Please take a look at some of our current restorations.
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1931 Bentley 8 Liter
These Bentleys are just pure fun. We had the opportunity to drive this before restoration. This rarely happens. It is nice to be able to check out all the systems before teardown. The body was very bad, and the chassis was mostly functional. The wood was shot and the panel fabrication was amateur at best. It's all old hat for us, we just went to work. I'll be putting more photos up and video soon.
1939 Packard V12 Convertible Victoria
This car was in the movie in the movie China Town. Looks can be deceiving and this car was a real 30 footer. It looked ok in the movie, but I don't it ever saw a grease gun. I have never seen a Packard 12 so worn out. The owner had torn the core down over 20 years ago, then scattered the parts across a huge warehouse. We received one half of an engine, and that was the good news. We gathered up all the parts and now we are on the home stretch. It will be finished in a couple of months.
1940 Packard Darrin Victoria
This poor car had the unfortunate luck of finding a body shop that must of specialized in welding farm machinery. They had only a stick welder and a sledge hammer. Check out the welds. I'm sure they received a volume discount on the bondo purchases they made. The left quarter is pushed in 1.5 inches, a panel pop riveted in at the bottom, and a rose bud torch was used to try and shrink the upper part of the panel. Very crude. Needless to say we will have the English wheel, power hammer and the Pullmax running hard on this one. This will be a good project for us to show you how we tackle these problems. When I went to look at this car, even I was shocked, (I thought I had seen it all in the 31 years I have been restoring). It was supposed to be a concourse condition automobile. The body was bolted down to the frame with 2, yes that is 2 bolts. Even worse is the fact only one bolt had a nut on it. The wisdom of the previous owner was to not put antifreeze or rust inhibitor in the cooling system. Just water in there for many years. Hummmm, cast iron and just water. I wonder what that combination produces. Check out the pictures. Look back for many more photos and some video as this project progresses.
1934 Lincoln V12 Two Window Town Sedan
I purchased this car a few years ago. Of course, every car has a story. This one had a good pedigree. We know the ownership history from when it was purchased new. I love original cars. It had 23,000 original miles when I acquired it. No serious restoration work had been done. Some maintenance along the way is all. The paint was OK. It ran, but had low oil pressure. I had aspirations to just drive it and enjoy. The low oil pressure forced me to drop the oil pan and look things over. I discovered antifreeze in the oil. Further investigation reveled that the right head was porous, and it leaked water in to the pan. The more things I took apart, the more I was devastated. Come to find out, a new head was purchased in 1969. It was a poor casting and leaked antifreeze into the pan for over 35 years. The whole inside of the valve chambers was covered in rust. The babbitt on the mains was black and some dropped out in my hand. The engine was junk. Oh well, I gave up the hopes for an all original car and we are restoring it. What an easy and pleasurable car to restore. I always tell my customers to purchase the best conditioned cars they can find and things go very well and much less expensive. I could easily restore this car in 9 months, but unfortunately we always have 6 to 10 cars under restoration at any given time, and the customers take top priority. Check back often, I will make some progress on the chassis this winter. It would be fun and very informative to take a 100% authentically restored chassis to the shows this summer. I have made great efforts to restore this car to EXACTLY the way it came from the factory. No over or under restoration.