This is a car my friend's uncle has had since the mid 70's. We've known about this car since high school. Anyway, we both have always had a passion for Corvettes and about 15 years ago I bought a nice '72 LS5 Convertible.

Tom has always pestered his uncle to sell the '66 to him to no avail. Well, a few years ago, his uncle got into some legal trouble and needed $$$ to pay for lawyers to keep his tail out of the pokey. He calls Tom and tells him to come get the Vette quick before he changes his mind. $15,000 later, the car is Tom's and we are heading home. Like most stories though it gets better.

I'm driving the truck home with the Corvette on an old car dolley when all of a sudden there's a terrible skidding sound. I feel the truck sort-of lurch and look in the driver's side mirror to see a 66 Corvette passing me! Now mind you; this is 5:00 at night in heavy traffic on a two lane road posted at 55 MPH. Naturally, we are going through a ravine with a grade of about 8% downhill. I look ahead as a couple of cars crest the other side and say - (cuss words) we're going to have a head-on and kill someone. By now there's cars going everywhere to avoid us. This road parallels a mountain range and there are large 6' wide by 2' deep concrete ditches along the driver's side of the road. Luckily, the car starts up the other side and continues to drift left off the side of the road, shoots across the ditch and comes to rest in an empty field.

Once I get the truck shut down and we all empty out our shorts; we make our way across the road to where the Corvette has stopped. By dumb luck, where the car crossed, the ditch had been filled in with dirt. Other than a bent-up heat shield underneath; it came away completely unscathed.

Now we begin to extricate the car from the field and the police show up and I have to do some fast talking. The police sargent happens to be the bishop of the church I attended when I was a kid and, because nobody was hurt, lets us go with a lecture about securing the car better - to which we heartily agree! Later, we found the diff gear teeth were in pieces and had locked the diff up long enough to lock up the rear tires and come looose. The dolly was an old 'loaner' and has a single strap which wrapped around the front tires. The car literally twisted out of the straps when this happened. Anyway, we got the car over to Tom's shop without further incident.

Here's some pics:

http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u...d/MVC-026S.jpg

http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u...d/MVC-001S.jpg

http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u...d/MVC-009S.jpg

Check out the air cleaner:
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u...d/MVC-008S.jpg

The car has since been pulled off the frame and is headed for paint. The frame just returned from being blasted & epoxy coated.

-Lurkin

 

Trusting people has taught me how stupid I can be. My first barn purchase was 3 Camaros, two '68's and one '69 convetible for $1700 and I left a check for a down payment. Owner ask if I wanted a BOS and I said that they seemed honest and that if they cashed my check, the deal was closed. NOT! They sold the convertible the next day for $1800 and called me offering the other two if I was still interested. They also cashed the check! Stupid me.
Second fish...My accountant had an awesome NCRS '67 coupe that I always wanted. In 2001, he called and offered the car for $25,000. I checked it out and being dumb, I hesitated. He called me again a month later and I declined. It went to Carlisle and cought the cash in 45 minutes. Stupid me.
There are others but don't wish to bore you all so my latest barn find is now dragging me into the dirt. While looking to a job and meeting with my unemployment advisor, he tells me that his 85 Y/O mom just turned down a Corvette because it needed too much work. She is dying and wants to drive a Vette before she passes. I was put in contact with the seller and purchased a '66 roadster, SB, that was "matching numbers" for $14000... another story about trusting people. One thing is that the lady did find a '75 convertible that she has driven most of the summer, before illness prevented her from driving.

'Nuff said'

 

I have a friend who in 1976 bought a 69 mustang mach 1 with a 429. Being a dumb kid (he was 17 in 76), he put a big holley double pumper carb on it and just slapped it in. He then went to our high school to show off. He floored it and the trans kickdown jammed the carb wide open. As he saw himself heading for disaster he put it in neutral and pulled over then shut it off. Unfortunatly he spun the bearings. I helped him pull the motor and he had it rebuilt. When we finaly put it back together I noticed that the water pump was shot. I told him not to run the car and we would get a new water pump and have it running the next day. The next day as I drove to his house I saw the car on the side of the road with steam pouring out from the front grill. I helped him tow it back to his garage (his mothers garage actualy)where it still sits today. In the years since, it has been home to a family of racoons, multiple generations of mice, and a rat or two. I have offered to buy it a number of times but he swears that he is gonna fix it one day. It has now decayed to a near total loss, and now that he has seen the Barrett jackson auctions on TV he has started looking at getting it back on the road. So far everybody that has looked at it has passed or told him that it would cost more to restore than the car would ever be worth. I think that this is a common story for those guys who swear that one day they will get it running.

 

This is my red/red 1967 Convertible with the original 327/350 motor and only 24,987 miles. I brought it home last year after it had been sitting since at least 1976, dropped a battery in rolled down the power windows! Pretty cool huh? Even the cigarette lighter still works!
I'm still not sure why this gentleman even sold it to me. I learned after the fact that this car was nearly impossible to get, you know the type, Unapproachable! You could'nt even make an offer of any sort! Anyway the second car is 'the one that got away' It's a Glenn Green '65 survivor that at the time was only offered at $25K but i kept trying to lowball. This went on for months and when finally i decided to get it, I called up the guy and......well you know the rest.
I still get a sick empty feeling in my stomach when I think about it.

