It's been awhile since the last post but we did a couple of days in San Francisco. I was glad to get out of the big city and all the traffic that goes with it.

We missed out on a once in a life time buy on the way up, it was a 1966 GTA 390 convertible Fairlane with original paint. The interior was getting tiered, it had a scrape on one side and the paint was all wearing through, but it had not been molested and had all the correct parts. He called someone else who was interested because it was going to take a week for me to get the cash from Aus and organize transport.We are now in Washington visiting family, I especially wanted to see my aunt as she is having health issues and I suspect I wont see her again after this visit. I have been looking for cars up here and called a 1966 GT 390 Fairlane but I was a bit late for that one. Nothing else near to where I'm staying has really grabbed my attention.

He couldn't wait a week..pfft! I didn't see too much for sale either Ian.. even at the Long beach swapmeet Wasn't that much that caught my eye. We did drive past a car yard near Garden Grove and there was a 57 Thunderbird in there.. I said to my mate go back so we can have a look " yeah later" ..never happened.. He did go back to see it when I left . Said they wanted 25K for it and the paint was shot..  Prestige had some good ones as usual but top dollar.. 



"Came too close to dying to stop living now!"

I haven't posted on our trip for a while but we finally returned home to Australia last Wednesday. Quite a bit has happened since the last posting. We decided to sell the trailer/caravan in Washington rather than worrying about it on the last week before we left.While we were in Washington we went to Mt Rainer as it was going to be the last chance that we might have for our 5yo daughter to finally get to and experience some snow. There was plenty of snow up there but we had to climb to it. At about 7000Ft we found some good snow fields and she had a ball, we made a little snowman and she did lots of sliding about. My daughter has lots of energy and she was wanting to go even higher but was enough as we had to get down again (my wife turned back long before we got to the snow).Also while in Washington I met up with Marc another member of the forum. Towards the end of our stay in Washington Marc took me to a couple of friends houses to see their car collections. The first house we went to was Marc's friend Jim where there was a great collection of low mileage original cars(mostly Fords), some still with original paint on them. Interestingly most of the cars belonged to Jim's wife who had been buying up good original cars many decades ago long before they met. One of Jim's own cars was an early Ford coupe hotrod with overhead valve hemi cylinder heads on the old side valve V8 and didn't that make an incredible sound. The next stop was friends of Marc's, Frank's and Cathy's house with an amazing collection of 57 Tbirds and a couple of other cars as well. (Frank restores cars for a business) They had four supercharged 57 Tbirds, one of those is in the process of being restored with the other three all finished, an E code that is Cathy's daily driver, a D code that is completely original including paint (it was pointed out to me how rough the were at the factory on the finish of the cars with all the lead splatter in the engine bay that was just painted over and other things not finished that well). The most unusual car in there collection was a supercharged 1957 stationwagon, from my recollection Frank said they believe there were 7 made to his knowledge and it is the only one known to still exist. Frank and Cathy also had a great collection of memorabilia with the huge collection of model/toy cars with about 90% of them being 1957 Thunderbirds, and there were hundreds of them of all different types. I'm sure it must be the most comprehensive collection of 1957 Tbird toys in existence.

Welcome home Ian.. Your gonna get the "come down" soon .. wishing you where doing it all again..  Hemi heads on the flathead..? Ardun heads? Im going to kick you for not taking your camera !! 



"Came too close to dying to stop living now!"

They're the ones. I'm kicking myself.

This frank is Frank Stubbs?

Frank/Rebop

Bristol, In ( by Elkhart) 

Yes Frank and Cathy Stubbs.

He's well known in the Y-block world, reproduced the F code air cleaners (like the one on my car) . He's been written about in Hemmings.

Frank/Rebop

Bristol, In ( by Elkhart) 

Well we have been back over a month now so I should probably finish off this post. Getting back to reality and not being able to get on the forum for a couple of weeks is my excuse for not doing this earlier.
It was a quick trip down to San Diego from Washington as we were heading back to Australia in less than two weeks and there was the last minute shopping and packing to be done for shipping back home.
We were stopping at the motel 6's on the trip, one was in Weed northern California that we later heard on the news that they had the forest fires go through and burnt a lot of the town. The next night was in Fresno, that was interesting with all the hookers and pimps in the neighbourhood.
The next day we drove up to Kings Canyon NP to see the big Sequoias and the later that afternoon we were invited to stopped buy Charlie Burns's place for a wonderful meal and live music. Charlie's farther inlaw is quite a talented fiddle player. It was a great afternoon and we really appreciated the hospitality.
We stayed at a motel on the I5 that night then headed down to LA the next day. We did look at a couple of cars on the way but they were duds. We stayed in Riverside that Sunday night as it was near buy where I had to pick up my roof from Larry's Thunderbirds the next day.
After stopping in at the shipping warehouse to check on packing options we headed down to San Diego. It was a strange feeling coming to the end of the big trip after two months on the road.
I did lots of ordering the next day as I had to get it packed and up to LA by Friday as we were leaving on the next Monday and it was also the holiday weekend. We packed everything into boxes Thursday night and loaded the Suburban for the drive the next day. I took the 3rd row seat out and the truck was full to the top. Remember my wife had nearly three months of shopping so it was packed full.
We were making good time on the way up on Friday then when we were 2/3rd's of the way there we were involved in a pile up on the I5 and the front of the truck got quite bent. The bumper was pushed back and touching the front tyre and the fan shroud was touching the aircon pump pulley so it couldn't be driven. My biggest concern was I had to get to the warehouse that day followed by the fact that I still had to sell the truck. When we had finished with all the police formalities and the tow truck finally arrived I got him to hook his winch to various points on the front of the truck and pull the front out, much to the amazement of the police officer who seemed quite surprised that I was able to straighten it so that it could be driven again and made the comment that he had never seen anything like that before. Finally we got to the warehouse and built the pallet plastic wrapping it and tying it all down before heading back to San Diego but with the delays earlier we ended up picking up some of the afternoon traffic.
Fortunately someone who rang me the night before was still interested in the truck and came and bought it that night but probably for about a thousand dollars less than I would have got for it before it was bent.
The rest of the trip was not very eventful, just some last minute shopping, packing bags for the long flight home and saying our goodbyes.