Hi everyone...
04-09-2005, 03:11 PM
#1
Thread Starter
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location:
Posts: 2
Hi everyone...
I'm michael, and I am a ford addict... Oh that is another group... Sorry. I found the fourm quite by accident the other day and thouhgt I'd say hi. I'm a 39 year old engineer from Northern California and after a short hiatus to get married and buy a home I'm back doing what I love. Building Fords. I'd say building Mustangs but something happened 3 years ago that changed that a little. I found a 1966 Cobra replica in need of a restoration. It had been in a guys garage not running for 5 year with his cats using it as a bed. Long story short he was hooked on pain killers and his wife was a crack addict. She'd basically smoked everything they had and was about 3 days away from losing their home in foreclosure and needed some cash to move. I asked if he wanted to sell his car. He called me the next day.
http://www.clubcobra.com/photopost/s...cat=500&page=2
I mentioned I was a ford addict. Born in the 60's I grew up watching Trans-Am and NASCAR races with my dad. Something about the shapes and lines of the second generation mustangs was overpowering, especially with the fenders blown out for racing tires. I knew I was a car guy before I could ride a bicycle. We always had a few old cars around in various states of repair. Mostly out of necessity. If one wouldn't run, you'd better have a spare. What can I say. Dad was a blue collar guy. More than once I had to tell him his Corvair was on fire again.
By the time I was 7 I was "helping" my dad fix his cars. Mostly that meant getting wrenches, ratchets, sockets and an occasional hammer. I knew the difference between a 3/8 and 1/2"rachet by the age of 8 and by 10 I could get him 1/4, 3/8 or 1/2 socket by sight. By 11 I was turning wrenches and really helping. We moved to Napa, Ca when I was 12. My parents were divorced the year before and my dad had a new girlfriend. We moved in with her and her young children. Dad didn't have as much time to spend working on cars, he was busy with his new girlfriend and by this time had a new car. My dad was pre-occupied but he was still something of a pack rat. I came home from school one day... I was in 8th grade and to m surprise there was a 1974 Chevy Vega coupe in front of the house. It looked like every other POS Vega in the world until you popped the hood. Wedged in where the 4 cylinder would normally be was a 283 V-8 which I was told came from a 50's corvette. The car ran, sort of. It started if you poured gas down the carb and would go into gear if you pulled on the screwdriver stuck into the opening in the floor. But it was a solid car, body was straight, paint was ok. It may have been the most beautiful thing in the world at that point. A perfect toybox for a bored 13 year old...
Dad was working a lot to cover alimony and child support for my sisters and my mom. When he wasn't doing that he was playing house with his now new wife. I'd bug him just about every day to come work on the vega... Finally I asked him if I could just start working on it myself. He agreed. What harm could it do??? It didn't really run. I'm sure he thought it that would be the case for a long time... So it began. My solo journey into fast cars. In a week the vega ran. By saving my lunch money I got a carb kit $12. tune up parts, $18. In not very long it actually ran pretty well. In 3 months the car was realtively safe, ran and stopped well... Only one thing left to do. What else could I do... I had to see if it ran, so one day after school before my new mom would be home and well before my dad would be home I started it up and eased it out of it's seeming permanent parking space in front of 2411 Mac Lean St. Napa, CA. I was 13. I drove it to the edge of town to a speed shop. Not that I could afford any of the go fast speed parts I saw on display. Being there was enough. I put 3,000 miles on that car that year, most of it All without my parents knowing.
As it happened our neighbor at the time was a mechanic. He really knew his stuff and had a ton of tools. He supplemented his income by taking in side work in his garage at home. Engines, transmissions, whatever. We enjoyed a mutually helpful relationship. I'd help him lug transmissions around his garage, he'd let me pick his brain about a problem with the vega. He also let me borrow a specialty tool from time to time, which I hated doing but he seemed happy to help. I helped him frequenty and we became friends, or as friendly as a 13 year old can be with an "old guy" after all he was almost 40. Tony would tell me stories about drag racing and the 60's. He'd lived in Southern California and like me started working on jalopies and hot rods. He taught me a lot.
At 14 I heard rumors about my cousin who was going to off to college selling his 1967 Mustang. It was a car his parents bought in San Jose in 1968. They were the second owners. It ran ok, needed brakes ans a suspension rebuild and minor work. It would be perfect... But I was "only" 14... It took a few months of negotiations but I got my dad to loan me $800. I had $400 in the bank from odd jobs. It took another month for my cousins father (my uncle who originally owned the car) to decide he didn't want to keep the car for himself. It was March 1981 when I bought my first Mustang, a 1967 Ford Mustang GTA in dark moss green...
