Contact

I got a call tonight from Curt, the FedEx truck driver. He's planning to deliver the car tomorrow, something like noon or maybe 11 am. He has a delivery in Bakersfield first and will call me after that is done. I've been busy all day making room in the garage so I'm ready!

Parts

A few parts have been trickling in while I wait for the new girl to arrive. Gotta have gifts on hand to welcome her, right? A nice gas door guard, an NOS pair of door handle guards, some restorable front bumper guards, and today's prize... the illuminated Indian head hood ornament! That was a tough one to find. It has the clear head, and doesn't have the light, but I'll use an LED anyway. All this is added to the power steering column and associated parts I bought before I had even settled on this car.

I've placed an order with A1 Electric for the usual array of power goodies too. That should all arrive next week. Now if we are just on track for the weekend delivery...

Woodside Credit transferred the loan to Bank of the West. I got their welcome letter today. 

On The Truck!

Cindy at Fedex called to let me know that the car has been loaded onto the transport truck and I can expect it to arrive here on Saturday or Sunday of this coming weekend unless weather or extraordinary circumstances get in the way. She took my credit card info and so the shipment is now paid for. Curt, the driver, will call me 12 to 24 hours before he expects to arrive. Awesome!

I got a second good piece of news later today too... I found what looks to be a very nice illuminated Indian head hood ornament for my car. It has the clear insert instead of the amber one, which I was kind of hoping to find, but the clear is still fine. I'll have to see if I can use an amber light or LED. Yes it was expensive. So what! :D

Just heard from Cindy at FedEx about my pickup date. Looks like they have it scheduled for Monday. Curt, the driver, is still a couple hundred miles out of St Louis but he'll be ready to load up Monday morning and Cindy will call me and run my credit card then. Whoopie!

So the Museum where the car is located is here:

Here is a satellite view of the building:

And here is the route the transport will most likely take on it's way here:

Cut the Check!

The bank cut the check yesterday and sent it out for delivery today. I also have a new confirmation on the transport. Now comes all the nail biting... always tough waiting to hear the car has been loaded and is finally in motion, watching the weather along the route, etc.

Loose Ends

Whirlwind morning! First I dropped the down payment check off at FedEx. Then I had to line up the insurance so that the loan company would release the check.

At first we ran into trouble with the insurance because they did not want to cover it until it was in my possession. They would agree to cover it from the expected delivery date, if I had one. Well I didn't because I was waiting to see that the loan was funded before contacting FedEx Custom Critical/Passport. But I went ahead and booked the transport, figuring it was safe to set a pickup date of the 19th, the end of this week. I then gave the insurance company the date of March 1st for delivery. Well that wasn't good enough for the loan department. They wanted a binder to be in effect immediately before they would fund. They suggested I look into (Hagerty) a different insurance company! I went back to my insurance folks and gave them the news: cover me effective today (or tomorrow) or I have no choice but to go to another company, most likely Hagerty. After consulting with supervisors and much hemming and hawing, they ponied up with a binder starting at 12:01 am tomorrow morning. Whew!

Next thing, FedEx called and the wonderful gal that talked to me wanted to know if they couldn't pick the car up sooner than Friday! That's a real switch! She said they're very familiar with the St. Louis Car Museum so knows the drill. I told her I didn't know when the funds would clear and the car released, but they were welcome to work with John (at the museum) for whatever date he was comfortable with. She rings off and about a minute later, John calls to get the name of the loan guy I'm working with so he can get the info he needs to release the car. Wow! These folks seem to be really on the ball. Amazing.

Anyway, after all that I dropped the loan package into the nearest UPS overnight drop box and took a break!

Loan Stuff

Got the loan docs, so I'm signing papers, getting notarizations, writing checks for loan fee, tax and license, down payment... ugh.

Purchase!

Oh CRAP! I just bought another damned car!

The verbally given appraisal comes in at the $18~22K, with a written explanation to follow. I called the St Louis Museum and worked out a price that was closer to the top of the range than the bottom, but hey, they are putting a whole brand-new water pump on for me. ;-)

Emails are flying back and forth with the museum and the financier. Yikes! The seller put a wrong digit in the VIN on the purchase agreement... bound to be a snag or two.

Inspection #2 in St. Louis

Al Mercer is my inspector for the St. Louis car, and I heard from him last night. He is pretty non-emotional and blunt in his assessments, which is a good thing. He pointed out some serious areas of concern with the car, most glaring being the paint on the rear deck on either side of the trunk lid. This is an area where there is a solder joint to join a body extension for the longer wheelbase model. Al thinks the surface prep was not good on those joints, so the final finish is rough. He only took photos of the defective areas, including some areas of rust in the floorpan and modifications to the frame for the dual exhaust, cracks in the steering wheel, some wing vent glass issues, etc. There is a small flaw in the front bumper that might be hidden if I found a set of bumper guards. He didn't get to drive the car much, but said it started, drove and braked well enough in the parking lot. It seems that a gasket on the water pump blew though, so the museum's mechanics will have to fix that. Al is supposed to call me to discuss his formal report later today. After that, I will be calling the museum, unless the valuation is too low.

 

Bad News

Well... The appraisal for the Spokane car ended up being $8500, which meant a loan was out of the question. I also knew the seller would not lower his price much, if at all from the $15K he was asking. Sure enough, I called the seller and he understood if I didn't want to buy at 15 but he was not going to drop his price. He thought the appraiser was "dreaming". I think I know who is dreaming and it's probably not the professional appraiser. To be fair, real selling prices are very subjective and I could see him getting far more than the appraised value. I just can't sell it to the bank very well. So... need to disengage myself from that car now...

Meanwhile back on eBay, there is a car at the St. Louis car museum I had looked at before. It's very similar to the Spokane car but the colors are reversed.

BIN is around $22K so, while more than intended, it's not out of the question. I quickly contacted the seller and asked for contact information to give to an appraiser and emailed the one from I-VAN in the area. The inspection is scheduled for Wednesday. Nothing much for me to do until then. The seller did call me later, perhaps as much to verify my number as to tell me about the little "stain" I could see on the speaker grille. He said the radio and clock do not work and the gold plating on the letters over the speaker have the gold flaking off. He assured me it was good mechanically.

There really aren't that many of these out there in the body and style I want. I started out thinking I would buy a cheapie Chieftain sedan and quickly found out that, for the money, the only way to really go is the two door hard top. And those are the ones everyone else wants too so they are expensive and hard to find.

Spokane Pictures

Got the photos from the inspector tonight. He called as well, and sounded like he liked the car. His overall impression was of a car that is very solid and tight, even though it doesn't *look* like it has been maintained particularly well. Not particularly clean and some windshield issues. The test drive proved that the engine started up easily, ran smoothly and had plenty of power. The Hydra-Matic was fine. The car rode well and there were no rattles, noises, squeaks or wind whistles, even at freeway speeds. They took it up to 70. Slight brake pulling, not surprisingly. No "sawing" on the wheel to keep it straight. All good signs.

He expects the asking price will be in the ballpark, though he wasn't willing to narrow it down any further before doing his homework. The seller is quite confident the value will prove to be $17-18K making his asking very reasonable. I doubt it will be that high, so it will be interesting to see where the numbers land.

I do not plan to treat it like a project if I buy it. I'll clean it up, condition the leather, perhaps replace the Daytona carpet, do a little degreasing on the engine and take care of things that look like they could really stand to be replaced... hoses and belts. I already have a complete '55 power steering column with pump, pulleys and hoses that I could swap in for the existing manual column to improve the driving experience, but I don't plan to paint it or completely redo the interior.