(static)
(upbeat music)
- Were back in Midland, Texas,
where we were about a year ago.
This won't be your normal Barn Find Hunter episode.
It's gonna be better than that.
This is gonna be the best Barn Find story ever told.
It's got so many moving pieces of this story.
It was just a year ago, you may remember
our Midland, Texas episode from last year,
but if you don't remember it,
go to Barn Find Hunter episode 34.
We were in this yard looking at this field
of pretty solid cars and I actually
really fell in love with this one,
a 1960 Ford two-door station wagon.
You know I'm a Ford guy, you know I'm a wagon guy
and two door wagons are even better.
But there was another wagon that was over here
that got my attention.
I think it was probably right here.
Yeah that's a solid body, you know.
How many wagons can I have, though?
I have to walk by.
And I kept on going back to that wagon
and there was something solid about it.
So the owner, Tom Cross, I said,
"Tom, you have compound and a rag?"
It was kinda dingy like this, you know,
like kinda dingy, desert dirt.
And I polished a little piece of the fender,
you might remember it, polished a little piece
of the fender and it shined.
So that 1962 paint on this wagon still shined
like it was brand new.
And I said, "Tom, I wish I had a buffer out here,
I'd like to buff this whole fender out."
And Tom said, "well I have a buffer,
but I don't have an extension cord this long,
but let me figure something out."
And (makes revving sound) he fires up his forklift
and comes over and moves a car over there
and moves a car over there,
and picks this car up and brings it to the shop
and then we hook up the buffer,
and I buffed out this fender.
Oh my goodness, this car is too good to be thrown away.
And Tom was getting ready to crush these cars,
he said, "I've had 'em here for 30 years."
So you know, having spent time buffing out
this little piece of the fender,
then having spent time buffing out
the complete front fender,
this car was talking to me.
And this car had good bones.
And this car, I couldn't get it out of my mind.
So on the way home and over
the next couple of days I thought about it,
we decided we'll just make a project car out of this.
We'll take a car that we find in a Barn Find Hunter episode
and kinda bring you along for the ride,
showing you that cars can be found,
purchased, and worked on, and enjoyed
for under market value.
So we came here over the winter time,
right now it's spring and it's getting warm,
it's going to be 92 today.
We were here when it was 20 and 30 degrees
in the winter time.
Thankfully we were working inside a shop.
The handy thing about here is that every part
we needed was in that yard.
We had to hardly buy anything except for,
well, new bearings for the wheels,
new brakes, tie rod ends, ball joints,
those kinda things.
So it's handy when you have your own parts department.
Now here's one of the parts cars,
'62 Ford Galaxy we used for the dashboard wiring harness.
Here's another car we used for some brake parts.
So thankfully, these '62 Fords just lying around.
So a project like this, you know,
can't even be attempted unless you've got
really good partners helping out.
And we have a good partner, Mr. Tom Cross,
who we just met by accident.
Riding down the road in the Woody,
right down that road and saw a field of cars
and knocked on his door and he said,
"yeah, come on in."
And so Tom has been an active participant
and partner in a project of taking that
junkyard wagon and turning it into something pretty special.
How many people helped you with this project?
- Well, with all the sponsors and everything,
we probably had 12 to 15 people.
Had two of my good friends that
put a lot of hours in it with me.
You know it was just a group effort.
It went really well.
- Well let's show these people
what this has turned in to.
(upbeat music)
So this is original 1962 paint.
But you could tell, this car now has wheels.
It has tires, it has an interior,
it has an engine, it has a transmission,
it has repaired floors, it's got shiny chrome,
and most all the parts were sourced
from the yard right back here.
Look at this thing.
That amazing?
These are some of the sponsors.
Many of which are Tom's good friends
that helped out with radiators and batteries, wheels, tires.
These individuals gave their time to this project.
It wouldn't be looking like this without their help.
To check this engine out now,
if you remember, when this car was sitting out
in the field all those years
it had no engine or transmission.
Show you what it looks like now.
Now this is not a factory piece, this wooden pole,
just, it's helping because the springs
that hold the hood are a little bit worn out.
But here is a very nicely built 390
that was built by a friend of Tom's here in town,
and it puts out about 325 horsepower.
Sweet idling, sweet running car
of which Tom gave us one,
and it was cracked, gave us another one,
and it was cracked, and this is the fourth one
and it wasn't cracked and it runs sweet.
It's got a four barrel holley, what a five?
