(serious guitar ballad)
- My luggage was delayed by four hours,
so while I was waiting for my luggage
I just went cruising around and found a yard full of cars.
What I'm hoping is that this yard will produce
another yard somewhere else, he'll say
I know of a guy and that's the way these things work out.
So, we're gonna try to spend four days
in one town and I have no leads at all
and see what it produces in four days.
So, we're here to look at Tom Cross's Fords,
which he's got a whole bunch in the back
but I'm looking over here
and there's a couple of, well GM,
it's certainly an Oldsmobile coupe on the right
and some kind of GM, Chevy, Pontiac
or Oldsmobile wagon on the left.
We'd call it a Woody but it's really a steel Woody,
there might be a little bit of wood on that car
but most of the wood is probably on the inside.
So, I'm gonna see if we can go see those cars as well
because look at that picture, that's a perfect picture, man.
That could be the cover of a book, wow.
When I landed in Midland yesterday
and I went cruising through this industrial section
and met a guy, I'd never met before, Tom Cross
and now we're like best buddies.
We speak the same language although we've never met.
He's a barn find guy, too and has invited us
to go take a look at his Ford collection in the back here.
Can we take a walk back there sir?
- Sure can, let's go.
- Thank you.
(mellow southern rock music)
Are these cars from Texas or where are they from?
- [Cross] There's some of them from Texas,
some of them from New Mexico.
Liberal, Kansas, Dodge City, Kansas,
just a lot of different places.
A friend of mine and myself we got a bug,
a lot of these old yards were being
just completely disassembled and being crushed
so we gathered up a couple trailers.
We doubled them because you can do that
in Texas and New Mexico, you can follow two trucks.
- [Cotter] Double up, no kidding?
- [Cross] You can double them at a time.
We covered about a 500 mile radius, running junk yards.
- [Cotter] And this would have been the 80's or 90's?
- [Cross] Early 90's.
- [Cotter] Early 90's.
- [Cross] 93', 94', 95', total all in all
I probably hauled 95 to 100 cars.
- [Cotter] Two at a time?
- [Cross] Two at a time.
- [Cotter] Phew!
- [Cross] Sold a lot of them over the years
and this some of the remnants of what I've got left.
- Here we have a Fairlane, 260 V8 Fairlane,
bucket seats, automatic.
- [Cross] This was another New Mexico find.
- [Cotter] So that's what they call a sport roof?
- [Cross] Yeah, it's a sport model.
- No post here, so if you put the back window
and the front window down, it would be
an open area here with no post.
That's a sporty little car, and it's more solid
than anything I grew up around,
up in New York, man, I'll tell you that.
Does it still have a 260 in it?
- [Cross] Yes. (car door slams)
- It's a two barrel?
- [Cross] Yes ... yes.
- Tom's got, you know, this many cars in this yard
and most of them are parts cars, some could be restored
so I'm just gonna point out a couple
that I think are worthy of restoration.
This is a '63 Ford Fairlane sport roof, which means
fold the windows down, there's no pillar.
It's got a 260 V8. The 260 was the second series
of small Ford V8s. After the Y- Block series ended,
a 221 came out first, only lasted a little while.
The 260 was second, which was a variation of a 221,
and the 289 was the third variation of it.
We've all heard of 289s, they were Mustangs,
and Cobras, and all sorts of stuff.
So this car, as opposed to the other cars that Tom has,
this car is complete.
It's got a 260 V8 you can see it's complete
right down to the air cleaner.
The windshield washer bag which is a (chuckles)
a Ford item, and there's no accessories here at all.
No power brakes, no power steering
It's got a generator, this is pre-alternator days
but if you look at this car, it's complete.
You could restore this car, not needing many more parts
than service items, hoses and belts,
certainly the interior, tires,
but you wouldn't have to be a slave to buying parts
from parts distributors for this car.
You could buy this car, do an inventory of the parts
that it's got that are reusable and probably,
for not much money, get this car going.
You could drive it as is, as a Rat Rod kinda thing
or you know, do a full restoration.
And I'd say with this body style it'd be worth it.
If I had this car I'd put a four-speed in it
but other than that, I think it's a pretty cool car
the way it is.
This is a 1962 Ford Galaxy 500
and the worst thing about it is that it's a four door
but let me tell you what the best thing about this car is.
It's got every option, this car is a loaded car
and when Tom brought this to this yard 25 years ago,
he drove it here. (car hood creaks)
So it's got a 390 motor, as you can see right here, 390.
It's an automatic, the 390s back in this era
all had Thunderbird written on the valve covers
cos that was the standard motor in the Thunderbirds
so, you know a lot of people said,
"Oh I got a Thunderbird motor in my Ford."
This has got power brakes, air conditioning,
power steering, all the 500 accessories, the trim.
The keys are on the front seat,
but that's a power front seat and I didn't even know
that Ford had an optional power front seat back in '62.
The worst thing about the car, besides the four-door,
if it was a two-door, this car wouldn't be here
but I'm saying you should think about this car anyway
because, what difference does it make?
This dent's been in the roof
since before Tom got the car 25 years ago.
So because there's no creases in there,
it's still a clean bend, I'm saying that could probably
be popped out with no body damage.
You see the factory air conditioning underneath there.
It's got a clock in the dash,
which is the same as in a 289 Cobra.
I told Tom that I'd like to buy the clocks
out of all '62 Ford Galaxies here.
He said, "Unfortunately, you gotta take the cars with 'em."
So (car door slams) I don't need the clocks that bad.
But it's got, that's the correct hubcap for this car,
I mean this is a solid, complete car
I assume the floors are okay,
and he wants a couple grand for it, like 2000 bucks.
