It's all in the family...

Mark comes by his interest in old cars--model As in particular--honestly. When Mark was in college, his father pruchased a 1931 Model A truck hot rod project. Mark and his brother restored the truck, while their dad "supervised". After all, that's why he had sons...

Even earlier, Mark's great-grandfather started the trend with a beloved 1926 Dodge truck that he used for his fruit business.

So, it would seem that old trucks are in the family genes.

First things first...

When you start a restoration project, you have to think in terms of "first things first". This means creating a list of stuff you will need to do in order to even get the car running. In this case, the radiator needed to be removed to be boiled out and restored, the dry rotted radiator hoses had to be replaced. As the former owner had used plain water for the cooling system, it had to be drained and the rust removed. Some years ago, the former owner had coated the gas tank interior with a sealant which is now flaking off like dry leaves. This means the gas tank may need to be removed and cleaned out--no small feat, as the gas tank is one of the main parts of the front of the car.





Mark removed the radiator and took it to a radiator shop to the restored. That's right, radiator shops DO still exist--they are just hidden away in time warps, which is where Mark found this one.





Then, in an attempt to assess the extent of the sealant flaking in the gas tank, Mark lowered one of our son's computer cameras in to the tank. By propping the laptop up on the hood of the car, he was able to visually scan the inside of the tank. He decided it wasn't quite as awful as he thought, and he may be able to scrub out the sealant without removing the tank--a big relief!

It's like the story of the old lady with the sports car in her barn...

Everybody wants to know how we came to be the owners of a 1931 Ford Model A coupe. Well, believe it or not, we got it…at a garage sale. That’s right–a garage sale.
I know what you are thinking–”How come I never find garage sales like that?” Well don’t feel bad. Finding this car at a garge sale was alot like that story where the elderly lady advertised the “old car for sale” and what she had in the barn was a mint condition T-bird that had belonged to her son.
People who know my husband, Mark, are likely not surprised. His favorite haunts are garage sales, auctions and the occasional dumpster (bleah!) But this find was the find of a century, even for him. A few weeks ago, our neighborhood was participating in the community-wide garage sale. As I arrived home from work, my husband called me. “Can you meet me on the cul-de-sac? A guy is having a garage sale, and he has a car I want to buy.” I envisioned a rusted heap of metal. What other type of car can you purchase at a garage sale? I was willing to go see it, becuase I was sure it would be a disaster that I could easily persuade my husband not to buy. Instead, when I arrived at the house, I was escorted to the basement and was very surprised to see this:



It was light-years better than I had anticipated. However, we already had two cars and only two garages, we didn’t need another car. On top of that, I was sure the owner would want far more than we would be willing to pay. Mark talked to the owner for a few minutes, exchanged business cards, then we walked home. I told him I liked the car, but that it was obviously worth more than we needed to spend for a project car. Mark asked me how much I thought the car was worth. I gave him my estimate. “He wants HALF of that. Can you believe it?”

After doing a little research, talking to his father and looking at the car again, Mark became the proud owner of a 1931 Ford Model A coupe. And then the real work began–because the Model A is not in driveable condition.