- 650, it's got a 650 on it.
- 650 holley.
Tell us about your friends in the street rider club,
what they gave us.
- West Texas Street Ride Association
donated the front brake, disk brake
conversion kit for it with a master cylinder.
One of the guys in the club donated
the Billet air cleaner for it.
So basically from axle to axle this car is brand new.
Bearings, brakes, engine, transmission,
master cylinder, we had all the wiring out of the car.
Everything in the car works, all the accessories work.
It's a good running, going down the road old car.
(door slams)
- A lot of the glass, we had to take the windshield out.
These things were not even in, these quarter windows.
A couple of the guys from McPherson College,
Austin and Dalton came in here
and they made their own gasket over here,
which looks kind of factory, out of black silicone.
And they did such a great job putting these in.
These are tinted.
And these are out of a '64 donor wagon that was in the back.
That car donated quite a few pieces,
including, thankfully, the glass.
The rear end, we had out.
It's got new rear brakes.
- [Tom] Bearings, seals, everything.
- The whole rear end's
been redone. - Everything,
all the bearings. - Is that a Ford nine inch?
- [Tom] It's a Ford nine inch, 356 gear.
- Yep.
Now we didn't make any attempt to fix the body.
It is what it is.
It's a '62 ford, so that makes it 57 years old, I guess.
The tailgate was real raunchy when we got it.
It had the window was broken out of it.
- Oh yeah, blowin' the dust out.
Yeah, you've got that video on your phone too, right?
(engine revs)
- It's got such nice spring loading in there right now.
Now if I'm not mistaken, there's a spring
on the other end of this.
- [Tom] Two springs.
- Is that right?
Now check this out.
This is the original Ford piece.
This is how you kept the spare tire cover open.
It wasn't hydraulics or clicking little mechanisms.
Was made by Ford to hold it up to the rain gutter.
Just amazing stuff.
So you can see how solid this all is right now.
Tom did an amazing job, it's all Rust-Oleum.
It's got Dynamat, sound deadening and heat prevention.
And then it was covered in the same fabric
we covered the seats with, Mexican blanket.
What a blast.
- [Tom] Had to put a touch of Texas in it, you know.
- Touch of Texas.
- Just had to.
But all the glass in the back of this car
is out of a '64 wagon, which was a donor wagon
for the floorboards, for the spare tire portion of it,
and the rear glass, 'cause this car did not
have rear glass in it either.
We had to make some alterations
in the tailgate to make that work,
but that come out fine.
I was able to find a set of inlets,
basically Fairlane, because this is a country sedan
and we were basically able to do that.
- So if you remember from the original episode,
this top was pretty rusty.
When we came here in the winter time
to work on this car with some McPherson College students,
who volunteered a week to come down,
our intention was to paint this top white,
which is what it would've originally been painted.
So we're sanding it down and then the students said,
"this is kinda cool, why don't we just clear over the rust?"
And here it is, a rusty top that's been cleared over.
It's kind of a satin clear.
They mixed,
- [Tom] Cornstarch.
- Cornstarch with it,
which is apparently an old hot rod trick
of keeping it duller.
So it's a little bit duller.
It almost looks like leather.
So it's a nice compliment and it shows that the car
is just not too pretty, we don't want to make it too pretty.
And a white top would have made it a little bit too pretty.
So you can take a look at this top.
Buffed out this, and you now I'm not a buffer,
so I burned through the paint in a couple areas.
Oh well, I tried.
What I really dig is, Tom went through this dashboard,
literally had the dashboard out of the car,
went through the gauges, went through all the switches.
The radio works, all the, I'm talkin'
the interior dome light works, which is on right now.
Check that out.
And the seat, Tom used some foam padding he had
and made a structurally sound padded seat
and then brought it to a friend, what's your friend's name?
- [Tom] Gus.
- Gus. - Ramirez.
- And Gus got this Mexican blanket
and stitched it into a seat cover.
What could be more perfect?
So these seat belts are Simpson's racing
seat belts out of a race car.
I race a car.
When seat belts get to be a couple years old
they won't pass tech inspection anymore.
But they're still fine.
So they're sitting on the shelf at home,
I said well lets put them in the wagon.
So this wagon has seat belts that have been
in my Corvette at 150 miles an hour.
So (chuckles) we'll see how fast we can get this
goin' across Texas in a couple hours.
(engine revs)
You've seen me for four years
walking around, looking at cars
saying yeah, this is good, this is good,
I would do this, I would do that.
