July 26th 2013 Part I
Yesterday I had a few interesting things happen to me. As soon as I walked into the Ford Store on Friday, Bill asked me to get down some 35-36 Axel Housing. Why me? Because I was the one who could weave through the tight aisle, climb up racks to the top shelf and balance while sorting through several different ones to find a matching pair. Needless to say it was a somewhat interesting start of the day monkeying up the shelves.
After that was accomplished, I was helping to clean up the shop for the car show this Sunday (tomorrow) when Bill wanted Ted and I to run some brake shoes down to a local shop to get reshoed. Unfortunately Bill had taken his truck somewhere, and Michael’s Van was getting serviced so I had to use the vehicle I drove today. Normally this would not have been an issue as I own a truck; however, today I had to take my mother’s Prius to work. Needless to say Ted and I transported the two boxes of brake shoes in the Prius. Hauling it wasn’t an issue. It was just darn funny to see the Prius backed up to the Ford store to haul some parts.
When we dropped off the brake shoes I had a moment to check out the shop we went to. I didn’t catch his name, though Ted said that he works this fairly large building and machinery by himself. It was an impressive shop with nearly a dozen different machines. The most fascinating machinery was his brake shoe oven. This bit of equipment bonds the pads to the cores. I didn’t know that there were really any shops that still did this, but Bill uses him often, because people want original shoes over reproduction, so reshoeing them and selling them works well for everyone, (quick little advertisement for the Ford store. If you bring in your vintage ford brake core you can get a discount when buying another set).
While we were out in that neck of the woods, Ted suggested that we go check out Bobby Walden’s speed shop a few buildings down, since I had not seen it yet. Bobby Walden is a well-known Metal Fabricator and hotrod builder, he even worked at So-Cal Speed Shop before setting up his own shop. Boy was I impressed. This was a full-fledged fabrication and custom shop. All around the shop were 30s ford coupes, with the exception of a single 40. Another ford that jumped out at me was a 1932 Roadster pickup. I had never seen one in person before. Ted and I looked at it and were amazed at how clean and straight the body was. I figured it must have been a Brookville (reproduction)body. Luckily Mr. Walden was there and was able to tell me that it was indeed a real 100% Henry Ford steel 32. That made my day, (though it still would have even had it been a reproduction body).
And that folks was today at the Ford store. In the next post I will talk a little about two other cars and about a man who walked in towards the end of the day with some interesting stories about his dad during WWII. As, I believe Edward R. Murrow would say after his broadcast,” Goodnight and Good luck”.
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