Not mine yet.
Last year at MIP, a guy and his wife attending the show came up to my car and said he had a matching car to mine (Color and interior), but was a convertible. Intrigued we started talking. He had inherited this car with his dad's estate when he passed away a few years ago.
His Dad ordered it new in Huron SD to replace a '67 Polara that had a 383 - 2bbl. This is where it gets interesting as to why he ordered it the way he did. They had a full size camper trailer that they pulled with the '67, but his Dad didn't like the power when pulling the camper so when he ordered this one he had the camper in mind, and wanted to keep the price under $5,000. I have a copy of his invoice that shows before tax at $4,948.85.
'68 Polara convertible, 440 Magnum, Trailer towing package, sure grip differential, Front Disk Brakes, Air conditioning, Auto Pilot, Power bench seat, 3 spoke steering wheel, tinted windows, Blackwall 15"tires, clock and center seat belts, the electric window would have put it over $5,000 so he didn't order them. He never did put a hitch on it to pull the camper as it would get a little crowded in the back seat for the current owner and his two sisters.
It has 60,000 original miles and was garaged. The only things not original on it is the Carburetor (1406 ASV2), and the sides were re-painted about 15? years ago because of repairs to the rear quarters by the trunk pan due to them living on a gravel road and filling up with dust and dirt. Hood and trunk are original paint.
Anyway back to the encounter, as we talked he shared that he wasn't using it as much as he should be as he was not very mechanically inclined and he mentioned that he should likely sell it, but it had quite a bit of sentimental value, so he wasn't quite ready. He gave me his card and I contacted him a few times over the summer where he shared some more information on the car. So last fall when I needed to head to MSP for something, I contacted him and asked if I could see the car.
We looked at the car and and I pointed out a few maintenance items that he should consider having someone look at or if he wanted to get it to Fargo, I could do some of it for him.
I put together a pretty extensive list of things that should be done that could take it to top $ along with how much it would likely cost in parts and labor to get it there. But every time I started talking about price he would clam up and I wouldn't hear from him for a while. I could tell he wasn't quite ready to sell. I invited him to bring it to MIP this year back in February when I signed up and he thought that would be neat. Anyway I didn't hear from him so I contacted him the week before the show and he said he hadn't done anything with the car to get it ready.
So I offered to help him get it ready once I parked my car Friday morning. When I got to the show and parked I grabbed my tool bag, vacuum gauge and timing light and he picked me up and we went over to his place to get it going.
It started up but ran pretty rough, I could see the varnish on the carb but thought I could just spray some carb cleaner. Got it adjusted and idling smooth, but it didn't like to rev. I took it for a quick spin and it died on me. It was running out of fuel.
I pulled the top off the carburetor and it was a mess with very little fuel in the bowl. So I pulled the whole thing apart and cleaned and scraped of the varnish, cleaned the inlet screens, Hooked my "emergency" electric fuel pump up and made sure we were getting good flow from the tank. We changed the fuel filter and got it purring and running up and down the road pretty good. He said it has never run that good. I think I was there from about 1:00 - 8:00PM, but enjoyed every minute of it. We made plans to meet at his house Saturday morning so we could drive into the show together. I had a great time and he is a great guy. We talked about the future during the show and his concerns. I told him that now that it is running, drive the hell out of it this summer and when he is ready to store it this fall to talk to me. I told him if he was ready to sell then we could probably work something out. If he wasn't quite ready, I told him I would come again next spring to help him get it ready. He said we will talk this fall while the weather is still nice, he would like me to buy it but we need to come to a fair price for both of us. Price is difficult as there are not a lot of comp's out there.
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