We actually did it with this car.
We actually, you know, made a project car out of it.
And I'm gonna tell you how the economics worked on this.
In hard cash, we've got $8,000 in this car.
But Tom figured out with all the sponsors
that were involved with this car,
we probably have $15,000 invested in this car right now.
And I'm guessing that's about the market value of this car.
You could probably sell this thing
maybe for around that money,
which means you could still go out
and find in a car and if you roll up your sleeves
and do some hard work, you could build a car
that you won't be upside down in,
which is unusual these days.
We've mentioned McPherson College,
students coming here to work on the car over the winter.
There's some decals on the car.
We should mention why McPherson is involved with this car.
McPherson College in Kansas offers a four-year
bachelor's program in automotive restoration.
And so it's part of the business school.
So students have to take accounting classes
and bookkeeping and all their electives
like they normally would if they were going
for any other business degree.
But they also have to learn auto upholstery,
machining, engine building, metal working,
all the various disciplines of auto restoration.
And so when they leave there,
they're not only auto restorers,
but they also have the business
background to open a shop one day.
And they get hired by shops, Paul Russell,
Ralph Lauren, the Petersen Museum.
They go to work at collections around the country.
Just amazing the placement they get.
They have an old shop truck, it's an old Chevy pickup.
An old Chevy LUV, I think it is.
It's only running on three cylinders,
it's really a piece of junk.
So we've decided to donate this car
to McPherson College as their parts chaser.
Something to go to the junkyard with to buy parts,
or go to an auto parts store to pick up parts,
so the students don't have to drive their own car.
This'll be their new parts chaser
and replace the Chevy pickup.
So we're gonna drive this car from Midland, Texas,
where we are now, to McPherson, Kansas,
but we're gonna take the slow way.
We're gonna take back roads and we're gonna be looking
for Barn Find cars for new episodes of Barn Find Hunter,
while we're driving a Barn Find car.
(upbeat music)
You ready to hit the road?
- [Tom] I'm ready.
- Tom has donated a 1962 Texas license plate.
(upbeat rock music)
- Now once we go into Lubbock,
there's a place called Cook's on the left-hand side.
You can see a bunch of signs.
They've got functions going on over there all the time,
bands and things like that.
They do a lot of rat rod shows and stuff in there.
And maybe something you could get off there
and talk to somebody.
But I think just get out of here
and get to Lubbock first and then take it from there.
- Okay dokey.
♪ Where do we go now ♪
(engine revs)
♪ I know you wanna go ♪
♪ To the end zone ♪
♪ That's where I am ♪
(engine revs)
♪ Where the night gone ♪
♪ My mama was at home ♪
(engine revs)
♪ We don't know where ♪
♪ We're gonna miss this ride ♪
♪ We're gonna find ourself in the afterlife ♪
♪ We don't now where ♪
♪ We're gonna miss this ride ♪
♪ We're gonna find ourself in the afterlife ♪
That's a big block Chevy 454, isn't that something?
So for 500 bucks, you can get the drivetrain in this thing.
Let's see what this one is.
Big block, 454.
Isn't that something?
(rock music)
We've been doing this program now for four years
and we've yet to find a Judge.
Tell me this is not a real Judge.
- [Man] It's a real Judge.
- All right, this building looks pretty appetizing, here.
Is there anything in there?
- Yeah you're not gonna believe this one.
Nobody believes it.
- Really? - Come on in.
(rock music)
That's the rarest car I've got, the white one.
- Don't tell me what it is.
It's a Superbird?
All right we gotta go now, boys.
Holy mackerel.
Sheesh.
Just so you know that we didn't pick the last good car
that Tom Cross had in his yard here.
There's other good cars to be had
and I just wanna point out a couple.
Here's a Ford Fairlane, 1963 Fairlane.
It's got a 260 V8.
It's got the sport roof,
which means a two-door hard top.
And this is a solid car, and Tom wants to sell it.
Here's a 1960 Ford two-door hard top
that has surface rust, much like the wagon
that we're gonna be driving to Kansas in a little while.
This could be sanded off and clear coated.
Tom said this is a solid body, solid floor.
He wants to sell this car.
Even in this yard, there are more project car possibilities
we only chose one of them.
Maybe one of these is made for you.
(engine revs)
- [Tom] I don't wanna see it go.
(laughing)
- Don't cry, buddy.
- [Tom] I'll tell ya, it's been a trip, it really has.