Thursday, November 4, 2010

Column #38 - The Adventure of the 1955 Nomad

Well, let’s see, after 5 hard weeks of ‘machine talkin’ it’s about time for another of my famous ‘detours’. This one is into the world of car shows and the adventures that come with ‘em.

Back on October 16th, I took Mrs. Mayberry over to Cool Springs for the Battleground AACA Region’s annual show. They wound up having a record turnout of almost 300 cars. The 1966 Batmobile was even there - how kool is that? I had an ulterior motive for going because of a couple of reasons. First, I needed to hand out some flyers about our cruise-in at Cannonsburgh and second, back last summer our club renovated our clubhouse and we found a poster from Battleground’s 2nd car show. It was in great shape for a poster that had been hanging on our bathroom wall for over 20 years. Anyway, I thought that club would be glad to see one of their old posters returned to them, so I took it over. They were thrilled to see it, much less actually have it given to them. I think we spread some real good will on that one.

As it sometimes the case, this show did not go down without an “adventure”.
An “adventure” is what I call it when things do not go as I plan – and you can read that as “things get really messed UP!”.

During the day I had noticed this really pretty 1955 Chevrolet Nomad wagon sitting in front of Sears and the owner was elbows deep under the hood. I had stopped by early in the day to check in and he seemed to have enough tools to do whatever needed doing, so I wished him well and went about the day. Well, sure enough, the show ended and during the wrap up, I noticed the Nomad again - still sitting where it had been all day long…and the guy’s feet were hanging out from under the dash. This cannot be good.

It wasn’t. As it turned out, the poor fellow had lost power in his electrical system and he was trying to find it again. I just happened to have a multi-meter in my tool box, so he borrowed it and started checking for voltage. We even had a fellow stop who owns a restoration shop and we all had at it. We found where the problem should have been and thought that we could jumper around that area and at least get him home. We actually got the car cranked for the first time in about 7 hours. Only…yea, I know…inside an “adventure” there is pretty much always an “only”…the underdash wiring started getting hot, caught on fire, burned a spot on his dash and we sprayed fire extinguisher dust all under the dash… what a mess…but we did NOT let his car burn down. At last report, they called AAA and got the car back to McMinnville where it remains bedded down in its nest. The Nomad’s owner and his wife seem to be real nice folks, who I would not have minded meeting on any day…I just hate that it was because of his car problem.

Send your questions or comments to:
Toolsmartz@bellsouth.net and we’ll see what we can do to help you.

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