1958 Vintage Cadillac Extended Deck Sedan Restoration
Jan
08

A New Year Dawns

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After the Win­ter we suf­fered through last year, who would ever have thought we could be see­ing weather like this.  I’ll admit our weather the last 12 months has been more than chal­leng­ing, what with a Tor­nado, Hur­ri­cane, Bliz­zard, Hail Storms and Micro-Bursts, even an Earth­quake!!  Who could have imag­ined we could see 60 degree temps in Jan­u­ary!!  Yet here we are, yes­ter­day I couldn’t resist and pulled the “Gray Lady” out of her slum­ber, took her out for a spin, topped off the fuel tank, turned a few heads, fin­ished up by clean­ing her and recov­er­ing her.

Turned up an issue while out, we have been hav­ing a minor tranny leak all sea­son from the front seal.  Now with her laid up for a while it seems to have got­ten much worse and my be more than just a seal.  The only issue with the car we never dealt with was the trans­mis­sion, we’ve run it a thou­sand miles, and now we have no choice but to rebuild it.  Ahhh well, we debated doing it when the car was apart, but every­one said to just put it in and run it.  Just delayed the inevitable I guess.

Prob­lem is, this past week I also found that I need to rebuild the tranny in my GMC Savana 3500 too!!!!  Geez…looks like it won’t be a pleas­ant Spring with about a 5K expense to start the year with.  Could be worse I guess, but for now both of them are put away for the rest of the Win­ter and early tomor­row morn­ing I hop in the Chevy HHR for the 1400 mile trek down to South Florida.  We’ll try to take in a cou­ple shows while there and I will pop in if I turn up any­thing interesting.

 

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Dec
23

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

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Late Fall has been a try­ing time here in West­ern Mass­a­chu­setts, the “Hal­loween” storm caused much dam­age, dis­rupted busi­ness and the cleanup is finally fin­ished.  I’ve not had a lot of time and not been update here as I should, but the “Gray Lady” is snug in her garage.  I’ve still got to top off her fuel tank and add fuel sta­bi­lizer, do a final cleanup, cover her back up and wait until the bet­ter weather returns in the Spring.  I’ll pop in and out through the Win­ter from South Florida where I will be try­ing to escape the cold and ice here in the frozen North.

We do have plans to attend a cou­ple events while there, the Boca Raton Con­cours is in Feb­ru­ary and the AACA has a show sched­uled in the south Beach area of Miami Beach.  We also will have time to visit South Beach Clas­sics down in Miami to check out their new loca­tion and inventory.

Mary Lee and I wish all of you a very merry and happy hol­i­day sea­son, and a happy, healthy and pros­per­ous New Year.

Till then,

 

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Nov
24

Happy Thanksgiving

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Nov
21

Did You Miss Us?

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It’s been an inter­est­ing year here in West­ern Mass­a­chu­setts, we have suf­fered a Hur­ri­cane, Tor­nado, Bliz­zards, sev­eral micro-burst fueled dam­ag­ing Hail­storms and now the famous “Hal­loween” snow­storm.  Prop­erty dam­age here has been even more severe than that expe­ri­enced dur­ing the tor­nado or Hur­ri­cane.  It started Sat­ur­day night dump­ing more than 13″ of heavy wet snow, it was made more severe because all of the leaves were still on the trees.  That Sat­ur­day night at our house sounded like the gun­fight at the OK cor­ral, “crack” and down would come a limb, over and over again.  Power went out very early dur­ing the storm, and we awoke to com­plete deves­ta­tion.…. Pho­tos are of the deves­ta­tion in our own back­yard the fol­low­ing day, click on them for a larger view.

Three days later, with power still out, Mary Lee and I hopped a flight down to Florida for a pre-holiday break.  Well, we’re back, cleaned up, some­what and now get­ting ready for the Hol­i­days.  The “Gray Lady” is snug as a bug in her garage, we did have a tree down on the roof but thank­fully with no dam­age.  As a com­mu­nity we are still clean­ing up the storm debris, some of us suf­fered with­out power for as long as eight days.

