Monthly Archives: November 2009

The radiator seemed to be working like a charm. It even looked good because the radiator guys had spray painted it black. A couple days after reinstalling the radiator, I parked the car and looked under it. I’ve learned in the months since that this is a good habit to get into.

There was fluid dripping from the front of the car. Not a lot, but enough to notice. I reached under the car and put my finger in it fully expecting green antifreeze and already thinking of what profanity I would be using when I contacted the radiator shop. Instead the fluid was red. I knew enough to know that was transmission fluid. It still seemed to be coming from the radiator though. I popped the hood and took a good look at the radiator. There were a total of four hoses going to the radiator: Two large ones, one on top, one on bottom, for the antifreeze/water and two small ones on the bottom of the radiator near the center. These hoses had transmission fluid in them and they were leaking. A closer inspection revealed that the hoses just weren’t fitting very well after the reinstallation. I took them off and went to the auto parts store. (In another vehicle of course)

As I’ve stated before, I’m not the most mechanically inclined individual. The only time I’d ever gone to a auto parts shop alone was to pick up some antifreeze. Other than that, I just didn’t trust myself to know what the hell I was talking about. In this case, I had the hoses I needed to replace and the hose clamps. I figured I could handle it. I found the right clamps and then asked a guy named Serge to cut some hose for me. I wasn’t sure how much I’d really need given that the hoses I’d taken off weren’t working. Maybe I should have them a bit longer. In the end, I asked for two feet of hose, figuring that was more than enough for the job.

I got back home, cut the hose, put the hose on and tightened it up with the clamps. It was just replacing hose, but I’d done it by myself. My car had a problem and I went to the store, bought parts, and fixed it. I felt good about that. And it’d cost me like five bucks. I started the car and got out and watched the engine. No leaks. Awesome.

The next few weeks, I had no problems with my car and really enjoyed driving it. I’d actually had enough experience with it that I was entirely comfortable driving the big thing. I got used to the sounds of the car. The rubber in the passenger side wing window still folded a bit letting in some air. I used duct tape to fix it. Eventually I’d probably want to replace the rubber, but not now. The next thing I noticed was that the slightest moisture caused the belts to start slipping, creating this high pitched whine.

I called my brother and said I’d like to come over and have him help me switch the belts on the car. This was both so I could get his expertise and so we could work in a garage. It was not yet Spring and still plenty cold.

We got the belts off easily enough. Yet again, I can’t stress enough how much I enjoy having a car that has such a simple engine. At the auto parts store, while checking out, the girl behind the counter asked if we had a military ID for a discount. Neither  my brother or I had ever been in the military.

My brother said, “I was in the Army, but I’m retired.”  My brother is thirty-two and looks five years younger than that.

“Really?”

“Yeah, I forgot my ID though. Can you help a veteran out?”

The girl behind the counter gave us the discount and as soon as we left, I laughed my ass off. Of course the thought did occur to me that the same girl who thought my brother was a retired veteran had given us the new belts.

We got back to my brother’s place and got one belt on easily. The other one wouldn’t quite fit. It was so close though. It just needed a little more. My brother asked for the key and said he had an idea. He turned the key just enough to turn the engine over and that cranked the wheels, causing the belt to pop right on there. We tightened a few things up and all was well. My car wasn’t only cool. Now it was quiet.

As I mentioned earlier, I don’t have a garage. So there were many mornings when I wasn’t so happy with the gigantic windows on my Galaxie as I scraped the ice off of them. The real problem though was that moisture was getting inside the car and so after scraping the outside of the windows, I had to scrape the inside. The solution to this was incredibly simple and entirely unexpected. I was complaining about it to my wife and she suggested I put some cat sand crystals in a dish under the back window.  It sounded crazy, but I figured it couldn’t hurt.

I haven’t had any interior moisture problems since.

To Be Continued….

The first year of owning a classic car, it’s going to need more work than any other. So I’m going to end up talking a lot about the various problems I’ve had with my Galaxie, but that’s not all there is to it. If that were the case I would have sold it after the first couple weeks.

