Ozbilt's travels

[ozbilt]

17/10/09

Here is a Youtube vid of a car that resided here at the Gilroy shop. 67 Shelby clone, 351W, 5 speed, Airide suspension. A cool car.

[ozbilt]

20/10/09

I will have the Pomona update tomorrow as I am still stuffed from the event. 40 hours of event with 5 hours sleep on a car trailer floor. We were shopping at 1am on Sunday, vendors set up on the Sat & then shop, public gets in at 7am Sunday.

Arrived back in Gilroy at 1.30am Monday after pulling the trailer for 7 hours at 65mph (F350 6 speed Powerstroke Diesel).

36 roads of vendors, 1/4 mile long each, so to walk both sides of every road that is 18 miles, then add the 3 miles each way of end roads plus 10 rows of cars for sale, each row 2 miles long. that will give you an idea of the size. 80 to 100K of the public attend. It is a zoo. Spoke to at least 30 Aussies at our stall, good indication of how the Aussie dollar is.

Nothing cheap, actually quite expensive & most were POS. I will load & post the pics tomorrow night.

[ozbilt]

21/10/09

Pics of Pomona as promised. I just drove from Gilroy to Sacramento (5 hours), hitting some wrecking yards on the way, then spent the day sorting Cuda parts as we have a car going to Norway, another coming to my place (70 AAR Cuda). Will spend the next couple of days finishing that task & finally have some fun by going to Las Vegas on Thursday for a U2 concert on Friday night.

http://s728.photobucket.com/albums/ww28 ... %20swap/?a...

[ozbilt]

26/10/09

Something cool I just found & will get for myself.....A genuine 60's "Super Modified" race car, complete with huge top wing & 427 Ford engine, fuel injected. These were the forerunners to the sprintcars you see on speedway today. If any of you are old enough to remember the Larry Burton, Sid Hopping days of Liverpool Speedway or Sydney Showground (actually any major easter speedway) of the late 60's will know this type of car.

[ozbilt]

30/10/09


We stumbled across a large inventory of NOS, repo & used Mustang parts yesterday. All fastback stuff & the hard to get bits like interior stuff, grilles, panels etc.

Ask away if anyone requires any bits. I have 2 containers full of cars leaving in Dec, but still room for parts. I am loading & unloading myself so that makes sure all leaves & arrives Ok.

Chatted to Ken on the phone tonight, as he has finally arrived in CA from Australia. wish him well in his venture. I have enjoyed "my ride" here so far & only hope they have the same.

[ozbilt]

6/11/09

I am now up in China for a couple of weeks. Nothing changed here thats for sure! Still the same crazy place. I will take some pics of the street scenes, quite funny.

I stay sane by streaming Vega 93.5fm radio (from Sydney) in my room at the factory.

Pics here... http://s728.photobucket.com/albums/ww28 ... mview=grid

Flown over Siberia many times but this was the first time it was clear.



Hong Kong, my favourite city in the world, Carol & I have been coming here since the mid 70's. This shot is taken from the hotel room looking towards the Kowloon peninsula

[ozbilt]

7/12/09

Back in CA now & eating chicken that actually is chicken...:p

Getting colder here & the Christmas lights are on all the homes & shops. Thanksgiving is done (thank goodness!), I actually landed that day.

Will be spending Christmas here with my daughter & not in Australia with the rest of the family, as there have been a few stuff ups with people not doing what they said they would do. Oh well, reinforces my belief that the only person you can truly rely on, is yourself.

[ozbilt]

21/12/09

Back in Australia, made it home for Christmas...

I will be back in CA mid January, returning to Oz for a few weeks late February. Then back to the States in March. Seems I spend my life in aircraft! Good thing I like em!

Good to be home for Christmas, also good opportunity to get the shed (read "Man Cave") sorted out for all the projects that are coming back in the new year.

[ozbilt]

1/1/10

Funny how a picture can bring back so many memories, even stuff you would never think about. If anyone had asked me for a list of things I had built, I would never have included this one.

I was just reading the latest Australian Muscle Car mag. Each edition brings back memories & leafing through today , came across a vehicle I had input with back in the late 60's. (edit, now found out it was 1971, oh well I am getting older & the mind is fading)

On page 37 of issue 47 there is a picture of 4 double decker busses at Bathurst. The third one in the row belonged to Ron Hodgson & it was that bus I had a lot of fun with. It came to our shop with the top already off it & we had a crew that made the "pop up" awning that you see in the pic. We made some fake "mag wheel" covers for the wheels & a set of fake extractors that came out of one side of the bonnet (not on in that pic). All those that remember the old Sydney busses of the time will remember the "London bus" style of the driver beside the engine that they had.

Funniest part was that my boss came up with the bright idea when painting the inside & outside of the bus (burgundy air drying enamel) was to mask the windows with liquid soap. Now this was Christmas /New Year so very hot. Paint was applied (he was burgundy for some weeks!) & I was given the simple task of running a razor blade over the glass to get the soap & over spray off. Well folks the paint had soaked through the soap & stuck fast to the glass. Probably took me a week to get it all off.

The top was an observation deck, with a bar. The lower was a lounge area, with a bar. Anyone seeing a common thread here?

