Lost junkyards

[justbob]

I found this picture taken in '99 http://home.att.net/~yonny/wsb/html/view.cgi-photo.html--SiteID-13728.htmlwhen I was trying to research my latest find, a '49/'50 Zenith porthole tv. There was another yard about 30 miles from me that the old coot wouldn't let anyone in his yard or sell you any parts! What is the point in having the business??? Atleast I got to drive up the entrance a couple times. He had everything from late 1920's to around late 70's piled along both sides of the long entrance to his heavily wooded yard.

I could spend weeks combing these yards! Do you have any good pictures / stories?

[Sactown]

Bringing life back to those cars is beyond my skill set. Nice radios though. Is that tat for real? :cool:

http://home.att.net/~yonny/wsb/media/8628/site1110.jpg

[UncleLar]

Bob,are you into old radios and stuff? Did you see my tube caddy and Fisher stereo stuff when we were moving?
I also have a bunch of Zenith Transoceanics and a nice restored 1941 Zenith table top.
You'd have a stroke if you saw the old TV's I left behind when I moved in 1998.
BTW,I love hitting old boneyards too,but they're all disappearing.

[justbob]

This TV was a find at my last job. It was all tucked away under a bunch of blankets in a garage. My plans are to cut it down a little (almost two feet deep) gut it (done today) and set in a custom fish tank. Yeah, I've always been fascinated by old boneyards and forgotten dragstrips. I miss the days of old gassers that were only a normal thing, even though I never liked the looks till recently.

[Motorhead350]

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k267/malibuconv1968/IMG_0431-1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://66.154.44.164/forum/showthread.php%3Ft%3D313182%26 showall%3D1&usg=__jFPh6ITc8RLX0dAfGMf_Bdw2 ldU=&h=478&w=639&sz=102&hl=en&start=3&um=1&tbnid=OoNSsmfI0LzeRM:&tbnh=102&tbnw=137&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dlost%2Bdrag%2Bstr ips%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26um%3D 1

Here is something sad and cool at the same time. Go to post number 40, looks like that one just closed.

[LIGHTNIN1]

I've passed a number of places like that with a lot of rusty cars and trucks and they were not doing anything with them. Always wondered the thinking behind it. People I know are always going to fix them up but never do. Guess they have a different outlook.

[Motorhead350]

I've passed a number of places like that with a lot of rusty cars and trucks and they were not doing anything with them. Always wondered the thinking behind it. People I know are always going to fix them up but never do. Guess they have a different outlook.

I think I have an understanding of this.

Sometimes we just don't wanna let go. Wither it's something that happened or losing someone special in our lives. Cars can go to this sometimes. The only difference is you can actually rebuild the car. If it's a classic that you wanted to fix or your first car, this means a difference. I guess some think of classics they buy the same way I view mine.

I have had my 65 C-10 for a year and a half, but haven't put anytime into it in close to a year. The reason is my money needs to go other places right now, but I want the truck done... by me. If I sold it I would feel like I failed and even if it means it sits 5 more months or five more years, I will not accept failure. I want to finish it and have something else to be proud of and something I can honestly say I have built or have built with friends.

There is always a story behind a cars odometer and if someone doesn't want to get rid of a car, that person will have a reason and probably a story to go with it. As we all know junk is junk, but at one point that junk was new and wasn't junk. Perhaps the owner of a car or junk bought it new and wants to see it in fine condition again.

Like I said, cars are more than cars to some people... especially if that one person is lonely or sees the car as an escape, it means something nothing else can touch. When it's rusted and tired, you can make it live and breathe again.

[justbob]

^^^I completely agree. Also thanks for that link! You want to research an old track in the burbs of chicago? Try Oswego dragway, IL. They shut it down in '78 when I was five, but just about the only good memories with my pops were from spending saturday mornings on the hood of his Impala litterally 10-15 feet off to the side of the starting line! Thats right, the parking lot was situated even closer than what most tracks nowadays save for the photographers! It is now a tree nursery and they use whats left of the track for their main path to all the rows of trees.

I can still smell the rubber and even still remember the feeling of being pelted by chuncks of rubber from the gassers from lift off! Don't even get me started on the fact they didn't even get a tree till they almost closed. And people at work wonder where I get my need for speed from! Its not my fault they had a crappy childhood!

