How I Named My Car (25 Comments Mission) & [WW]

Day 3,162, 17:50 • Published in USA USA • by George Armstrong Custer
Just how it goes sometimes.
Dateline: Sunday July 17, 2016 (Day 3162)
Storyteller: George Armstrong "Old Man" Custer
Music: I'm In Love With My Car (Queen) 
Preamble Ramble 

It's been quite a while since we gathered 'round the Old Man to hear a cautionary tale of misadventure taken from his long and crazy life. "Quite a while" in this case is nearly five years, when I related the double header about being stabbed and shot in armed robberies ten years apart. Crazy stuff.
Five years.. I hadn't realized it'd been so long.

I never did put serious effort toward that "Senior Journalist" (25 Comments) mission, so let's take a shot at that. I really hate seeing all these articles with no content, just "hey, give me 25 Comments!" so don't mind me for putting forth an effort actually to earn the reward.

Being as I'm going for the 25 Comments, that makes this article kinda eRep related, so it is being submitted to VP Resoula's Writing Week Contest.
Y'all got till 20:59 eRep time on Tuesday to get into the contest, kids!

A Bit of Background

Old cars have always been almost as much a focal point in my life as old music. We're not talking show cars, or even restored and pretty, but simply decent running daily drivers that are easy to work on and fun to drive. The "cool factor" don't hurt none, either.

The first car I remember was our old Pontiac, and because any cool car needs a name my old man had it dubbed "the Blue Goose." Later on, I remember riding on winding roads through the canyons in the old man's two-tone '56 Chevy wagon, and the old man would gently let an empty Pabst beer can slip out the driver's side wing window.. the aerodynamics carried the can all the way, bouncing along the windows, down the side and around the back, then back up the passenger side and into the open passenger side window of "the Blue Ribbon."


               
                 
                   
'56 Chevy Bel Air wagon, and '50 Chevy DeLuxe (stock photos)

My own old cars have included a second owner numbers matching '50 Chevy DeLuxe, named "Big 744" after its original black and yellow California license plate. It was exactly like my mom's car when I was a kid, so when I saw it with a For Sale sign in it I just had to have it. Then there was the unimaginatively named "Beast," my '59 Chevy pickup. There really was no better name for this giant ugly rescue project with its '67 Chevelle 327 and fuel sucking Quadrajet carb. Boy, that truck sure could fly.
I was a young man with a good job, and I only needed to keep one car at a time running well enough to get me to work and the auto parts suppliers. I did all kinds of work myself, from changing out brakes, clutches and transmissions to diagnosing electrical issues and complete rewiring.

My '62 GMC shortbed stepside


So some thirty years later, when I went car shopping, of course I jumped on the opportunity to be third owner of an uncommon '62 GMC farm truck carrying its original small block 305 V-6. Unfortunately, the passage of time and a few serious head injuries meant that I could no longer do some of the heavy lifting or deep engine work. When it spun the timing gear, bent all its lifter rods and broke two piston arms, I sadly waved bye-bye to "Jose" and put the truck into the hands of a much younger and stronger man.

Now with the understanding that I would be paying for any serious mechanical fixes, but still pretty good with diagnostics and swapping out things like a starter or alternator, etc., I was back on Craigslist looking for my next ride.

I have never been a big fan of Fords. Back in Michigan, standard winter equipment for old Ford owners is a baseball bat or axehandle, to reach down and whack the starter that would always collect just enough moisture to freeze up. "Fix Or Repair Daily," they say.

But rules are made of exceptions, and for me there's a small group of Fords that have always been dream cars-- the '60-'63 Falcons, and better still, the Rancheros. For those who don't know, the Ranchero was the early car-pickup hybrid, the one Chevy copied when they came out with the first El Caminos. With a sporty economy car on the front, and a little pickup truck bed on the back, it's the best of both worlds. To have this little truck in early '60s Falcon styling.. yeah, it's my dream car, and I'll deal with it being a Ford.

 
'63 Falcon Futura and Ranchero (stock photos)


My Brand New Old Car

The price was right, the deal was done, and I drove my new little Ranchero straight to a mechanic friend to do a backyard resurfacing on the block and head to eliminate that as a source of excessive smoking. He warned me then, though, that the low cylinder compression would only get worse, and a proper boring out and new pistons, or a new engine, would definitely be in my future. That's okay, I figured on that, and planned to just run it till it wouldn't go no more, and hope that didn't come too soon.
Project cars are money pits, you have to know that going in. Boats are a hole in the water you keep throwing money in, and old cars are the same hole except it's in your driveway.

My little primer grey Ranchero had not named itself yet, but it did have some crazy electrical issues that had me thinking along the lines of "ghost" or "gremlin." The little car-truck had not yet developed a definite personality, but it was coming...
I'd be driving down the road and the headlights would go out.. or the whole car would just turn off. One day it would eat a battery overnight, then not do it again for a week. I'd turn the key and it would start right up, or it would give a loud hard "click!", or sometimes nothing at all.

I'd had experience with electrical gremlins before, and diagnosing the exact problem becomes a puzzle.. a challenge.. a mind game between man and beast. I'd won that battle against "the Big 744" and "the Beast," so this little mystery machine is not going to beat me. Hell, it only takes three or four wires to run the car, and another six to run all the lights, how hard can it be?
 


First I eliminated half the potential problem area by disconnecting all power to lights. Another fix was to replace both the key switch and light switch-- Ford's "better idea" at the time was to cram these switches with fuses instead of having a seperate fuse box, so replacing these 60 year old switches with new generic pieces and a couple inline fuses was an absolute starting point.

