balthazar

To be clear here on the objective at hand, this is NOT a restoration in the usual sense RE vintage iron. This is, I guess, a "repair", for my approach is to make it reliable & road-worthy, and drive it as is otherwise. I am already waist deep in a rest-mod project, and I don't want to wade that far out with this one (which will only delay the other). In the interest of not making this project go years-long, I have also self-dictated that I will not obsess on this truck, but to place expedition above perfection. - - - - - - Ford was still putting wooden (plywood) flooring in these trucks (I am fairly certain it was the advent of the F-Series for '48 that likely included a switch to steel floors). The COE has pretty small floor area because the interior has a van-esque 'doghouse'; rendering this vehicle a true, literal 2-seater. The floor boards consist of 4 parts; 2 'floorboards' and 2 'toe boards' (that angle upward). The driver's toe board is actually seamed and is in 2 pieces to fit around the pedals and steering column. When I got the truck, there actually were carpenter ants in one of the original boards (guess that shouldn't really be a surprise). The floor boards were in such poor condition there was no question I would have to replace them all. I sourced oak-veneered plywood and make heavy paper templates. With typical practicality, Ford made them mirror images, so I only had to template once, then flip them. Took quite a bit of fitting & sanding to get them in there snugly, then there were old bolts to extract (not all worked out), holes to tap, holes to drill in the new boards, and refinishing. I didn't want them to stand out as 'NEW!!', so I cast an eye toward aging them, or at least making them 'disappear' as best I could :

'56 Plymouth 4-dr sedan, black/ white over black, decent shape, parked & for sale. about 5 blocks away on a side street: '55 Plymouth 2-dr hardtop, black/ red over black, missing Belvie side trim (perhaps recent repaint) but otherwise decent, parked & for sale. '80-style Trans Am, black w/ gold, dusty in rear of driveway.

YIKES.

The very nature of a delivery van is short local trips, where MPG will hover @ city numbers rather than even composite numbers. Even a 2-3 MPG bump in highway #s won't show in real world usage, and you'd be lucky to get a 9-spd trans into 7th, let alone 9th.

@ the house behind my customer's house, I spotted chrome thru the trees. At fist I thought it the front fender of a '57-58 Merc, then I realized it was the rear quarter of a '58 Cadillac coupe. Circled the block, but couldn't get a closer look.

^ In other words; a 2.8L.

As stated above, this gen COEs all had V8s, the venerable Ford flathead. In '38-42, Ford had a smaller flathead eight, a 221 CI, while Merc (which debuted for '39) had the popular 239. Ford gained the 239 post-war. The 221 was rated at 85 HP, the 239 @ 95. A slight compression bump (from 6.3 to 6.6) raised the rating to 100 @ 3800 on the 239 in the '41 Merc. The '46-48 239 had another slight bump in CR, to 6.75:1, but the HP rating was unchanged. TRQ on this motor was 180 @ 2000. My mill is a '46-48; it has that gen's 59AB heads, and there's no corresponding VIN stamp on the integral bell housing. As I am putting headers & true duals on the engine, I hope to add 5-7 HP to that; 10 is probably being overly optimistic. I know : woo-ee. Trans is the spur-gear, non-synchro 4-spd, first gear is a stump-pulling 6.40:1 ratio. This truck trans was used '32-52. Ford added a synchro 4-spd in '48. To tell the truth, I do not know if my trans was swapped with the motor & I have synchs or not (odds are against it, of course). These motors have been popular since introduced. In fact, I don't think there is another motor with the popularity longevity of the FoMoCo Flathead. And while there are a bunch of hop-up parts available, unless radical work is involved, Ford flatheads are really only good for about 175-200 HP before they run into issues. Aftermarket aluminum heads are numerous, but brand new heads are over $500, and even tho they have 8:1 CR, they only bump HP a tiny amount, a poor ROI IMO. If it was like 30-40 HP, I'd pull the trigger. As it is, duals is all the engine mods my truck is going to see.

