My Journey Begins

Well eBay convinced me that my dream of classic car ownership was not too far off after all. In fact, it was so near at hand that after only a few months of searching, I came across this beauty out of Atlanta, GA.

After only a few hours of hesitation, I hit "Buy it Now" and apparently pissed off a number of other bidders who began emailing the seller offering thousands more than I paid.

Purchase complete, I now had to figure out how to get it to me in Viera, FL. Turns out, there's a service affiliated with eBay called uShip. I posted my needs on the site and immediately received requests to ship my car. Sadly, most of the people with the most reasonable prices were  completely uncommunicative once I expressed initial interest. Finally, a man identifying himself as Captain Rambo offered me a more expensive option, but he was willing to move fast, and he maintained constant communication. Twenty-four hours after agreeing to the contract, my car was in my garage.

Now, not all is perfect, despite the beauty radiating from that picture. Overall, the car is in excellent condition. There are some dings in the paint, the trim strips are dented, likely from years of other car doors being carelessly opened in parking lots, there are two cracks in the paint, totaling about 18 inches, and there are some minor rust issues in the passenger side wheel well which *might* have penetrated the metal. Hard to say right now, but the paint has some bubbles on the outside, right where the rust is on the inside. On the mechanical side of things, the car runs rather well with only two exceptions. First, it does not reliably shift in to second. About thirty percent of the time, it hangs in neutral. Second, at idle, the car should be running 900rpm, but maintains only 450 to 500. This is slow enough, that occasionally, the car will die.
Inside the cab, there's some work to be done as well. The leather of the front seats is toast, and is being held together with hope and seat covers. The upholstery is functional, although I'd like to replace it. The interior paneling needs a lot of work. There are places where it is held together by black duct tape and some screws that are definitely not original. After that, the instrument panel is so dim that it cannot be seen at night, so  for safety's sake, I need to figure something out there. Last of the major issues is that the sound system in the car currently consists of a cardboard cutout with an image of a radio on it, plastered to the dash, and screw holes in the doors where speakers go.

My current plan is to preserve the car first, then begin the mechanical and interior restoration.

A couple other angles on the car: