Friday, January 30, 2015

the story of his dad's 57 Bel Air (very cool)


In the summer of 2002, after attending a car show and seeing a nice 1957 Bel Air and a host of other cars, the excitement and interest flowed about my father’s Bel Air. I sat down with my father and told him about the cars I had seen the past weekend. We talked about what it would take in time, energy, parts, money etc….. We decided it was time to start restoring his Bel Air.
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I will never forget how my father disassembled the Powerglide on the tail gate of his 69 C10 pick up, and throw everything in buckets. It came to one point where he couldn’t find some tooling to further the disassembly. He found some metal laying around, fired up the acetylene torch and heated and bent the piece into what he needed. Later on after the cases were cleaned and parts bought, I watched him dump those same buckets out and sort everything and re-assemble the Powerglide without even a book in front of him. My dad was a hell of a mechanic and I will never forget watching him rebuild that Powerglide. The car shifts smooth and silky every time I drive it.
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As the restoration came up on about two years I got involved with other hobbies and set aside the restoration. My father as well let the project stall being that my interest were elsewhere. During this time the Bel Air sat with no progress and unfortunately during that time my father passed away. One of my biggest regrets in life was wasting the opportunity to finish his car alongside him and see him drive it. With little motivation after my father died, the Bel Air sat for a few more years collecting dust and no progress. In 2011, while looking at my father’s car sitting in pieces I realized that it was a shame to not have a piece of my father’s legacy and my childhood completed.

Full story at
http://carstories.com/2015/01/one-bel-air-spans-two-generations/

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