So it began. Since then I've owned all makes and models, GT this, Z-28 that... I keep coming back to Ford. In addition to the Cobra I have a 1968 C code coup and a 1973 Q code Mach-1 Fastback. Today I'm still building high performance machines, mostly in the shape of buildings. Never thought of a building as a machine? www.urscorp.com
http://www.clubcobra.com/photopost/s...cat=500&page=2
I mentioned I was a ford addict. Born in the 60's I grew up watching Trans-Am and NASCAR races with my dad. Something about the shapes and lines of the second generation mustangs was overpowering, especially with the fenders blown out for racing tires. I knew I was a car guy before I could ride a bicycle. We always had a few old cars around in various states of repair. Mostly out of necessity. If one wouldn't run, you'd better have a spare. What can I say. Dad was a blue collar guy. More than once I had to tell him his Corvair was on fire again.
By the time I was 7 I was "helping" my dad fix his cars. Mostly that meant getting wrenches, ratchets, sockets and an occasional hammer. I knew the difference between a 3/8 and 1/2"rachet by the age of 8 and by 10 I could get him 1/4, 3/8 or 1/2 socket by sight. By 11 I was turning wrenches and really helping. We moved to Napa, Ca when I was 12. My parents were divorced the year before and my dad had a new girlfriend. We moved in with her and her young children. Dad didn't have as much time to spend working on cars, he was busy with his new girlfriend and by this time had a new car. My dad was pre-occupied but he was still something of a pack rat. I came home from school one day... I was in 8th grade and to m surprise there was a 1974 Chevy Vega coupe in front of the house. It looked like every other POS Vega in the world until you popped the hood. Wedged in where the 4 cylinder would normally be was a 283 V-8 which I was told came from a 50's corvette. The car ran, sort of. It started if you poured gas down the carb and would go into gear if you pulled on the screwdriver stuck into the opening in the floor. But it was a solid car, body was straight, paint was ok. It may have been the most beautiful thing in the world at that point. A perfect toybox for a bored 13 year old...
Dad was working a lot to cover alimony and child support for my sisters and my mom. When he wasn't doing that he was playing house with his now new wife. I'd bug him just about every day to come work on the vega... Finally I asked him if I could just start working on it myself. He agreed. What harm could it do??? It didn't really run. I'm sure he thought it that would be the case for a long time... So it began. My solo journey into fast cars. In a week the vega ran. By saving my lunch money I got a carb kit $12. tune up parts, $18. In not very long it actually ran pretty well. In 3 months the car was realtively safe, ran and stopped well... Only one thing left to do. What else could I do... I had to see if it ran, so one day after school before my new mom would be home and well before my dad would be home I started it up and eased it out of it's seeming permanent parking space in front of 2411 Mac Lean St. Napa, CA. I was 13. I drove it to the edge of town to a speed shop. Not that I could afford any of the go fast speed parts I saw on display. Being there was enough. I put 3,000 miles on that car that year, most of it All without my parents knowing.
As it happened our neighbor at the time was a mechanic. He really knew his stuff and had a ton of tools. He supplemented his income by taking in side work in his garage at home. Engines, transmissions, whatever. We enjoyed a mutually helpful relationship. I'd help him lug transmissions around his garage, he'd let me pick his brain about a problem with the vega. He also let me borrow a specialty tool from time to time, which I hated doing but he seemed happy to help. I helped him frequenty and we became friends, or as friendly as a 13 year old can be with an "old guy" after all he was almost 40. Tony would tell me stories about drag racing and the 60's. He'd lived in Southern California and like me started working on jalopies and hot rods. He taught me a lot.
At 14 I heard rumors about my cousin who was going to off to college selling his 1967 Mustang. It was a car his parents bought in San Jose in 1968. They were the second owners. It ran ok, needed brakes ans a suspension rebuild and minor work. It would be perfect... But I was "only" 14... It took a few months of negotiations but I got my dad to loan me $800. I had $400 in the bank from odd jobs. It took another month for my cousins father (my uncle who originally owned the car) to decide he didn't want to keep the car for himself. It was March 1981 when I bought my first Mustang, a 1967 Ford Mustang GTA in dark moss green...
So it began. Since then I've owned all makes and models, GT this, Z-28 that... I keep coming back to Ford. In addition to the Cobra I have a 1968 C code coup and a 1973 Q code Mach-1 Fastback. Today I'm still building high performance machines, mostly in the shape of buildings. Never thought of a building as a machine? www.urscorp.com
09-12-2007, 02:27 AM
#7
4th Gear Member
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: California
Posts: 1,098
RE: Hi everyone...
Welcome to the forums Mike, great luck for you finding that cobra, unfortunately the link did not work. Do you have another link to some pictures or can you post any? Glad to have you here.
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