No this isn’t the finishing up the last trips notes, nope we just returned from there today 6/23.
We had stayed the weekend in Bisbee again with a couple friends and Lowell is 2 minutes away and so we wanted to show them the cool little town.
This time it was a bit earlier on a Sunday morning and the breakfast cafe was crowded and one other thing was different the Harley Repair shop was open.
We got to meet the owner Jim (real first named – last name omitted). As I alluded to in my earlier posts, Jim is a avid supporter of one of the largest motorcycle social events in the world – Sturgis, South Dakota. On this particular Sunday Jim had his shop open and was working on the brakes of his old Chevy pick up.
One of Jim’s many vehicles. He mentioned that we owns nearly all of the motor cycles and cars you see there.
Most of the cars and vehicles belong to Jim. He has a pretty large collection of cars – like a 1969 Mustang Shelby, Studebaker pickup, Hudson, 67 Corvette to name a few (Oh and this Caddy!!).
He has collected all of the Indian and Harley motorcycles you can see on display and parked along the street and I’d say they out number the cars at lest three to one.
This Indian racer has been well restored.
I didn’t get him on camera, hadn’t expected to run into to him on a Sunday morning and didn’t want to impose. As I stated, Jim was setting up to do a brake job on the Chevy pickup pictured above. As we approached we were greeted by two dogs, one named Blondie, the other dogs name I didn’t catch but both were older but cutie dogs. Jim was hauling out a Honda scooter with a for sale sign on it when we walked up followed by the two dogs. Next to the Chevy pick up was a 2004 Harley which he had just picked up from a when a family friend who’s patriarch had recently passed and the family offered the bike at a far price. The dogs belonged the same fellow and Jim adopted them (he had just lost his 12 year old dog).
Jim admits he has collected a lot of interesting pieces and let us know he has a Chrysler with an original Hemi coming in and a flat head Ford V8 engine, but needs a Ford to put it in, and a few more goodies. He laughed saying that he’s running out of friends with space to store thing. Being a fellow car lover, I offered to bring some things back to Tucson with me to help out….we both laughed….pretty sure that’s not going to happen.
Although Lowell is a legitimate Arizona city it has pretty much been left on it’s own. It has been slated to be torn down -(more on that later on). Jim explained that “they” pretty much let him and a couple others carry on business and Jim use most of the building for storing and displaying his treasures.
There is an effort to save the town of Lowell, AZ and make it a historic area. Look for more from me on that.
Let’s talk about the staging. Most of these are original, but staged (well staged) with some period correct signs, gas pumps and vehicles. Let’s check out.
The 2011+ Mustang platform has already proven itself to be a hell of a performer, both on the street and at the track. Livernois Motorsports customer Todd Carlson has one of the cleanest examples we’ve seen to date, outfitted with a number of upgrades including a Livernois Motorsports engine and 2.9L Whipple supercharger. The best part? Todd drives this car every chance he gets, except for in the rain.
Keep in mind while you are reading this that the C7 Corvette was a huge draw for anyone that had an idea, notion or had a dream about the new design. This won’t be as exciting
There is no doubt that for us the 2015 Mustang will be the hottest story of the next year. Rumors abound, and speculation (even by us) is mostly what we have to go on. We’ve brought you plenty of leaked secrets, artist renderings, and our own opinions and wish lists about what the next generation Mustang should be. This week we can add a little more to that growing pile, none of which will be completely confirmed until the Blue Oval decides that we’re worthy of knowing, and let’s the new horse out of the barn.
But there are other, equally cool cars that you might take a fancy too and want to restore. Finding stuff can be a problem. My new feature “Wrecked” might help you out with finding those parts.
I’m doing this in conjunction with listing on PartingOut.Com they pull together a lot of cars and many are southwestern cars, that means less debilitating rest on the parts you need. And that’s where I found this very near completed parts car.
So before the ’57 Chevy craze there was the 1956 Chevy’s (really?….yes!!). No glitz of big fins and gobs of super shiny chrome there were the still cool Chevy’s. The 1956 Bel Air was the one of the cool cars.