Before I go any further I need to explain something about myself. I’ve been in twenty-five car accidents. It’s not that I’m a terrible driver. I was only driving in five of those and none of those were very serious. Statistically you’re safer with me behind the wheel than in the passenger seat. That said, I’ve been in cars that were cut in half, cars that flipped over, cars that sunk, and cars that caught fire and exploded. (Yes, cars can explode. I know people tell you that that only happens in the movies, but I’ve got pictures on my Facebook to prove it.) Now given, this history with vehicles, it probably comes as no surprise that in general I don’t like to be in a car. This is where owning the Galaxie means something different than it might to other people.

The 1965 Ford Galaxie is twenty-two feet long. It’s a big steel box and it’s on the road with a bunch of plastic cars with less steel in them than your average Hot Wheels. The bottom line here is that I feel safe in my Galaxie. A hell of a lot safer than I felt in my ’83 Firebird (wrecked when I was 16), my ’83 Mustang (engine died), my ’73 Volkswagen Bus (engine died), my ’89 Convertible Mustang (hit a truck), my ’94 Toyota Camry (hit a Jeep), or even my ’78 Monte Carlo (caught fire and blew up).

In addition to my feeling safe, the Galaxie has the added bonus of having more style than any car made in the last twenty years. Yes, there may be a whole thing where there are Chevy Guys and Ford Guys, but first, you’re Classic Car guy. When I pass another classic car, I wave and they wave back because we know that while we’re both probably getting less than 15 miles per gallon, we’re still recycling, because our car has been used before. And let’s not forget that unlike new cars, my Galaxie doesn’t assume I’m stupid. It doesn’t tell me when I’ve left my keys in the ignition or left my lights on or my door open. It assumes that if I’m bright enough to drive a car, I can figure out when my lights are on and that just maybe I have a reason for them being on. It’s also not going to remind me to put on my seatbelt or when I’m really low on gas. Yes, it has a gas gauge, but it’s not going to beep at me. In fact my Galaxie is incapable of beeping at me for any reason at all.

Having said all of this, I still haven’t gotten to the best part about driving my Galaxie: It is fun to drive. Driving most modern cars is almost like playing a video game. Most modern cars are so air tight you can’t hear the road. You can’t feel the engine. Hell, you could easily be in some bad car simulator.  Whereas when you’re driving a car like the Galaxie, you experience the drive. You can feel the road. You can hear the engine. There aren’t sensors to tell you when something is wrong. YOU are the sensor.

My point here is that while I’m going to talk a lot about all of the problems I’ve had with my car, the only reason I’m talking about them is because I love my car. If it weren’t for that love, it’d just be this machine that needs work all the time. It’s not though. Instead it’s this machine that needs attention from time to time and after giving that attention, it continually rewards me with something more than just a means to get from point A to point B. It rewards me with a good drive.

To Be Continued….

After work one day, I stopped by a Napa Auto Parts store to buy a battery. I told the bearded guy behind the counter that I needed a new battery for a 1965 Ford Galaxie. He grunted a little and said, “Ford Galaxie, eh?”

“Yeah, it’s in pretty good shape. It runs fine. It just needs a new battery. It’s been sitting for a while.”

“How long was it sitting?”

“I don’t know. I just bought it a few days ago for $1,200.”

The guy put a car battery on the counter and said, “Hmm, bad deal. Here’s your battery.”

Knowing what I know now, I would have walked out without the battery and found another place. At the time I thought the guy just didn’t like classic cars.

I got home and put the battery in the car and it started much easier. It still needed a little coaxing but I figured that was just the old car being an old car.

By late November it had started to freeze overnight and occasionally there was snow. Luckily I was driving a car weighing over two tons. Driving the Galaxie in the snow was even more like driving a boat.  One good thing about it was that the heater still worked. In fact it worked really damn well. The Galaxie could go from freezing cold to room temperature in about five minutes.

At first when I started the car on those cold mornings I thought that the car was overheating but I quickly discovered it was just the ice on the hood turning to steam. On one such morning, I noticed a bit more steam than normal as I drove to work. I checked the aftermarket gauges below the dash. The temp was closing in on three hundred degrees. The car was overheating.