The upside was the parties were great on that bus when it was at Oran Park or Amaroo, plenty of booze & lots of decent looking members of the opposite ..... (insert word there). Hoddo even had a real bus driver & he drove it to the tracks dressed in his Syd bus uniform inc. badge. He doubled as a bar man at the tracks.

Those were the days.

[ozbilt]

3/1/10

I did some research on that bus. This is the latest info ... History of DGT/PTC ALBION Double Decker Vehicles - 1947 - 1949

#2127 - sold 1/71 to Ron Hodgson Motors as grandstand vehicle regd RH.858
Resold to Channel Ten TV Station Lane Cove as advertising bus reregd GNY.481 10/73
Resold to Hanby Narranderra NSW as shed - still there today but rather a mess now

Now I am getting ideas of first going to Hanby, Narranderra to see if I can get it. As if I haven't enough to do.

Thinking........maybe a 8V8TTA engine, or a twin air Caterpillar....hmm, we could get this thing really going. Maybe pulling a trailer with, say, 4 Mustangs in it.

Got to work on some figures, mind is racing.

[ozbilt]

25/1/10

On the ground in Sacramento now, slept well on the plane, very smooth ride, as usual, across the Pacific.

United business even have lamb meat pies (party pies) from Oz for mid flight snacks. See we can teach the yanks somethings...:+

[ozbilt]

27/1/10

Wrecking yard today. Saw a 65 f/b that was in a house fire. Was a nice car, now burnt to the ground, sad as apparently they lost the lot, house, all personal possessions & the collector car.

Keep the electrical work to standard in your homes & have a smoke detector always working. Unplug battery chargers when leaving the shed or garage (in fact unplug everything).

I may be overcautious, but I even disconnect battery's on classic cars that are in my shop, even overnight. My road cars are the exception to that.

Everything in my shed at the ranch is disconnected inc all the electrical leads/machines & cars stored there.

Sad one here, C code 65 f/b. looked a nice car before the house burnt down taking the car with it.

Get a smoke detector, unplug everything in the workshop before you walk out....

[ozbilt]

30/1/10

Another wake up call, although this happened in the 70's enroute to Vietnam....

http://www.ponysite.de/lawman4.htm

Links in the article on the whole tour. Seems we lost a few desireable cars on that journey. Good promotion for Ford & probably not worth all that much to Ford (in terms of $) at the time, just another bunch of cars to them.

More here..

http://freenet-homepage.de/pony/lawman2.htm

http://freenet-homepage.de/pony/lawman.htm

Any sharp eyed people out there notice any "special" touches to these cars? You have to look hard at the wrecked pics.

More info here on one of the Vietnam CJ's...

http://www.ponysite.de/lawman3.htm

Apparently there are a few surviving cars, but they were the ones sent to Europe. All the Vietnam cars were destroyed, a South Viet Gov thing.

[ozbilt]

31/1/10

Today was interesting...

1st off, I visited Sacramento Mustang, forgetting they did not open Saturday & found the lights on & the boys working. So once inside & chatting to Denis, the conversation turned to "who finally bought the place?".

Turned out it was a well known Sacramento Mustang/Shelby guy, Brian Lee & partnered up with Tim Shanahan (one of my repeat customers). Had a long chat to Brian & must say here that they are updating their website & I will be buying through them in the future (they were a supplier of mine, but not the major one).

I can highly recommend Brian & his team. Brian is already known to a few forum members & lurkers here.

The 66 convertible I had at the Castle Hill show the other week was Tim's old car, now Bernice's (Mrs BossKraft).

Met Matt & Sheri (Shermatt) around midday as they are in CA & were coming through Sacramento, that was a very enjoyable lunch, or would have been if people would stop ringing him while he is trying to eat!!!! :_

Geeze guys he never stops...must have talked a maximum of 10 minutes after spending an hour & a half with them.

[ozbilt]

2/2/10

I am still planning on the 67 coming here that will blow the Eleanors away, this will be a real beast. Teaser below...



Not too much inside the rocker panels (actually no Mustang floor or rails). Car sits about 150mm off the deck.

Same as the 1959 190 SL Mercedes that is coming with it.

Busy week of driving ahead, all with a car trailer behind me....

Sacramento to Gilroy on Tuesday, LA Wednesday/Thursday, Sacramento Friday. Gilroy Sat & Monday only for the day each time, returning to Sacramento each night. So around 1600-2000 miles will go on the clock this week without any side excursions.

My tow vehicle is a 2004 Ford Explorer,

Ford gave us this one in exchange for an 2001 when they could not fix the trans problem after 7 attempts (the old Explorer had 40K on it & we had over 10K on rentals they gave us under warranty). It is law in here in CA...

http://ag.ca.gov/consumers/general/lemon.php

All our Explorers have been V8s, the first was a 1997 with a 5.0, the rest 4.6. They are the best bang for the buck as they seat 7 people, rated to tow 7K lbs. I love it & will buy another in a year or so. Nothing comes close over here.

Notice the licence plate? Carol's 69 Mach1 was OZBILT, my 87 F100 was DUGGO PK.

Sean, Bernice & Tayla (BossKraft) took it across country to Birmingham AL last year on the Mustangs Across America Run, muzz67 tagged along in a rental Mustang.