Messages

Wow, great advice, thanks guys. I only have a couple of days left, and I'm frantically trying to finish wiring on a 60 Starliner pro-street car. I put the F100 to the side for now, but will print out your advice and go through it with my buddy with all the cars. Apart from the F100 and the Starliner, he has a very quick 428 Cobra, a 69 BB Chevelle, a 70 Cutlass with 350 crate motor, a 65 Mustang, a Viper, all of which are good, working cars. Unfortunately they never get driven until I come to visit! Our daily driver while we are here is a 96 Crown Vic Police Pursuit black and white with only 30k miles on it. Great car! Hopefully I can return to Australia knowing I got at least one busted F100 back on the road.
Thanks again guys, I knew you'd come through for me!

Hi gang. It's been a while since I was here. Isn't it a true test of friendship when you only here from someone when they want something?
Anyway, I am in Fall City, Wa, for a month visiting friends and going to the Portland swap meet next week. Anyway, my buddy here has a 55 F100 with a 92/93 LT1 and TH350. It's a nice car, well built but the wiring is pretty bad. I have sorted it all out, and it's all back together, but the engine isn't playing properly. It seems to die when you pump the gas pedal. If you keep tickling the gas it will run, and that lets us move it around the yard, but there's a fundamental problem that I need to fix and I am not a mechanic. We are getting a new cap and rotor for the optispark, but I'm not sure if that will fix it. The TPS looks OK, not slipping around at all. I think there is a MAF and MAP, but I have no idea what I'm looking at. I have zero experience with GM engines.
Any ideas?

I had a total knee replacement about a year ago (old baseball injury, I was a catcher). Brand new titanium knee, agonising rehab (I have a high tolerance to any pain killers ending in "ain") but now it's all good.

You people are sick!
Except you, Bryan. You are beautiful.

There's a container going to Texas (San Antonio, I think) in two weeks, and I can have a complete spare hood in it for you. It will cost about $150 Aussie Dollars (spare change for your Goobers) but you'll have to arrange shipping from the depot to Florida. Maybe a fellow RRTer can pick it up for you? Anyway, I'll PM ya, because I have to get the thing to Sydney from Canberra first.

Thanks heaps. I have that image in a crappy book I have, but it is very small and blurry.

Um....
Anybody? The Aussies just wanna take the mickey!

I know it's a long way, but, hey, it's do-able if you are desperate!
I have a couple of spare 36 Plymouth hoods, all with good chrome and stainless. I also have the side curtains that I modified for my Plymouth, but I am not going to use them. They were designed for dzus fasteners to hold them in place. I am happy to separate the top and sides of a spare hood for you. I can ship them to LA via one of the regular companies that operates out of LA and Long Beach, or I can ship them via UPS air ($$$$$$$$$).
BTW, I don't want any money for this stuff if you use it on your car.

I promise to post here more often if you help me!
Enough grovelling.
I have just had new bushes pressed into the upper control arms the wrong way around. Has anybody got an idea of which way around they go? Better yet, has anybody got a decent diagram/photo? 56 Victoria, Fairlane, etc. I bought the bushes from Kanter.

You must have been hovering over the keyboard to get this reply in so quickly. Whassamadder, got nothing to do?

He kinda reminded me of Choco, but better looking...

Oh, yeah, and what was it about being "cool" to be "ugly"?
The only White Christmas I have had is was when we were living in Issaquah, Wa, in the 80s. It just didn't feel right, so I put on my shorts, T Shirt, thongs (flip flops) and sunnies, and went out on to the snow laden deck with my beer in hand to cook a BBQ, like "normal" people do on Xmas day. I froze my nutz off, and the neighbours were looking at me in a funny way, but they soon realised I was just homesick.

Hey Choco, considering the crap I cop for my lack of windows and 'upholstery' I've just gotta ask,, when ya gunna get a grille for that thing?        

Gosh, you are so funny, Carps. I've NEVER heard THAT one before!

I got my zoomies on.....


Then going to a garage scene with a few of the guys....


In my Plymouth.....

Don't forget to PM me the info on that power supply, so I can find the torch and coolant system fer ya...

I know that when folks get to be your age, short term memory loss ranks right up there with Ensure and Depends, so I thought I'd remind ya.

In case you forgot...

Don't forget to PM me the info on that power supply, so I can find the torch and coolant system fer ya...

     :0-0

If there's one thing that I really, really hate, it's that.... thing .... you know .... um ...

A few of us were in New Orleans in August last year. We stopped there on our way to Louisville. I'd always wanted to visit New Orleans, and I'm glad I did, because it won't be the same ever again after this.
How do I know?
I was based at a Naval Communications Station in Darwin in 1974 when Cyclone Tracy struck. We call 'em Cyclones, you call 'em Hurricanes (anti-Cyclones). The wind speed thingies on the tower at the bureau of meteorlogy in Darwin measured up to 200MPH. They were blown off the tower. Darwin, the capital city of the Northern Territory, was flattened overnight on Christmas eve 1974. The devastation would be equivalent to that of Katrina, however, the population of Darwin was, and still is, miniscule in comparison. Nevertheless, 150+ people were killed by Cyclone Tracy, and many more are still missing, including many indigeneous people.
I still have a recording of the noise that was made by the cyclone. It was recorded by a priest who thought his days were numbered as he lay huddled in his rectory at an old church. I play it back every now and then, and remember what it was like as I ferried hysterical men, women and children from one "safe" haven to another, as the winds tore through the strongest buildings.  I remember what it was like seeing cars with caravans still attached to them flipping end over end up the road. I remember the looks on the faces of two friends (one a Hot Rodder with a 29 Dodge sedan) who were caught in a ditch when the Navy's bushfire truck was blown off the road. They were going to stay holed up in the ditch, but they heard someone calling for help. It was a young aborginal woman, still clutching the hand of her 4 year old daughter whose torso was severed from a flying sheet of roofing iron. They had no choice but to get her to safety at the Naval base sick bay. I also remember my friend Stevo, who had only joined us a few weeks prior to the cyclone. He had only just settled his wife and two daughters in a house on the base when the cyclone struck. He was teamed with me as part of the first Passive Defence team, formed after Cyclone Selma had struck some months earlier. The next morning, he was given permission to go and check on his family. He found them under a pile of bricks and rubble. He arranged the evacuation of their bodies by himself, and I never heard from him again.
I remember the attempts at communicating with the outside world once the cyclone passed. It took a couple of weeks before we could land some real assistance, as all road, rail and sea lanes were obliterated. The Air Force managed to clear their runways within a few days, and soon a mass evacuation took place, using Hercules and civilian aircraft. All that remained behind were Defence Force personell and a civilian infrastructure to start on the rebuilding of Darwin. It was a rather surreal 2 weeks before we returned to some semblance of "civilisation", but we were plagued with looters and opportunists for months.
Oh yeah, my car (just to keep on topic!). I had a hot EH Holden, similar to a 63/64 Chevy Nova, but with a 6 cylinder engine. It was lowered, painted purple and raced regularly at the drag strip. The night before, being Christmas eve, I had parked it behind the accommodation block where I lived. I was in party mode, as was everyone else, and the cars were staying hidden away. The cyclone blew a large oak tree down onto the wall above my car. The cyclone levelled the building, but the part of the wall that the oak tree had landed on stayed intact, protecting my car. Other cars parked in front and behind me were flattened.
My thoughts are with the people of New Orleans and other cities in the path of the hurricane. It is a terrifying thing to behold, and I am glad that, at the time, I was drunk as a skunk for most of the night!