[MERCMAN]

www.carsinbarns.com

[justbob]

Thanks Mercman! Well I asked for it. Now I wanna cry. Anyways one of those caught my eye, the coca cola give away car found at the bottom of the first link.

http://www.carsinbarns.com/Blue%20Ovals%20In%20Barns/pg9.html
This is what saving a car and a peice of history is all about!


http://www.corvettes-musclecars.com/other/69Cougar/index.htm

[UncleLar]

I don't know if any of you guys remember it,but there's a famous road course not far away from Chicago that's being partly restored.Meadowdale International Raceway off RTE 31 in Carpentersville. Some of the biggest names and makes in sports car racing ran there and even Nascar did for a while,plus Drag Racing!.Unfortunately it closed before I ever got a chance to see a race there,dammit.Man if I only could have been there to see Chaparrals and Scarabs racing!
http://meadowdaleraceway.homestead.co m/

[justbob]

I just found out about that one a couple years ago. Didn't know they were rebuilding though. Is it for use or museum? There was also the great open road track in Elgin, now THAT is a good read. I guess they shut down parts of the town back in the twenties??? and brought in racers from accross the globe! I'll see if I can do so research.

[UncleLar]

I just found out about that one a couple years ago. Didn't know they were rebuilding though. Is it for use or museum? There was also the great open road track in Elgin, now THAT is a good read. I guess they shut down parts of the town back in the the twenties??? and brought in racers from accross the globe! I'll see if I can do so research.
It figures,check the link,Meadowdale is having only it's second car show there TOMORROW! Doggone it.
The Elgin Road Races were famous.I believe they used to hold hill climbs on RTE.31 in Algonquin way way back.
The first auto race in the US was held in a raging blizzard in Chicago.
I'll bet nobody can tell me what make of car won the first race at the Indianappolis Speedway.

[justbob]

Buggatti???

[UncleLar]

Buggatti???
Nope.
I got a feeling that unless somebody cheats and looks it up I'm gonna win the bet.

[justbob]

$6500.00 purse in 1911!!!
http://carsandracingstuff.com/library/special/elgin.php

[UncleLar]

600 cubic inches and some of them big bore mothers were 4 bangers!

[Black Dynamite]

I'll bet nobody can tell me what make of car won the first race at the Indianappolis Speedway.

was it a Miller?

[UncleLar]

was it a Miller?
Not a Miller.

[UncleLar]

No more guesses?

[Phrog_gunner]

Stoddard???????

[UncleLar]

Nope,not a Stoddard.

[Black Dynamite]

I went ahead and looked it up. I never would have guessed the answer. I wasn't too far off with Miller though. 7-8 yrs maybe...

[UncleLar]

I went ahead and looked it up. I never would have guessed the answer. I wasn't too far off with Miller though. 7-8 yrs maybe...
Go ahead and post it,no one else seems to want to hazard another guess. But even though you looked it up,you might be wrong.
If you're believing the make of the car starts with a M you're wrong,but post and if you are I'll tell you why.

[justbob]

Ford???????????

[UncleLar]

Nope,not a Blue Oval Bob.
BTW,did you know the Chevrolet brothers made hot rod parts for Fords at one time,before they started making Chebby's?
And if anybody knows their engines pretty well I've got three that might darn well stump you.

[justbob]

Figured perhaps I was overthinking..........So I guessed stupid simple.

[Black Dynamite]

Go ahead and post it,no one else seems to want to hazard another guess. But even though you looked it up,you might be wrong.
If you're believing the make of the car starts with a M you're wrong,but post and if you are I'll tell you why.

I looked up Indy 500 winners and the first listed is a Marmon.

As far as first race won I don't even know what year the speedway opened. But what the hell, I'll guess Oldsmobile?

[UncleLar]

I looked up Indy 500 winners and the first listed is a Marmon.

As far as first race won I don't even know what year the speedway opened. But what the hell, I'll guess Oldsmobile?
Very good Grasshopper,the winner of the first Indy 500 was a Marmon driven by Ray Haroun,it was also the first car in history to use a rear view mirror.
But the winner of the first race there which was NOT the Indy 500 was a Buick!

Now lets see who knows their engines.:eek:

Who else besides Mopar made a 383 ? (and they made it before Mopar)
Who else besides Ford made a 289?
Who else besides Chevy made a 327 ? (and they made it before Chevy did)

[JUST 1BULLITT]

You got me on the engines...have to THINK On those; BUT I love this thread about these "FAST becoming extinct Junk Yards" all over America AND the usually QUIRKY types that own them or have over sight on them...these ARE a dying tradition and scene of Americana and it's a serious bummer! (I still get a thrill out of going through these places; you just never know what you'll come across!)