The gremlins persisted-- eating batteries, inconsistent starting, etc. Easy-peasy, the problem is somewhere between the key and the battery, or between the the battery, starter and alternator. Having replaced all these things, plus the starter solenoid (it's a little box mounted on the fender well, it converts the 12 volts from the battery to some higher jolt to kick the starter over), one technique to aid in diagnosis is to hotwire the car-- that is, start it by connecting wires instead of using the key switch.

 
early '60s Ford solenoid switch (left), and screwdriver hotwire diagram


Two places to do this are at the key switch, which I'd done and checked out as okay, and at the starter solenoid. To do this, you put the car in neutral and set the brake, set the key to the "On" position, and lay a screwdriver across two of the connector terminals on the solenoid.

Car would start, car would not start. Change this, fix that, try again. Car starts, take it for a drive. Car turns itself off again, push it home and try something else.
Think. Meditate. Consult the manufacturer's diagrams, make my own diagrams isolating a specific area of interest. Make little tape tags for wires and connections. Change every wire end connector. Mostly, though, think and try something else. Think more, and try something else.
Car starts, but turns itself off while driving. Then it starts and drives fine.
Drive it home, think on this some more.

"It's... Ali-i-i-i-i-ive!!!



Following procedure time after time can slip into going through the motions, and that's where mistakes happen. At some point I must have eased my little poltergeist inhabited junk heap up into my parking spot, but forgot to put it in neutral and set the brake.

One more time, lay the screwdriver across the solenoid, and the little straight six roars to life! But it's in gear, so it leaps over the cement parking stop and across the sidewalk and pins me against the wall. The electrical current becomes magnetic and holds the screwdriver firmly in place, keeps the starter turning over, and the car is now pounding me mercilessly against the wall. Now, 120 horsepower isn't much when you're pulling a load or struggling to keep up with highway traffic, but let me tell you it's plenty strong when it's trying to beat you to death.

I can't quite reach the screwdriver to yank it loose. The bumper is slamming and slamming into my legs, and I feel myself going weak.. I want to fall, I turn sideways to limit the pounding to just one thigh, but the thought of having that bumper hammer at my hips, then ribs, then head as I would go down... keeps me holding onto the murderous monster for dear life.

As in so many accident situations, everything went into slow motion.. I could see the screwdriver just beyond my reach, jiggling ever so slightly, while the chrome bumper continues to pound me into the wall. Finally, after what seemed like an all-day beating, the screwdriver finally shook loose, the death car backed off a bit, and I crumpled to the ground.

Struggling to maintain consciousness, as the roar in my head dimmed and the world came back to correct speed and focus, I hear the sound of another human.. "Great, there's help coming," I thought, but no.. there's a man standing just a few yards away, laughing his ass off. Holding his sides, uncontrollably, hysterically, laughing himself silly at the sight of me being beaten into submission by my own car.
Admittedly, now in hindsight, I know this must have been a totally hilarious scene to watch.. definitely YouTube material. Wasn't quite so funny for me at the moment, though, and he did finally gather himself up enough to come over and offer assistance.

I sent him to fetch my neighbors, a group of twenty-somethings, who were already outside looking to see what was shaking the apartment building. They rolled the car back into the parking spot and set the brake, tossed all my tools inside and closed the hood. The impact against my body was so severe that the bumper and fenders got tweaked, and the hood doesn't close straight.
Then they carried me up to my apartment.

Doctor Custer, Heal Thyself

By now it was clear that my leg had dislocated at the knee.. the pounding on my thigh just jerked it right off the knee joint and it was misaligned, totally out of joint. This is something that needs to be handled immediately, before the swelling sets in. Swelling can cut off blood flow and pinch nerves, then you have to ride it out with ice packs till the swelling goes down before you can move the bones.. so we're going to handle this right now. And I don't do doctors.

Someone else's x-ray. Don't it hurt just to look at it?


We sent the women folk out, because this is something they do not need to see. I had the boys put me on the floor, and directed the big linebacker kid to sit on the floor opposite me.. legs outstretched, his feet in my crotch, take my lower leg in a firm bear hug and wham! he laid back and pulled my knee back into place.

Well, that hurt.
I cannot begin to describe the pain-- even taking a bullet, which by the way does hurt a lot, did not compare to this. Being bounced off the front of an SUV doing 30mph (another story) hurt a lot, but not like this full body muscle and bone ache. Along with general bruising pretty much all over, my right leg was one solid black and blue bruise. My relocated knee was swollen but at least it was lined up correctly. And of course I took another few more not-needed hard hits to the head.

So what's left to do? Got some old leftover painkillers from a dental procedure, got a half bottle of good Irish whiskey, and got bags of frozen peas for ice packs. The kids took turns staying with me, to keep me conscious for the first day. After that I was on my own.

The Car Gets Its Name

After a few days I hobbled out to my little classic Ranchero, my dream car which had turned into a murderous nightmare. It was a monster who came to life and had tried to kill me, like some sort of... then it came to me, my car had just named itself-- the Frankenchero.



Epilogue

Well, I hope you had some fun. Maybe my story stirred a memory of some crazy adventure in your own life, or of your first or favorite car. For me, the adventure continues, as the inevitable low compression problem has the Frankenchero sitting now, awaiting funding for a new engine. But, damn do I love that car.

Please shout my Shout a couple times, and let's see if I can get this stupid "25 Comments Mission" out of the way.
Storytime With Uncle Custer
www.erepublik.com/en/article/2606267/1/20
How My Car Got Its Name
25 Comment Mission

:::
3162: 905