B-59 is waiting patiently until this is done. I've been on a hot roll on this truck for a few months, made great progress. Work schedule is allowing me some spare time, and I have reshuffled some other things & my approach, so at this point I anticipate going right into the B-59 once this drives, which will be this year.

I have limited past history on my truck. The doors are lettered thusly : "Humble Oil & Refining Company" Perhaps the rectangular block below that had the district or region name on it, like 'Harrisburg' or something, but there's no trace of that left. Humble started in 1911, entered in a partnership with Standard Oil of NJ in 1919. I believe the truck was probably bought new by Humble, no idea where it was used. It had a 1972 NJ municipal plate on it when I bought it, so I assume it served further use for a local municipality, perhaps on a road crew (tho without having re-lettered it, maybe they never used it after all. Maybe the plate is something some prior owner just threw on). I can tell you the bolts/nuts holding it on were on there a LO-OONG time. The dash has a stenciled "Watch Body Clearance 9'6", but all the pics I've seen of oil tanker COEs of the period, ALL the tanks are lower than the cab roof (which is 90", or 7'5"), so perhaps the municipality had some other structure on the back. No physical evidence remains as to what, and there really aren't any 'later addition' holes in the frame either. Pic also shows the Civil Defense symbols on the doors. From what I've been told, Fed Gov't paid monies to a truck owner, and the flip was these vehicles had to be made available in cases of emergency, even if that meant driving halfway across the country. Someone told me they heard NY State snowplows registered under the Civil Defense program were dispensed to Colorado in a big storm. The factory speedo was replaced at some point with a unit from a Ford car. This is obvious because the car speedos read to 100 MPH, the COEs only read to 60. I did pick up a really nice COE speedo at a swap meet, for future installation (along with a nice gauge cluster). The downside is that I have no idea how many miles are on it. I can tell you the motor was replaced with a '46-48 unit at some point. Sooo, it was used in the oil industry, maybe 20 or 30 years, then maybe used a few more years for a local town. About 1977 a private owner bought it, coincidentally an ex-executive of Standard Oil. Around 1990, the guy who owned it before me bought it. The brake hoses were dated 1989, so he did some work on it, but nothing obvious. So private owner #1 owned it 13 years, PO #2 had it for 13 years, I'm coming up on 11. Again from what I could tell, both previous owners didn't do much toward restoring/rejuvenating it. I also suspect it spent most of those 26 years outside. The rims here are 20" Budd rims, and it's wearing Atlas Plycord 7.00 x 20 10-ply tires. Again co-incidentally, Atlas tires was a subsidiary of Standard Oil. They're tube tires, so I am gathering intel on whether new tubes & flaps in a carcass this old is reasonable or not. Truck isn't really compatible with modern highway use, and won't travel far.

dfelt- the Big 3 overbearing on Tucker was exaggerated in the movie/ many breezy accounts of the history. Edwards wasn't even on the Big 3's radar.

I always liked the lines on these trucks, ever since I first saw pics. In fact I drew a business solicitation postcard of this design about 5 or 7 years before : ... I bought this one off eBay in 2003- guy was nice enough to stop a very busy auction for me (IIRC, it had about 15 bids). This was the lead pic on the auction : This is a 1940 Ford COE, or Cab Over Engine, Model 09W. The COE was first built by Ford for the '38 model year. The few years before this, aftermarket builders custom-built Cab Overs, so some sort of demand was apparently there. The purpose of the COE was to get greater cargo capacity in the same length chassis, for use in cities and those states with various length restrictions for trucks. This is then the first generation Ford COE, and was built '38-42 and '46-47 (there were no '43-45s), and about 55K were produced. They were offered in 3 wheelbases (101", 134" and 156") and 2 weight ratings, 1.5-ton and 2-ton. Mine is the 134" WB with the 2-ton chassis. All were V8-powered, all were duallys. The only changes during the first gen were starting in '41; the '38-40s had dual round gauges ('41 & up got a single rectangular unit) and large oval grilles (the '41 & later got a 'waterfall' style). Oh, and the '38s had mechanical brakes; Ol' Henry didn't particularly trust 'juice' brakes and didn't approve them until the '39 model year. As you can see in the auction pic, my truck (as is common with unrestored COEs) came without a grille... but that then gave me options...