As with most clas­sic fans, our sea­son here is over, though we may try to attend an event up in Stock­bridge, MA on Decem­ber 4th only if the weather is per­fect.  A group up there as part of their Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tion will try to re-create that famous Nor­man Rock­well Christ­mas scene in front of the Red Lion Inn, com­plete with the clas­sic cars of the era.  We will par­tic­i­pate if all of the plan­ets align correctly.…..

Mary Lee and I wish all of you a happy, healthy and pros­per­ous hol­i­day season

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cour­tesy of Phillipe Ruel and the Cadillac/LaSalle Club forum

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cour­tesy of Phillipe Ruel and the Cadillac/LaSalle Club forum

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Sun­day dawned with one of those rare Indian sum­mer days.  The “Gray Lady” made her sec­ond trip up to Orange to attend the “Cel­e­brate The Har­vest” car show.  For the sec­ond time, we got skunked here, this show really doesn’t fit for us, there is no legit­i­mate class for us to com­pete in.  It’s a long day, with travel we were up there for more than 8 hours and with no chance to be awarded any­thing it tends to be bor­ing.  We ended up in Class E, a col­lec­tion of 1958 — 1964 autos that is a very bad fit for us, we were joined by a nice Chrysler, a Dodge 300, ’58 Chevy Impala and a Buick Elec­tra, every­thing else seemed to be ’60’s era Impalas with a few Fords tossed in.  Con­sid­er­ing the dra­matic style changes and size dif­fer­ences between 1960 and 1961 we were really com­par­ing apples to oranges.

Plaques were awarded to 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in every class based on a pop­u­lar vote, not being local we were at a dis­tinct dis­ad­van­tage there.  The top­per was when they awarded the 25 or so spe­cialty awards, a col­lec­tion of spec­tac­u­lar tro­phies, but we fit in no cat­e­gory, so had zero chance of an award there either.  They awarded best Chevro­let, Ford, Mopar, Mus­tang, Corvette, Truck and Buick/Oldsmobile, then best inte­rior, paint, engine, wheels, etc.  The 5 or 6 Cadil­lacs on the field had no shot at any­thing, I didn’t see any Lin­colns either and that was a good thing for them, because they would have been in the same boat.

It’s a great venue, with a nice parade and flea mar­ket, next year we might attend again, but def­i­nitely with­out the car, as it’s just not worth the effort it takes.  The Orange Busi­ness Asso­ci­a­tion does a great job orga­niz­ing and run­ning the event, and puts all of the rev­enue gen­er­ated to very good use.  If you are a Ford or Chevy owner, put this one high on your list for next year, it is a fun time, just not a fit for us.  It was a nice day out, with spec­tac­u­lar weather, just too long and bor­ing a day for what really amounted to just a ride in the coun­try for us.

Next Sun­day will see us at the 5th Annual Wheels & Whiskers event in West­field, another great fund rais­ing event.  See you there, weather per­mit­ting or course!

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Just back from 4 days at Her­shey, after attend­ing the 2011 East­ern Divi­sional Fall Meet, “The Engines Keep Revin’ In 2011″.  Details and pho­tos to fol­low when time per­mits.  Today we are attend­ing the Orange Busi­ness Asso­ci­a­tion spon­sored show out in Orange, MA to “Cel­e­brate the Har­vest”, have a great weekend!

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Oct
02

Rain, Rain and more Rain

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Another rainy weekend.….As expected, Saturday’s event in Brim­field and Sunday’s in West­field were both rained out.  Brim­field was re-scheduled to the next Sat­ur­day, but unfor­tu­nately we are going to be in Her­shey, PA for the East­ern Divi­sional National Fall Meet most of the week and won’t be back in time to attend.  The West­field show has been rained out for the 4th time!  They are now resched­uled for Octo­ber 16th, hope­fully they will be able to pull it off then.….…

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