the trailer, not the tree) and hooking a cable to the tongue. After Longfellow give her a mighty tug at a right angle, that trailer just kinda popped and I DO mean POPPED out of there. It was really something to see because suddenly the trailer was at 90 degrees to where it had been, bucking and twisting around like a bronc at the rodeo. The trees were all a-flutter from having the trailer wrenched from their grip and, predictably, the sledge just sat there because it weighs something like a million pounds and is meant to be dragged around by a D9 Cat.... only now it had the trailer on top of it. Ten lug nuts later, we had the wheels in our hot little hands. Wide fives are favorites of old school street rodders and they bring good money.

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I do love it when a plan comes together.

We made our way up to Nice Lady's ancient Ford crew cab F350 diesel dually and she had been on the fence as to whether or not to scrap it. One look under the hood made that an easy decision. Some nitwit had made off with most of the necessary bits. So right then and there we set about relieving the truck of the antiquated lift gate that had been grafted onto it. It also had a pretty substantial headache rack/rail system with a questionable-looking Ramsey winch (one end was melted) which was booger-welded onto it by a guy with probably one eye and likely only one arm and some really despicable welding skills.

Death Wheel à gogo!

Suddenly, the rack no longer had a winch. and just as suddenly, the whole thing started looking a lot better. So, I cut the mounting bolt heads off the headache rack and rails, punched the bolts out and Nice Lady had one additional thing to sell along with the winch, and the lift; a whole headache rack. Sweet. The headache rack & rail system was undoubtedly part of a some ad hoc gin pole arrangement at one time. Where the rest of it is, is anyone's guess. But the dually is destined for the shredder. Good riddance.

Cheers,
TJ

[rickf]

Do you have any idea how long I have been looking for a running gear (Hay trailer)? I want one to set my slide in camper on so I can move it around the yard more easily with the tractor. Around here a running gear in that condition will fetch around 1200.00 bucks bare minimum. The Amish come from many miles around to grab those trailers. Amazing how they find ways to get around the disdain of all things motorized when it comes to getting one of those bought and home.

[m3a1]

Well, there's what I imagine is a mid 70's one right here. All ya gotta do is come get it.

OR Google farm wagon running gear.

[m3a1]

I was beat by day's end, yesterday. I began with helping Skippy The Kid make an assessment of the early 70's Ford F150 pickup that Frank gave him to play with. It was his, if he wanted it, without caveats. Rather than being much of an automotive adventure, the whole thing turned out to be a teaching moment. We began with The Kid being all starry-eyed, ever fast-forwarding to the day the truck would sit gleaming in the sun.. and we ended up with him being sadder, but wiser.

I had to grab him by both ears to shake him out of his delirium. I swear, Skippy wanders around like Little Nemo...like he's sleep walking. Stop talking, I said. Stop talking about what might be and let's talk about what is immediately in front of us.

Initial walk-around consisted of only the most general observations. Window glass and seals would all need to be replaced, rust perforation in the bed and tailgate, a Flintstones-style cab floor, badly degraded seats (Don't touch 'em, I was warned...you'll put a hole in 'em!) Grillwork a bit mashed and all this goodness sitting on four totally wasted tires.

Otherwise, most exterior body panels were amazingly straight, which I admit, did a lot to trick the eye.

Under the hood, a Ford 390 with oil bath air cleaner (I thought we had gotten away from that by the 70's but, apparently not). As I was employed as a gas pump jockey in my teens, I had certainly checked the fluids under the hood of many an old Ford truck. How did I miss that? Or, am I just getting old? Here, within this truck's engine bay, there was very definite spray pattern, now visible as rust, over the front of the engine and forward part of the engine bay. The radiator had obvious evidence of leaks (long green stains over the radiator body). All the usual rust from a poorly vented battery on the underside of the hood and a gaping hole in the inner fender under the battery tray (or what was left of the battery tray) big enough to drop a tackle box through.

We attempted to pull the dipstick. It wouldn't budge. It would turn, because it wasn't stuck at the top of the tube but no matter what we tried, it would not budge. I even put a piece of bar stock through the pull ring and tried to lever it up and out...which simply straightened out the ring loop. That meant one of two things. It was either rust-welded in place (so, water in the crankcase) or perhaps a big chunk of something was leaning up against the lower bit of the dipstick inside the engine, pinning it firmly in place.

Also present, something I had never seen personally...the potting material actually melted out of a FoMoCo electronic ignition module. I knew they had a reputation for going bad but had never seen one that had failed so spectacularly. It came out liquid, dribbled all over the inner fender and then solidified, looking all the world like fiberglas resin. Spark plug wires - thoroughly chewed. Battery cables - shot. The engine? Stuck, like a fly on flypaper.

No va. No Bueno. Puramente muerto.

But, in the 'Plus Column' it had a pretty nice oil bath air cleaner and we did harvest a long-dead battery for a $10 credit at O'Reilly's or Auto Zone. So, it was time to bring The Kid back to earth. Like a schoolmarm, I rang the bell and got Skippy's attention with a small list of axioms.

First, he would be relying solely upon the good graces of others to get this thing underway. Frank, for one, because whatever was to be done would be done on Frank's land, in the open and disassembled vehicles take up to 8 times the space a fully assembled vehicle does. And me, for another, because Skippy has no tools, nor expertise; only good intentions which, as we all know, doesn't get one across a finish line 99.999% of the time. And finally, he would be having to dodge his parents because funding this monstrosity wouldn't be easily concealed.

