Howdy Fellers,

What a day Saturday was. Talked about a mix! Some really good bits mixed
with some really bad points. Here's the story. Sorry if I get a little long.

Wilber the '57 half ton finally came home Saturday. Wish I could say that
all went well, but it didn't.

It all started when I had to get Preston the '51 Hamilton built half ton off
of the car hauling trailer. He had to get towed home from work after I
accidentally ran him out of gas thanks to a malfunctioning gas gage. Just
under a half a tank isn't a half a tank it's an empty tank. IT only took a
couple hours to figure out that the tank was empty... After dumping a couple
gallons in the tank, and a few cranks, fuel was flowing again. But Preston
refused to start. Fuel started to hemorrhaging out of the carb now. I
figured this was not good, so swapped carbs. After that, no matter what I
did, the most I could get out of him was a weak cough. It made absolutely no
difference at all what I did. Pour gas down the carb, cough. Don't pour gas
down the carb, cough Always just enough to cause the starter to disengage.
After half a day of nothing but coughs, I gave up, rounded up some friends
and we got him up on the car hauling trailer.

I live on something of a busy street so decided that rather than blocking
the street with the trailer and tow vehicle while we unloaded Preston, we
would unload him a bit out into the street but parallel to the curb and push
him into possession when the rear bumper of the 02 Ford sport trac. Things
were progressing well when suddenly I heard a "scrunch". The sport track's
left rear quarter panel/wheel well became entangled with Preston's bumper.
Extricating the Ford resulted in about a 3 inch rip in the ford's fiberglass
and quite a bit of Preston's paint now residing on the Ford. GGGUURR!!!!!!!

Another try and Preston was finally resting comfortable in the driveway with
his nose pointing toward the garage all ready for his upcoming engine change
pre-op.

Now it was time to go get Wilbur the '57 Transtar out of another friend's
(Don) yard where he has resided for over a year. (don't ask... Why Wilbur
had to live there is another LLLOOONNNGG story and not pleasant) So my bud
Jason (who is restoring a '52 2R-5) and I set out to get Wilbur. We arrived
just fine with the empty trailer and got things lined up so we could roll
Wilbur out from behind garage, make a quarter turn to the right and roll him
up on the trailer. Now understand that Wilbur doesn't run, so he has to be
pushed and pulled around.

We were able to pull Wilbur out from behind the garage with no problem using
Don's Chevy van and a tow strap. How Wilbur's rear tires sank into the
ground about an inch while his fronts stayed right on top is a mystery to
me... We got him lined up with the trailer and using Don's own personal fork
lift, we commenced to push Wilbur onto the trailer. Everything was going
GREAT! Perhaps that should have been my first warning that something was
about to go wrong...

I was in the cab while he was being pushed onto the trailer to come home. I
felt the rear wheels clear the ramp and mashed on the brake to stop his
forward progress. Nothing! In fact, he was picking on speed as the trailer
was actually sitting nose down now. I tried to yank him into gear but
remembered that I had disconnected the linkage as it is so far out of
adjustment, I couldn't get him out of gear with the linkage attached. Let
out on the clutch... Nothing. He was set to be in neutral by moving the
"ears" from underneath so he could be moved around. Yanked on the parking
break. He slowed a bit; actually it was more like he just didn't pick up any
more speed. Then I felt a thud as his front wheels jumped over the edge of
the trailer and the frame settled on to the front of the trailer. I also
herd a rather sickening crunch sound as Wilbur's drivers side fender smacked
into the tailgate of my 02 Ford Explorer. To make a long story short, an
hour later and thanks to the help of Don's fork lift, Wilbur was back on the
trailer and cinched down.

After all the trouble outlined about, Wilber came home riding the trailer
just fine and now sits atop the trailer in front of my house in all his sad,
faded glory for all the world to see.

I don't want to talk about the condition of what used to be the sport
track's tailgate. Suffice it to say that what is there is not pretty.
There's a lesson here. If you are loading up a vehicle that can't be
stopped, be real sure to have a plan "B" in place to get it stopped.

Sunday was a bit better as I dug through my stash of parts, selected the 4
best fenders (yes, I picked one for each corner. LOL) to replace the ones on
Wilbur and went over to Don's house to weld up the stress cracks that they
had in them. Now Don has a little buzz box MIG machine (20% duty cycle).
This was the first time I've ever MIGed sheet metal, All my sheet metal
welding was done while in the Air Force using either oxy-acet for support
equipment or TIG for aircraft parts. All my MIG experience was in welding
heavy rail road car parts. So, this was to be my first experience in MIGing
thin, rusty stuff. I actually made some pretty good welds over all. Guess
it's like they say, once you have it down, you never really loose it. then
again, maybe 10+ years of being a weldor helped even if I never MIGed sheet
metal before.

Glenn