Memorial Day Weekend - Week 4

Saturday:

Cruise-In @ the old Wal-Mart building up in Harrodsburg. Spent a couple hours there late in the afternoon. Saw a grand total of three nice classic Mopars. But for this area, that's a lot! Personal favorite - this 65 Belvedere.



My "Most Original" award went to this unrestrored '56 Pontiac. The owner was really proud and enjoyed showing her off. Even had the original WWW spare in the trunk.




Afterwords we headed up the road to Twin Hills to watch Indiana Jones. Got there at 7:30 and by 8:30 the place was packed. Full. And it was good to see so many folks out with their families at the drive-in. The movie was... how shall I say it... different. Indiana Jones meets the X-Files. Actually, I enjoyed it quite a bit.



Monday:

Got to the garage around 12:3o to meet up with my buddy Tim who had not seen Elizabeth before. We spent a good two hours going over the car and plotting strategy on how best to handle the floors. I've been worried about how to best go about tackling the job of replacing the rotted sheet metal and I came away feeling much better about it afterwords.

Tim S. and I go back a quite a few years, he and I used to work together as electronic technicians at a local family owned office equipment supply company. More than anyone else, it was Tim and his brothers (who love mechanics and working on old cars) who helped re-ignite my passion for classic American heavy-metal. Thanks man!

Aside from that, I did manage to get a small bit of work in. Removed her rear taillight assemblies and trim and got the fin caps removed and rust debris vacuumed up. The trim and fin caps will probably wind up on eBay real soon as I work to turn excess parts into cash to help fund the floorpan purchases. Also gave the bumper bolts a good soaking of Blaster so I can work on getting them removed in the next couple weeks.





All in all a great weekend (although it seems they just don't last long enough these days).

Till next time....

Week 3

No work on Elizabeth this weekend, took off with the missus Saturday and hit some flea markets in search of vinyl (I collect Lps and open reel tapes) instead. A threat of rain kept us away from the drive-in Saturday night (and Speed Racer was getting some pretty bad press anyway). We do plan on returning for Indiana Jones.

Sometimes You CAN Go Back

I can't tell you what triggered it, but last week I started thinking, again, about the fate of those drive-ins in Cleveland that I used to haunt when I was younger. In my post "Summer of '79" I mentioned the Brookpark Drive-In, where I used to spend my Saturdays. Some searching led me to its correct name, the Auto Drive-In. That in turn led to a bit of hunting utilizing Google Maps and Microsoft's Virtual Earth.

This, unfortunately is what I found. :(


A damn sad sight. I don't know what would have been worse. Discovering it in this condition, with our concession stand falling in, or seeing that it had been paved over. Someone has gone through the trouble of planting a sh!tload of trees on the property (is it a nursery now?) so I suppose it's not all bad for the old Auto Drive-In of Brookpark.

The Memphis Drive-In

The other drive-in I used to frequent was the old Memphis Triple as we called it (for its three screens). Built in '54 it was the largest around. Probably the largest in the county. Sadly, it too has met its fate, in 2006, with the property having been sold to American Greetings. The Memphis was Cuyahoga County's last surviving drive-in theatre. :(


Which leads me to the point of this post!


Here's a shot of the newly restored marquee of the Twin Hills drive-in theatre in Harrodsburg, Kentucky - which reopened in 2005 after being "dark" for twenty years.


The missus and I spent Saturday evening there, our first trip to the Twin, and only our second visit to a drive-in since we relocated here in 1988. We're planning on returning next Saturday, to take in Speed Racer.

Yeah. It was fun. Just like it used to be.

Week 2

Removed the front seats today. I'd shot the rusty nuts with PB Blaster last week and was able to remove them with ease. After I'd wrestled the seats out, by myself and carted them outside I noticed that there was an odd piece of translucent piping trim sticking out from beneath the white and black seat covers. After a bit of poking I saw what appeared to be Elizabeth's original seat covers - still intact. Since I was planning on getting them recovered anyway I grabbed my utility knife and went to work carefully removing the obviously newer outer vinyl. Here's a before and after shot.





Both front and rear, seat cushions and backs still have the original materials intact. The cushions are shot and the foam is dusting out everywhere - those will need replaced. But the seat backs - I may keep those intact and simply apply the new material over them. Especially the rear seats, which are still like new.

Also removed the windshield lower trim and vent stainless along with the windshield wipers today. Gave the front and rear bumper bolts a good bath in Blaster and will work next week on getting them removed.

All in all a fairly productive afternoon. And nothing broken!

Do it yourself damnit!

Anyone with some money can buy a classic car. Hell, they're all over eBay now. Doesn't take any skill to do that.

It does take skill, patience, time and common sense to restore one yourself. Especially one that's been sitting out in a field for a better part of her life. But half the fun is doing it yourself, bringing her back, watching that gradual transformation from heap to honey. Because nothing beats the feeling you'll get when you finally sit behind the wheel, as you and her take that first cruise. When you can say, at last - "Yeah. I did this myself".

Week 1

Well, she's been here a week and I've already gotten some things accomplished. Since the garage is in town and I live about 7 miles away, I usually don't get to spend much time there during the week, I work 50 miles away and spend two hours a day driving, on top of putting in an eight hour work day. So, right now most of my work on Elizabeth gets done on Saturday afternoons.

The first workday was last Monday, which was spend doing cleanup work (rodent nests) and assessing her overall condition. I got the rear seats out and stored and also played around with her wiring a bit, to see what kind of shape it was in (better than expected, not brittle or cracked and probably salvageable).

Yesterday was a bit more productive. Removed her trunk lid and hood, headlight bezels and grille (without breaking anything) and got to work trying to free up her motor. It's seized up at the moment, from sitting for over 10 years and Pete wasn't sure of it's condition. I've applied liberal amounts of PB Blaster down into the cylinders to try to free them up and will wait until next Saturday to see if it worked (got a new 24" breaker bar and a 1-1/4" socket for the task). If not, I'll shoot more PB Blaster, wait a week and try again. If that doesn't work I'll be pulling and rebuilding Elizabeth's motor as well.