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How Classic Cars Are Found And Restored | Cars Insider - YouTube
Channel: Cars Insider
[9]
My name is Tom Cotter,
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and I'm the host of the Barn Find Hunter.
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You know, a barn find, it's defined as
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a forgotten, ignored, and neglected car,
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whether it be in a barn or a field,
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a carport, a garage, a warehouse.
[26]
And I don't like to have leads.
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I like to develop leads on the ground,
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go drive down the road,
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kind of get a feel for the town.
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What I look for is not necessarily
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the hardware, the car.
[38]
It's the story that that
hardware develops into.
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We're riding around looking for cars
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in kind of a commercial
area in Midland, Texas.
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And there's a field full of mostly Fords.
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The owner, Tom Cross,
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who owns a swimming-pool business,
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that's his private little empire of cars.
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He goes and drags them home,
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and they've been there for 20, 30 years.
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And we just started to walk through,
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look at them, and I saw that car.
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And then we kept walking away,
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and I came back to that car,
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and we walked further and further
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and looked at this car, this car,
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and I came back to that car.
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And that's how we found that wagon.
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I got compound, I got rags,
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and I start buffing out this fender.
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And I said, "This car
doesn't want to die."
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Dust is a big deal out there.
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Wind blows endlessly.
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So, the good news is there's
very little humidity,
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so cars don't rust away.
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But even if a car is completely closed up,
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the windows are closed,
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dirt's going to go in there.
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After 30 years, lots
of dirt goes in there.
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It was the body that got me,
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because it was in such good shape.
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Not perfect, but the original paint.
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It didn't look like it had ever been hit
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or retouched or anything like that.
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Taking off all that old red
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oxidized paint with a buffer,
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and you get this red gunk all over you.
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It did not let me down.
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That little patch led to a fender,
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led to the whole car.
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We put together a work team
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of McPherson College students
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from McPherson, Kansas,
that restoration school,
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and we went over the winter.
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We worked on it over a quarter of a year.
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Tom Cross and all his
friends got involved,
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gave us engine, transmission, rear end.
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His friends rebuilt it.
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He had a local hot-rod club donate parts
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and time towards the project,
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because it was going to a worthy cause.
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So we had, really,
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it was like building a
car from the ground up.
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If you can imagine building a hot rod,
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you start with a body and a chassis,
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and then you've got to
add all the components.
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We had to do that, because
even though there was
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a front end there, it had drum brakes.
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It needed tie rod ends and ball joints.
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So we rebuilt the front end
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and put disk brakes on it.
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The wiring, the brake lines,
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the fuel system, fuel tank, the glass,
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I mean, everything had
to be at least looked at
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if not restored or replaced.
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They put disk brakes on it.
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We built the 390.
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They rebuilt the transmission.
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We put Mexican blankets
as the seat covers.
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And I got to polish the entire car,
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not just the one fender.
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They put cool wheels on it, cool tires.
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It was a much bigger
project than I realized
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that day when I first polished
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a little bit of the fender,
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but little by little, it came together.
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And a year later, we drove it
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from Midland, Texas, to McPherson, Kansas,
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and presented it to the school
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as a parts-chasing vehicle.
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And it's still there today.
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And interestingly,
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the things we didn't quite
finish the way we wanted to,
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students at the school have
totally reupholstered it,
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new headliners, door panels, seat covers,
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to factory specs as part
of a graduation project.
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So, you know, from cradle to grave,
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we were kind of in charge of that car,
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and it was one of the most
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rewarding episodes I can remember.
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