Cadillac's primary goal is NOT sales volume, but profit. 2% is no where near motivation to write an article over (...unless of course; it's a domestic brand).

Yet ANOTHER very rare, 1950s American sports car up for sale, an Edwards : http://www.ebay.com/itm/Other-Makes-Edwards-America-THE-2ND-OF-ONLY-5-EDWARDS-AMERICAS-EVER-PRODUCED-1954-edwards-america-/390865682713?forcerrptr=true&hash=item5b01690119&item=390865682713&pt=US_Cars_Trucks

Harleys do not come from the factory with no mufflers. Factory Harleys aren't very loud, but the culture of HDs has many owners immediately alter/change mufflers to let that Twin sound be heard. I have seen the sentiment blu posted for years & years on stickers, and have heard it expressed; MCs are much more dangerous WRT impacts & a much smaller footprint out on the road, where a bit of noise can make oblivious motorists take heed. I am of the camp that believes it IS a safety thing. That said- some go way beyond that sound level, but some of the import bikes do this too. Having a silent MC is a real thought-provoker, that's for sure. So is having a bike that is the effective anti-thesis to the HD image. Will be interesting to watch.

Ya, 6-series is that kind of change and it has very low sales, too.

Personally, I have no interest in this 'Euro' type of styling; way too disjointed to me when 2 years later one could get a '53 Corvette that looks 25 years more modern than this, but it's always cool to see actual examples of cars otherwise you've only seen in books.

ELR is a stunner in & out, but I sure would have liked to see a Tesla-esque performance out of it to justify the price better. It's world's nicer in & out than the CLA, tho, from what I've seen & read. But the tag is too high there, too.

Super rare, but needs some polish. http://cnj.craigslist.org/cto/4472538640.html - - - - - Potentially... :

The main problem is asking $64K for a FWD-based econocar that starts at $29K! Even at $55K, that's still trying to convince buyers it actually has $25K of additions over the base car- not remotely worth it. It should be $40-45K, right in the STI/Evo range since it's on the same level. ATS & LaCrosse could be compared, of course, if the prices are comparable (I have not checked). The OEMs don't look at it that way, but you have to face the reality of how these cars are used- the exact same way; slogging thru traffic to the office & the mall. The theory that people just absolutely cannot look at two cars that are 16" or so apart in OL would be enormous trouble for those marketers that continually spin the concept that buyers "trade up" thru a brand's lineup. If that were true, perhaps the best plan of attack IS to make a 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7-series all within 5 inches of each other.... because going by your position, no one who owned an e-class would EVER consider an s-class.

Most consumers BY FAR shop with budget as the prime criteria, not overall length. If we were in an era where cars ranged from 170" to 230", I could see it, but the 16" difference in these two (CLA & 300) is a non-issue.

dfelt didn't say "brand new". CLA isn't a luxury car, it's a FWD appliance with abundant cheapness, according to too many reviews. It's rock bottom pricing also precludes it from being classified as 'luxury' (insanity that the AMG version's tag is, aside). 300C is much more appealing overall, IMO, primarily because it's not mistaken for a hyundai.

The only MB I have driven was a late '90s E430, and it too had distinct lags when hitting the gas AND in the brakes engaging. I see mercedes is still battling with the same engineering problems. $64K and the infotainment is optional?? HUGELY overpriced, esp when you consider the base car starts at $29K. MB hasn't come close to adding $35K worth of value to this. They're going to have to slap S-class incentives on this to move it beyond the initial impulse buyers.

I was being facetious. They're used in the U.S., too, of course. It's just the homogenization of the auto industry that points to a lack of creativity.

Is EVERY brand that tapes another 2-3" in WB to an existing car going to use 'L' for 'long' ???

'63 Thunderbird with the Sports Roadster '2-seater' option, that typical T-bird cream white, EXC shape, cruising the interstate at a steady 65.