The Rambler Part 1

I was pondering what to blog about yesterday, yesterdays blog being rather mundane. I mean, how do you top a pissing-on-an-electric-fence story? I couldn't think of a thing, so I decided to go in an entirely different direction.

There are certain cars that come into your life and for whatever reason become legendary. Sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for less than good reasons.

The Rambler was one of those cars that seemed to just accumulate stories. Even the way we obtained it was unusual.

JB was working at a place that mede fiberglass tubs and shower surrounds. They had gotten in a shipment of fiberglass resin that was contaminated. A half a dozen 55 gallon drums. Since the contamination would cause the parts to be discolored it was useless to the company. The supplier wrote off the resin, and the company said that anyone could have it that wanted it. We grabbed four drums.

My landlord had an alcoholic son, who couldn't hold down a job. However, he was a talented boat builder. He could use the resin to coat a couple of coulpe of double ended steelhead drift boats he was building. In return his dad would give us a 1955 Rambler station wagon, which was firmly entrenched in a field.

The Rambler had been sitting for a couple of years. It was butt ugly, a sort of mold green, with lichens growing on it. It looked quite organic.

They had been in the middle of doing a valve job on it when they had lost interest, but it was mostly all there, so we dragged it out of the field, and took it over to Steve's garage. They had removed the head and pulled the valves, which were in the back seat, but when we inventoried things, we were missing the valve stem keepers.

Off to the junkyard.

The junkyard was less than heplful, but we did find another flathead six Rambler. They refused to loan us tools or help us in any way, so we went back home and got the tools we needed. It took a quite a while to tear down the engine enough to get at the keepers.

Since the junkyard had been such jerks, and we were near the fence, each part we removed, we chucked over the fence. After a couple of hours, we went to the office with a small handfull of valve keepers. They charged us $.50 for the keepers.

We came back later and picked up the intake and exhaust manifolds, head and distribtor that had fallen over the fence.

When we went to install the radiator, it rattled, and was too heavy. WTF? We shook it, and hazel nuts started falling out of the bottom of the radiator. Some squirrel had been using it as his safety deposit box. Well, we had just broken the bank. We must have gotten a couple of pounds of nuts out of the radiator.

We cleaned everything up, put everything in place, and it started up the very first try. I was astounded that it had been so easy. Things are never that easy.

Steve took it down the street to give it a trial run. About a half a block away, there was a loud explosion, with fire and smoke gushing out from under the hood. It looked like a dragster that had blown the engine during a race. The door popped open, and there was Steve running down the street, ducking, waiting for the Hollywood explosion. It never happened.

After letting the car sit a while to make sure nothing was going to happen, we went down to see what had happened.

There were three of us working on the car at the same time. Someone had put the gas line on the carb and just tightened it a couple of turns, meaning to snug it up later, which never got done. The line had rattled loose and sprayed raw gas all over the inside of the engine compartment, and when it caught WHOOOMO!

The fire had burned up the seals in the carb and a bunch of wiring in the engine compartment. Luckily, we had all of these spare parts that has escaped from the junkyard, so after a couple of hours to set things right and make sure the gas line was tightened, the car was ready for the road. (To this day we still argue about who didn't tighten the line the first time.)

So The Rambler became our communal errand running grocery getting car of many uses.

Those old falthead sixes were notorious for blowing head gaskets. The head is about 1 1/2" thick, and if you overheat the car at all the head warps, and you have to replace the head gasket. The head is held in place by about 40 studs coming out of the block. Getting it loose can be a real pain in the butt. The nuts have to be first loosened just a little and then removed in a particular sequence to keep from warping the head.

We had done the initial torque down of the head, and were going back for final torque, when JB broke off stud #1 (the one right in the center of the head) flush with the top off the block. Crap.

We didn't want to take the head back off, so we took a bolt of the right size so it was a tight fit and cut off the shank so that it was just the right length. A tube of epoxy. Put some epoxy in the hole and hammer the bolt in place. Let it set for 24 hours, and off we went.

After a couple of months,we were driving down the road when BANG CHUFF CHUFF CHUFF. A small dimple appeared in the hood. The epoxy had given out and the bolt had blown out of the hole and put a dimple in the hood of the car.

No big deal, bolts were cheap. So we repeated the procedure. The only problem was that the fit wasn't quite as tight the second time, so the duration wasn't quite as long. Each time the duration was a little shorter.

We accumulated a nice series of dimples in the hood of the car.

When it got to the point that every other weekend we were refitting bolts, we decided we had to fix the problem. So we tore the head off of the engine to see what was up. It was a bit of a chore getting the head off without breaking it, because some of the epoxy had cemeted the head to the head gasket, which in turn was cemented to the block.

We futzed around for a while after we got the head off, and decided we needed to go get an easy-out to remove the remains of the stud. JB jumped in his truck while Steve and I waited.

I got a deliciously evil idea.

We were working in JB's driveway, and I lived right next door. In my garage I was rebuilding the engine from a 1940 Chev. pickup truck, which was all in pieces.

Even though the parts were not real similar to the Rambler, we grabbed the crank, rods, and pistons from my motor and dragged them to where we were working, and strewed them around. Lastly we draped an old towel over the engine compartment.

As JB pulled in, I saw his eyes get big, and he sat up higher in the truck, as his jaw dropped. He jumped out of the truck and was pointiing at the parts on the ground. His face went white, then red, then white again. His mouth was moving, but no noise was coming out. He kinda made a little hop and turned to point at another part.

Bu this time Steve and I were litterally rolling in the driveway, laughing so hard we couldn't talk.

Without saying a word, I got up and leaned over and took the towel off of the engine compartment.