So, you know, there are a lot of people
like to get into this hobby that don't have $100,000
to buy a car but a lot of people have $2,000
and this could be a father and son
or father and daughter project that would be easy to do
and fun to own and it wouldn't be expensive
to buy parts for, to maintain, or to operate.
All right, I'm gonna show you
the rarest car on this property.
Now Tom's got, I dunno, 30 or 40 cars here.
This is the rarest one on this property.
This is a 1960 Ford Station Wagon which would be rare enough
and there's a couple around here anyway
but this is a two-door wagon, two-door Ranch wagon.
I don't know if I've ever seen another one like this.
So this car doesn't seem to be in the really good condition
as some of the other cars I've seen
but because of the body being such a rare beast,
a two-door, this would be worth restoring
using one of the other wagons around here
or one of the other 60s as parts cars for this.
I wasn't even aware that they made a 1960 two-door wagon.
This is a automatic, what motor's in here, 352 or something?
- [Cross] Oh, probably 352 I would imagine
could even be a Y- Block.
- [Cotter] Is the 352 not a Y- Block?
- [Cross] No, 352 is an FE series
(grunts) no it's not gonna work with us, Tom.
- [Cotter] Yeah, okay.
- [Cross] Yeah, the 352 is an FE series
like the 390, and the 427, 428.
The Y- Blocks were 272s, 292s, and 312s.
- [Cotter] Well this has got the bolts
going through the valve cover--
- [Cross] So that's a Y-Block.
- [Cotter] It's a Y-Block, yeah.
- [Cross] It's just like that one
over there sittin' on that '55
- Exactly, yeah.
- [Cross] The Y- Blocks always had
those two bolts holdin' them on.
Terrible engines. Terrible engines.
- [Cotter] All right, I mean, if I lived closer
and my wife would let me have any more cars,
I would drag this home. What would you ask for this car?
- [Cross] For this one and the parts car $4,500.
- Oh, you got the four-door wagon over there.
- Yeah, I got a four-door wagon for a parts car.
- So that wagon would be the parts car for that wagon.
Now you see, this is the more traditional
1960 Ford wagon, it's a four-door wagon.
So the piece of trim that's missing off that one,
this has a break in it, that won't ever be solid.
And this has got air conditioning,
cool car air conditioning.
And this has got a manual gearbox, three on the tree
so you could do worse than to bring home a project
that was that rare body, and this as a parts car.
And you could probably sell the parts
off this car when your project was done.
Now that's my pick of the litter, right there.
This is an original paint car. A 61 ...
62 ... 62 Ford wagon, and you know I like wagons
and so I've always heard desert cars have paint jobs
that can be brought back to life.
And so we're gonna try it on this one
I've borrowed from Tom some Carnauba Wax Cleaner
and I borrowed a rag, and I'm just gonna see
if I can actually get a shine out of this fender.
You know, I've never had the opportunity to do this before.
Living on the East Coast with a desert car
so let's see what happens.
(vigorous buffing)
This just some of the crazy stuff we do
on the road with Barn Find Hunter
that you guys don't get a chance to see very often.
But I get to live my fantasy out with desert cars
trying to bring paint back to life.
(vigorous buffing)
Well, it's starting to get there.
(exhales) Only kidding.
All right, well there you go. Not quite what I imagined,
but if I had a buffer, and some compound ...
Okay, this is crazy, but Jordan said
if you would drag that car up there
and let me use a buffer to buff that fender,
it would make great video. So I'm not--
- I can do it
- I'm not taking one position or another.
- I can do it
- All right, here we go. (upbeat rhythm)
All right so this is something
that I've wanted to do, this sounds crazy
I remember seeing a commercial once
for like J-Wax or something like that
and they went into a desert junkyard
and found an old car and waxed it up, had it look like new
and I was probably 12 years old
but here's my chance to try it.
So we're gonna drag this car outta here,
bring it up to Tom's shop and we're gonna
buff out the fender, the hood.
I don't know how well I'm gonna work on this
but we're gonna see what kind of desert shine
we can get out of this.
(bluesy rock music)
(metal scraping)
Oh yeah, it's on there.
Unless you haven't realized yet,
we have a lot of fun shooting these episodes
and only when you meet somebody like this guy,
Tom Cross, can you talk him into dragging a car out
of his private junk yard cos you want to wax the fender
and see how shiny it comes. Crazy fun stuff.
Anyway, I'm gonna have to get the dirt off here first.
He just had a bottle of 409
just to get the heavy desert grit off there.
Although I might need all the grit I can get
to cut through that dead paint.
Okay, so if you own a body shop you might,
maybe can tell I don't know what the heck I'm doin here.
(buffer revs) Oh god, this is too much
(funky rock music) (buffer whirs)
Do you believe this? Do you believe
how we brought back an original paint job?
Look at that, look at the reflection
Now I guess this is a lesson for people
who watch the Barn Find Hunter series,
is that, we didn't plan on doing this today
but we found a car that looks straight
and I asked if I could borrow a little rag
and we polished up a little area right here.
I said, "Son of a gun, Tom, would you mind
dragging this car over to your building
we could use a compound and a buffer."
You know, if you say there's no old cars left out there
well there are plenty of old cars
if you just get out and find them.
And sometimes you find a gem like this
that you could pick up for not a lot of money.
Spend a weekend, in a weekend this car
could look this good all throughout.
Spend another couple of weekends doing the interior
probably have to reupholster those seats
It doesn't have a motor or transmission in it now
but that wouldn't be hard to put in
and I'm saying within two months
this could be a really beautiful, nice driving car.
They're out there ... happy hunting.
(bluesy rock music)