I pulled into a nearby parking lot and shut off the car. I called my wife and got a ride to work. After work, I had my brother pick me up and we went back to my car. After a quick inspection it was clear that there was ice in the radiator. The previous owner hadn’t driven the car much and kept it in a garage. So I suppose it’s not all that surprising that he didn’t keep it full of antifreeze.

My brother suggested he’d follow me and I’d drive the car back to the house since working in a parking lot in the freezing cold with nowhere to go inside kind of sucks. It was a long two miles. I got the car started and within a couple minutes it was already past the 200 degree mark. By the time we got back to my house it was pouring steam out again.

We were fairly certain ice had not got into the engine block, but inspecting the radiator showed that it had at least one nickel sized hole. It was time for a new radiator.

I asked around and people said I should get an aluminum radiator. It was lighter and better. Unfortunately they were also upwards of $300. Finally I found one online for something like $280. I bought the thing and a week later the box showed up.

It was a beautiful silver and as soon as I looked at it I realized it was the wrong radiator. They’d insisted it was the right one, but not only were the hoses in the wrong spots, the radiator wasn’t even shaped right. I carefully put it back in the box and reassured myself that I had taken a look at their returns policy before buying and that they’d refund all of my money.

The bad part about that was that until the radiator company refunded my money, I didn’t have the cash to fix the car. While waiting for the refund, I looked more online. I called junk yards. I called my friend Gabe who has a 1966 Impala. He told me that when his radiator broke, he called a place down on South Tacoma Way called Northwest Radiator. I gave them a call. They said it would cost anywhere for $50 to $300 to fix it. The next day I brought the radiator down and they spent the next few days rebuilding it to the tune of just over $250.

Once I got it back, my brother and I reinstalled the radiator and my Galaxie was back up and running.

To be continued next week.

Getting the $1200 together took a bit of doing, but a couple days later I had it. My wife and I drove out across the Narrows Bridge one November night after work and drove out to the seller’s house. The seller and his wife came out. I gave him the cash, which he immediately gave to his wife.  A few minutes later, I had the signed over title, a receipt for the payment, and keys to my 1965 Galaxie. He’d even warmed it up for me.

I started up the car with no problem. He mentioned that there was no gas in it and that the first place I should go is the gas station. Given that we were across the bridge near Port Orchard (which for non-locals is the middle of nowhere), I hoped the car could get to a gas station. I buckled the lap belt and took a look around. This car has some serious room in it. I turned on the stacked headlights and smiled at the dim glow of the dashboard. It ran two thirds of the way across the car and it looked cool as hell. I put the car into gear and followed my wife’s van out onto the road.

Driving a giant classic car like the Galaxie takes a lot of getting used to. You can’t make precision moves with a vehicle like this. As we drove through the night, it was totally clear to me why some people referred to these cars as ‘boats’. I kept looking at the gas gauge. It was on ‘E’ and not moving even a little. I’d never been to this part of the peninsula before. So I wasn’t concerned about nothing looking familiar. I was concerned that there wasn’t a gas station anywhere. I grabbed my cell off the bench seat and called my wife in the van ten feet in front of me. Unfortunately we were so in the middle of nowhere that it wasn’t connecting. I tried a couple more times and got through. She assured me that she knew where we were and where we were going. Five minutes later, we were at the gas station.

I put seventeen gallons of unleaded into the car and told my wife not to worry. She could go on ahead. I got in the car and turned the key. Nothing happened. I tried again. Nothing. I called my wife and asked if she could turn around. She came back, we hooked up some jumper cables and fifteen minutes later, we were on the road.

It was good to be on the freeway rather than the dark back roads. One of the benefits was I could suddenly see the car. While I was admiring the size and look of the car, I noticed I could see what was in front of me reflected on the hood of the car. The Galaxie had no problem getting to and maintaining freeway speeds. In fact it seemed more comfortable going fast than it did on surface streets.