 

I just love hearing these stories.

 

A 66 and 68 GTO are located in A shed and are rusting badly.The guy is blind and refuses to talk about them let alone sell them.

 

that is quite a story !

 

Last year I ended up finding a 66 roadster that was stored in barn for many years. My mother in law gave me the lead from casual talking with one of her tenants. Surprisingly, the frame is in really great shape, a little scalely but not major repairs needed.

The owner stated the car could be started right up and driven - yeah right. To his credit, I was able to change the pts and condensor and with a new carb in place, fuel in the bowls, the engine did fire up.

It took me 6 months of calling him every once and a while and simply asking if he wanted to sell. Finally he needed some $$ so the deal was made.



Car is painted and frame restoration is in process by yours truely.

SAS

 

Site has been suspended.

(why?)

 

Another 66 427/425 barn find. I work at a lot of shops In the Detriot area and have a pic of my 64 coupe on my laptop. The guy I was working with this week said that his dad has one of those in his barn. I started asking about it and he said that his dad bought it in around 68 and parked it in the late 70s. He said that it has both tops original 427 light green power windows and thinks his dad put on side pipes. When I tryed to get the dads info that's when the conversation stopped. I also have a llead on a 69 427/435 Triple Black Conv. that's 3 miles from my house off the road sense the 80s.

 

For some reason I seriously doubt that

 

Breaks my heart to see that picture

Glad it was rescued

 

How about a carport find.

Belongs to a friend.

http://www.buicks.net/racing/flint_flyer/index.html

Another guy I know went to a farm estate auction last summer. There was an early running e-type in the auction so he decided to wait and bid on it. It came up and the initial bid was '12' so he bid '15' and got it for $1500 and drove it home. The other bidder thought the bid was 15,000! The auctioneer had no idea what the car was worth. It was in really good shape.

Tyler

 

I hate to start off with this but (TRUE STORY)
There was roomer that a guy here in town had an older mustang fastback Shelby. A new neighbor to me that used to live about three miles away when he was a kid knew of it. He gave me the exact location of the car. I couldn't even go to bed that night I had to find out of that car was still there. I drove to the house that I was told and nothing there. It was renters in this old house. well across the alley was a old guy working on a 66 falcon wagon? I came up to him and BS with him for a while and he told me that the car used to belong to his neighbor but he passed away years ago. He explained that the neighbors brother rented out the house to people instead of selling the house. The renters needed the garage space so they pushed the car down the block where the alive brother lived. I asked the guy if he knew the house that he was in? He wasn't sure but gave me an idea where to look. I started knocking door to door, feeling like a fool asking if anyone had an old mustang. I came to the last house on the block and a guy sitting on the porch reading a love novel was drifting of and on asleep. I woke him up and asked him if he owned an old mustang he said no, but he used to have one. He told me that his daughter got rid of it. She would come over and mow the grass for him once a week and they had to push this car out in the driveway to get to all the lawn tools. He explains what a head ach it was for her and that one day a nice man came by and asked about the car. He said the car didn't even run, and he still took it away without charging me.*****: What kind of mustang was it I asked? He got me a pic with his brother in front of it the day he brought it home new. A 67 Shelby 500. It was white with either black or blue stripes on it. Price for car free....... True story.

 

 

CarsinBarns site owner posted this on another site Thursday:

"Hello everyone, as my wife and Ryan said, I have been down with some bad health problems, I am not going to go into details, but things have not been going well at all, but hopefully they are getting better. We should have the site back up in just a couple days, we did not get the domain name renewed in time so they suspended it but that has been paid and should be back up in 48 hours they say so it will be back, my wife should have a little more time now to get the updates going a little better for everyone also."

 

Great! It's a cool website.

 

Now undergoing total restoration. 1959 Frost Blue convertible w/hardtop. One owner with full documentation since new. Build sheet, invoice, cancelled checks where it was paid for plus more and there is even a hand signed letter from Ed Kohl that was sent to the owner. It is solid color with Blue interior and white conv. top, 283-230, 3-speed, positive traction, sunvisors, windshield washers, wonderbar radio and all numbers still match. Nothing was ever replaced on the car. It had been in a barn since 1972 with 104,000 miles on it. The car has never been wrecked or hit and no visible cracks or stress in the body which suprised me.

My other 59 that is finished. No documents for this one though.

 

Why did you restore it?

 

It needs alot of TLC from sitting and a complete detail restoration. Paint was peeling and flaking off, underhood is all original but needs rebuilding, carpet and dash pad have gone by the wayside. It is in excellent shape for an NCRS restoration with the original nuts and bolts, chrome and other parts that were factory on the car. There will a trip to Bloomington in this cars future with all the restoration pics and the documentation.