Chevy can in a several flavors, plain (One Fifty – 1500A), chocolate (Two Ten – 2100 B) and refined mocha mint (Bel Air – 2400C) – which include the very cool Nomad. With over 600,000 Bel Airs produced that year, (approximately 1.5 million produced over all) you are still bound to find some good used parts. (Who came up with the numbering systems – One Fifty – 1500A?)
They all came with station wagon variations but only the Bel Air came in a drop top (only about 41K of those made).
There were only two engines (six cylinder and eight). The six was iron displacing 235.5 cubic inches with overhead valves, a bore and stroke of 3 – 9/16″ x 3-15/16″, hydraulic lifters and four main bearing, producing 104 hp. All this goodness topped with Rochester one barrel on the automatic Powerglide Model 700200 or a Carter one barrel model 2101S and the standard shift, Rochester one barrel model 7007181.
The V8 was iron as well, displacing 265 cubic inches. The bore and stroke of 3.75″x3″ and compression ratio of 8.0:1 helped to produce 162 hp w/the standard or Touch-down transmission (topped with Rochester two barrel – model 7009909 ) or 170 hp with the PowerGlide transmission topped with a Carter two barrel model 2286s.
Normally I’ll stop there but there some cool power train options. Check these out:
– a four barrel Super Turbo-Fire V8 with 205hp and compression of 9.25:1 and any choice of transmission
– a 225 hp dual 4 bl carbs set up on the same engine block
The two door station wagon were call Handyman.
The taillight 0n the left hand side was in fact the fuel door.
1956 Chevy. No glitz but very cool.
Thanks for reading and drop a note if you own 1956 Chevy.
San Francisco 49ers Coach to Drive C7 Pace Car at Indy 500
For football players, there is no bigger event than the Super Bowl. Some men strive their entire lives to get to the Big Game, though just a select few have ever earned a Super Bowl title. San Francisco 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh fell three points short of winning his Super Bowl bid this year, falling to his brother, John, who coached the Baltimore Ravens to victory.
But even being a Super Bowl loser has its perks. One of them is the privilege of driving the 2014 Corvette Stingray Pace Car at this year’s Indianapolis 500 event, becoming one of the first “civilians” to drive this brand new American icon.
It’s a bit of a homecoming for Jim Harbaugh, who quarterbacked for the Indianapolis Colts during the 1990s. In addition to being a fervent football city, Indianapolis has a rich racing history, including the iconic Indy 500. GM has had numerous cars pace the Indy 500, including the Corvette, but with hundreds of thousands of fans in attendance, this is the first time many of them will see a Corvette C7 up close and personal.
In fact, this is the 12th time the Corvette has paced the Indy 500, including appearances that dominated most of the past decade. But this arguably the biggest Corvette pace car event of them all, a radical redesign from the “safer” look of the Corvette C6. Painted in Laguna Blue, this stunning ‘Vette will certainly draw a lot of looks when it makes its pace car debut this Sunday.
Well there were the Cobras and the Mustangs, even a Lancer and an Omni, why not a Shelby pick up truck….and naturally it would be a Ford.
The Ford Rapture was a formidable 4 by 4 at it’s inception with gobs of horsepower and not a badly appointed interior.
But we expect more from a Shelby and you are going to get with this monster truck.
Yeah…It’s a Shelby
That’s what most other 4×4 are going to see…the back side
The NEW Shelby Raptor delivers a heart pounding, supercharged 575 hp (50 state emissions compliant), tuned with Shelby Stinger exhaust, complimented by a custom Shelby leather interior, all wrapped in Shelby graphics and styling, and finished with an exclusive Shelby Registry number and badges. Personalize your new Shelby Raptor from your choice of three Shelby graphics packages, or add wheels and tires, light bars, bumpers and roll bars, all from our ever growing Shelby options list.
There are several paint scheme:
I like this white version – reminds me of the Mustangs