Modern cars often feel like car simulators in that you feel very detached from the road. With the Galaxie it was very clear that I was driving on a road. It’s not a passive thing that you’re doing to get from point A to point B. It’s an active thing. The low roar of the engine sounded better than any other car I’d ever owned. I could also hear a low whistle like a window was down. I checked the driver’s side window. Shut. I reached over to the passenger side but I couldn’t reach the passenger door from the driver’s seat. This was a big car. I looked at the windows and saw the wing window on the passenger side had part of the rubber missing from it. That’s where the sound was coming from.

We got the car home. I grabbed the jump box and plugged it in. I decided the first thing I’d be buying was a new battery.

To Be Continued Next Week

It began with the idea that rather than spending $1,000 for some ten year old Toyota Camry, I would buy a classic car instead. I’ve had a thing for classic cars ever since my friend, Gabe got a 1966 Impala. Before that, cars were just a way to get around. The Impala, though, this wasn’t a car. It was a ride. And it was gigantic. It had bench seats instead of seats and seatbelts that felt like you were strapping yourself into a fighter jet. It didn’t have airbags. It didn’t have crumple zones. It was a big piece of American Steel with a lot of power and more room in the trunk than most closets.

Shortly after Gabe got his Impala, I started looking at classic cars trying to find the one I wanted. Then I saw the movie Wonder Boys. The car driven by Michael Douglas in that movie is a 1966 Maroon Ford Galaxie 500 Convertible. For whatever reason, I liked this car.

So I started at Ford Galaxies. From 1959 to 1964, Galaxies looked too much like Thunderbirds for my taste. And there was something about the tail lights of the 1966 that I just didn’t like. After 1966, Galaxies tended to get bigger and uglier.  But the 1965 Galaxie was beautiful. It was the first year that they did a significant redesign of the Galaxie and its stacked double headlights and chrome grill just worked for me for whatever reason. Sometime around the year 2001 or so, I told my friend Gabe that I would be getting a 1965 Ford Galaxie.

It wasn’t until November of 2008 that I finally realized my dream of owning a ’65 Galaxie. I was in need of a car and had around $1,000 to spend on one. I looked online and found a guy selling a 1965 four door Ford Galaxie for $1,200. Despite my interest in classic cars, I had no mechanical ability so I called up my brother, a tow truck driver and asked if he wanted to go across the bridge with me past Gig Harbor, to this guy’s house to check out his car.

We drove out there one night, down a long dead end road, to a guy’s house where he had half a dozen classic cars in and around his garage. We introduced ourselves and he opened a garage door. The Galaxie looked like it was a white or light gray. (Actually it was light blue, but the light just made it look that way.) I took a couple pictures.

As my brother and I walked around it we could see that there were a handful of dents and areas where there was a bit of rust. While we were checking it out, the guy told us how his wife used to drive it and that before that he drove it across the country to New Jersey and back a few times to visit relatives. He told us how the original 352 engine had died so he’d pulled that out and put in a two barrel 390. This meant something to my brother, but for me, at the time I had no idea what the difference was except that I was pretty sure a higher number was better.

I opened the driver’s side door and looked inside. Bench seats. I cannot stress enough how much I love bench seats. There were a couple of small rips in the front seat, but nothing too bad. The rug on the floor of the car was a bit worn. The front third of the headliner was missing entirely and there was a fair amount of surface rust on the exposed metal roof interior. He told us how the seats were actually out of a 1968 Galaxie because the original seats and headliner had been almost destroyed by his son’s dog during the time that his son had the car.

He opened the hood and we started it up. It just took a couple of pumps of the gas pedal to start. It was quiet. Not nearly as loud as Gabe’s Impala. Still, it sounded nice. It sounded like a real engine, rather the buzzing sound of most modern cars. And looking at the engine, it made sense. It looked like something I could understand if I put my mind to it.

I asked if we could take it for a test drive and the guy said, of course. I decided to let my brother drive because I didn’t know what to listen for. I shut the hood and got in the passenger seat. I looked behind me as we backed out and it seemed like there was a football field between me and the back window. This car was gigantic. We pulled out of the driveway and headed down the dead end street. The ride was smooth. I asked my brother what he thought of the car.

He said, “If you don’t buy this car, I’m going to.”

To Be Continued…