[Black Dynamite]

Very good Grasshopper,the winner of the first Indy 500 was a Marmon driven by Ray Haroun,it was also the first car in history to use a rear view mirror.
But the winner of the first race there which was NOT the Indy 500 was a Buick!


:hijack:Hey Lar, I just found this in Automobile magazine:

"Louis Schwitzer, who had no hand in the Speedway's creation, deserves honorable mention for winning Indy's first race in a Stoddard-Dayton. Competing against four other stock-chassis cars in a five-mile sprint, Schwitzer averaged 57 mph, led both laps, and won by a 150-foot margin. Schwitzer had earlier emigrated from Austria with two engineering degrees and $18 in his pocket. Following stints at Pierce-Arrow and a Canadian car company, he helped design the engine that powered Ray Harroun's Marmon to victory at the first Indy 500 race in 1911."

As for the engines I really don't know. The only guess I can venture is IIRC Packard had a 327.



As for the original topic, I remember a graveyard for old cranes, bulldozers, graters, dump trucks, etc, that was near my house. I loved sneaking off to go play on those. I'm sure they've all been melted down by now.:(

[Phrog_gunner]

I'll bet nobody can tell me what make of car won the first race at the Indianappolis Speedway.

You never said the first Indy 500. You said the first race at Indianapolis. It was in 1909.


The winner of the first five mile race turned out to be an automotive engineer, not a professional racing car driver.
His car was a stripped down Stoddard Dayton touring car powered by a four cylinder engine of 212 cubic inch displacement. It traveled at an average speed of 57.4 miles per hour for five miles on the macadam track. The driver's name was Louis Schwitzer, nicknamed "Louie".

[Leadfoot281]

Very good Grasshopper,the winner of the first Indy 500 was a Marmon driven by Ray Haroun,it was also the first car in history to use a rear view mirror.
But the winner of the first race there which was NOT the Indy 500 was a Buick!

Now lets see who knows their engines.:eek:

Who else besides Mopar made a 383 ? (and they made it before Mopar)
Who else besides Ford made a 289?
Who else besides Chevy made a 327 ? (and they made it before Chevy did)

Without looking this up, I'll guess;

1. No idea...
2. Studebaker 289.
3. AMC 327. Commonly found in old Wagoneers BTW.

[UncleLar]

I stand corrected about Buick winning the "first race",here's what I've found from the Motor Speedway official site.
"The proceedings begin promptly at noon, with five cars taking off for a two-lap, 5-mile, standing-start dash. This one is for stock chassis, powered by engines of between 161 and 230 cubic inches. The winner, in a time of 5 minutes, 18.40 seconds, is a Stoddard-Dayton driven by Austrian-born Louis Schwitzer, who eventually will become a leading industrialist in the city as well as technical chairman for the Indianapolis 500.

Of the next three events, all short dashes, two are won by famous names of the future, Louis Chevrolet (Buick) and Ray Harroun (Marmon) both winning four-lap affairs.

The third winner does not fare so well. Knox driver Billy Bourque defeats Chevrolet and Bob Burman in a two-lap race for cars of cubic-inch displacement between 301 and 450, but the poor fellow does not even make it through the same afternoon. Just past the halfway mark of the featured 250-mile race for the Prest-O-Lite trophy, he spins out of Turn 4, hits an infield ditch, flips over several times and ends up hitting a post. Bourque and his luckless riding mechanic, Harry Holcomb, both are thrown out, neither of them surviving the accident.

It is nearly 7 p.m. when Burman is flagged in as the winner, the 250 miles having taken almost 4 hours and 40 minutes to complete. "

Phrog_Gunner,"You never said the first Indy 500. You said the first race at Indianapolis.",Absolutely correct,when you say The First Race at Indy everyone naturally assumes the first race was the Indy 500,I specifically didn't say first Indy 500,lol and I got proven wrong! Damfi didn't learn something,never too late to learn.

Leadfoot got the 289 Studebaker correct along with the AMC 327,I hadn't heard of Packard using a 327 but it's quite possible.
Mercury used a 383 for a short while. The first one I became aware of was installed in a friends brother's hot rod gasser style Studebaker pick up truck in 1967.

[justbob]

Also 302-69 Camaro and 302/5.0 fords.