Sadly, no Jalopy Showdown antics this year. Instead of hitting the showdown as we had planned even up through Thursday night, Friday am Joel and I made the call to get on the road to Ohio to go look at a new project, a 1950 Ford F-1.

This deal was ’something else’ from moment one. I found the ad online through the Road Devils board, and passed it along to Joel. He in turn contacted the seller. Now, the way we figured this would work out is: look at the pics, decide if it was worth the asking price, strike a deal, send a deposit, and we would return the following weekend with a trailer to pick the thing up and drag it home.

The way things actually came together was: seller refused to do a deal any other way than in person, cash in hand, you remove the thing immediately. Hence, Friday morning we were on our way.

The trip out to Columbus was pretty uneventful, although a bit tedious as Joel’s Hon-duh gets kind of cranky above 60mph. At any rate, we arrived in Columbus at about 5:30pm, were met by Patrick and Jimmy (fellow Road Devils local to the area), looked over the truck a bit and made the deal. So far so good.

Dig the tape stripe flames! They didn’t even make the trip to Patrick’s.

One big thing stuck out as a small, but immediate problem: the steel wheels on the rear of the truck were held on by (4) mag shank lugnuts when they should have had OEM style tapered seat lugnuts. On arrival at the local Autozone, we discovered that the truck won’t stay in place on a grade (hokey shifter seems to prevent fully getting it into park). From this point on, we have to shove a boot under the tire (preferably without human foot inside) to act as a wheel chock. We buy/replace lug nuts and are on our way. At this point, I volunteer to drive the thing up to Patrick’s house about a half hour north, but first we need to get gas.

The gas station was uneventful, but I did notice after we topped off the tank that I could smell gas. Oh well, the tank being in the back of the cab and all, probably to be expected right?

It was during this leg of the journey that I realized this is one spooky mother#$%er to drive! The slightest steering input causes the truck to try to instantly change lanes. Likewise, anything more than a very gingerly pressure on the pedal wants to lock the brakes. Exciting! All the more so because someone has pissed Patrick off and he is chasing them down on the freeway. For my part, I see Patrick fading into the distance; Joel is behind me in the Hon-duh that won’t do 65 if you dropped it off a cliff. Neither Joel nor myself know how to actually get to Patrick’s place. The only reasonable action at this point is to just floor it and hope for the best. If I thought this truck was spooky at 55, with the speedo fully buried, it is just downright supernatural. Eventually, I caught up with Patrick, and after a while Joel caught up with us and we made it back to Patrick’s place in one piece. The rest of Friday night mostly consisted of soaking up the hospitality (and moonshine) at Patrick’s.

Saturday morning we had to get the title sorted out and make a few repairs before starting the trip back to PA. The title was easy enough to sort, but for the minor hiccup of Joel not having a secondary form of ID with his SSN on it. That was easy enough to remedy by having Patrick sign as Power of Attorney (odd, but whatever). After a quick stop off at the parts store, we went back to try to get the beast in a little better shape for the trip home.

‘Repairs’ proceeded quickly, and by 3pm we were ready to get on the road. We had figured on taking it easy on the way home (not that we had much choice), little did we know that nary a service plaza would go unvisited. Around 4pm, we decided to stop and top off the tank; the gas gauge doesn’t work and we had no idea at this point what sort of mileage to expect. We were also figuring on grabbing some food before we hit the turnpike, so the A&W seemed like a good idea. After some burgers and root beer, we wandered back outside to check all of the fluid levels and discovered our first ‘issue’: The radiator was pissing coolant out between the top of the core and the bottom of the tank. In lieu of a better solution, we decided to dump a bottle of Bars-Leak in there and keep an eye on it. At the same time, we topped off the tank and Joel noted the offensive gas smell.

The next hour or so was slow, but relatively uneventful– that is, until our next gas stop. I went inside to use the facilities, came back out, was in the midst of lighting up a smoke when I saw Joel across the parking lot in the midst of some sort of psychotic episiode. “Wonder what his problem is” I wondered? He was making strange gestures and all I could really make out was “Put that out! Get over here!”. OOOOK… so I wander over. “Oooh, look at that, fuel is literally pouring out the top of the tank and running under the seat. Which, coincidentally, is where all the electrical is located. In the absence of a picture, imagine opening up a toaster, a household light fixture, and three blenders… smashing the contents with a hammer and throwing them under the seat. This is the best approximation of the fine state of the electrical system in the truck. The problem ’seems’ to be centered around the ‘patch’ that the previous owner put over the top of the tank where the sender should be. The patch job consisted of a piece of inner tube, 5 cap screws and some 1/4″ nuts being used as washers, along with a generous portion of RTV (which the gas promptly ate through). So to recap, here is our situation: at least two hours from any help, gas flowing all over the sketchy electrical, Joel high as a kite from breathing fumes for the last couple hours, and no real way to repair the problem.

The gas station assured us that not 15 minutes up the road, we could find a parts store for whatever we needed. With no better ideas, I jumped in the truck and Joel followed me to the next exit (Joel was looking a bit pale at this point and seemed a little too excited in general so I volunteered). After getting off the exit and getting to the parts store (a NAPA), we realized it was closed $^%*. On the plus side, there was a garage around the corner that looked to be open, or at the very least someone was inside, so we stopped there and explained the situation. The proprietor of said shop really didn’t seem too impressed with us, but agreed to help us regardless. Much time was lost creating a sheetmetal patch to fit over the inner tube (now acting more reasonably as a gasket). By about 10pm we were ready to get back on the road.

(Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion in Part II)