So, I made things easy for him. The Lesson - To be able to determine when you are looking at a parts donor vs a reasonably restorable vehicle (and in this case, I use the term 'restorable' very broadly). I said, THIS is your learning moment. Know that there are better candidates out there that represent a far better starting place than what you have here in front of you. If you feel you MUST have an early F150, Texas is littered with them. If you feel you must hang onto this one, tell Frank you'll accept this as a parts donor but you mustn't turn his yard into a Ford Parts Warehouse...or, better yet, tell Frank, thank you very kindly for the offer but I think I'd be in over my head with this particular truck....and Frank will respect you for your honesty and integrity.

With all that, I suggested he simply chew on that for a while and see if he comes to the same conclusion as I. Then, we turned our attention to some other, far better candidates for him to lavish his attention on. As it turned out, Skippy The Kid had also been bestowed with 1.45 slick little motorcycles which, to my way of thinking, represented a project (or maybe two) that required minimal space, minimal equipage, and presented the least requirement upon the forbearance of friends and associates. Between the Kawasaki and the Suzuki, the latter is the far better of the two and, at first blush, I'm guessing with a little fuel, it might just run. The Kawasaki, on the other hand....is going to require a far more firm commitment (which is putting it nicely).

These are the sorts of kinds of machines Hambone loves to tinker with. Both of these are young-adult sized bikes; the 72 Kawasaki being a small street bike and the 71 Suzuki and mild version of a dirt bike, both very typical of the early 70s....back when we were young, and cool.

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I also told him that, if bikes aren't his cup of tea, they are all the rage and perhaps he should go straight for the throat, sell them, take the dough and seek out something that he was MORE interested in...

Like a straight jacket. Well, I didn't actually say THAT.

Frank came out into the cold dreary day as if on cue and The Kid told Frank he would have to pass on the truck. Then, he kinda ran out of words so I backed him up and told Frank I thought it would be far better to steer him towards the scooters. Frank and I have had long conversations about Skippy's attention deficits and how we might get him to focus a bit more efficiently. I could see that The Kid was wounded, yet somewhat relieved for have uttered the words. Frank, good ol' Frank, said he understood.

Then, because I am a firm believer in Negative Reinforcement, I decided to rub salt in The Kid's wound I took him with me (and Bill) up to the Nice Lady's place to do some work because there was just enough time left in the day to do it. One cannot swing a cat up there without hitting an early 70's Ford F150 and I wanted to see what Skippy would do. Once we got up there, would he abandon us and go fawn over them? Pet them? TALK to them?

The project for the day was to restore the freshly repaired tire to Nice Lady's fork lift because I was aware the longer it sat in the bed of my truck, the greater the chance that some halfwit would make off with it. I didn't want that, so we made a special trip up to get it back on there and get the lift off the big wooden block. We also made an effort to pay some extra attention to the wheel studs which had probably never seen so much as one drop of oil in their entire life. So, with a brisk tidy-up with a wire wheel and a drill, the lugs all went on very sweetly.

This was one of those tricksy wheels whose center hole was about a quarter of an inch larger diameter than the hub's center. Thus, one cannot rely upon the hub to center the wheel...which would explain why my arch-nemesis, VERN, had nearly every lug nut (which are exactly like the big military lug nuts) so ridiculously loose. What a JERK! That dude couldn't even take the time to put a wheel on correctly. I so want to gouge his....

Oh..... never mind.

So, I demonstrated the correct technique for centering a large heavy wheel while it is suspended in the air (with no centering hub) to Bill and The Kid...and I did it the right way, without getting under it. Notably unimpressed, Skippy wandered off to pet the old Fords. Kids nowadays...

Ah well, Rome wasn't built in a day.

Cheers,
TJ

[rickf]

Just a little tidbit of general info for you. F150's are Not all THAT old. They came out in 1975. F100's are. But F150's also never came with FE 390 big blocks. So if that is what is in there it was a transplant. Depending on the year it should have had a 302 in it or if 78-79 would have been a 351M. The 429/460 was a bolt in replacement onto the bell housing of the 351M. Motor mounts had to be fabricated.
Are you sure it is not an F250 with 150 fenders on it? That would have had the 390. Doesn't really matter from the sounds of it on the engine condition though.

[m3a1]

Nearly everything Frank has laying around has a transplanted engine with the notable exception of the 47 & 49 Fords.

I wish someone would round up all the old 70s Ford pickups in Texas and just get rid of them. Fine trucks back in the day, to be sure...but now? Ugh.

And yes, they ARE all that old, Rick. WE are old, so everything seems 'Not That Old' to us.

[rickf]

I put 250,000 miles on a 1970 bronco and sold it dirt cheap. That truck would go anywhere I pointed it. Bought a F150 and eventually transplanted a 429 into it, then put a supercharger on the 429. Scattered the 9" rear into three different counties one night so put a Dana 60 from a F250 in the rear. Blew the front diff a week later and transplanted the Dana 60 front from the same donor truck. Twisted driveshafts into pretzels on a monthly basis. But damn it was fast! Sold that and bought a 73 Bronco and put almost 100,000 on that one and sold it cheap also. NOW, You see what the price on old Broncos is! Old F series trucks in General are way up there with the late 70's Bronco's approaching the early Bronco pricing. Never say die on some of these old trucks, if you have a place to work on them and get them cheap you can make BIG time returns.

[m3a1]

Or MAYBE you shouldn't have thrashed on your Broncos like that, and saved all the trouble on the back side.

[rickf]

Other than 35" tires and lockers in the back the Broncos were stock. The first one had the original three speed in it the whole time, Had the original clutch up to 180,000 miles! and that was with a LOT of four wheeling in mud and water.