Clem

An old friend, Clem Johnson, and I headed down to Logan County to pick up the car. Clem runs TubaTrucks, a restoration company in town and restores primarily 1964-1972 Chevrolet pickups, so he's used to hauling automobiles. It was great to have his help and experience.

The two batteries that we brought to operate the winch were both dead. We were lucky that the seller's son, Justen, was there to offer a hand. We jumped the winch from his pickup and got it loaded.

I've always wanted to get to know Clem better, so it was good to spend this much time with him. He's a really talented man and with some luck I will see more of him as I work on this car. The whole process went without a hitch. I was expecting at least some sort of difficulty, but we got it done and had a really good time doing it.

The car is now safe in my shop and the work begins to assess where to begin. My temptation is to make it drivable first and get to know the car a bit before I tear it apart, but that's probably a waste of a lot of time and money.

I might just get the engine running and make sure it's worth rebuilding. It's my guess that it's the original engine, but it's been machined, a process that made the mating surface tight against the head but removed the stampings that would prove it's the one that came in the car originally.

The interior has already been stripped out for the most part. The only damage I see is from battery acid that has eroded away the battery tray behind the driver's seat. Though there is surface rust, there is no scale or rust-through anywhere that I've found yet, which is nice. The trouble areas on these cars are so far very solid on this car, but I'll know much more when I tear into the car some more.