Dad's Hot Rod

JayG's Friday Fun Thread theme this week is Beautiful Buicks, so naturally I've got to chime in here and post a few pics. What you see here is my dad's hot rod, a 1948 Buick Special. Oddly, I don't have any photos of the complete car.




Note the International House of MedicMatthew under construction/renovation.




And here she is, taped up with the wheel removed getting the final flame job.

When I moved home from Pittsburgh (the first time) my dad had just gotten her on the road. He had to run to the store to pick up a loaf of bread for my mom and when we left the store he drove out of town and pulled over and said "You drive it home." That was six years ago, that was also the last time I drove it. Incidentally that was the same day that pic #2 was taken. Everyone in the family jokes about taking the Buick out and my father would never say no, but there's no one in the family who is willing to take it out because we know that A.) If by some chance something happened to it we would never live it down and B.) We all know that he'd break out into a cold sweat and not breathe until it came back home

My dad has always had a project car and it has always been a GM product. He'd break it down and rebuild it back up, spending a lot of his free time in the garage. My dad has worked in a paper mill all of my life and when he wasn't working on his own car he did a lot of mechanic work on the side for other people to supplement the family income and he'd usually have my sister or I peering over his shoulder or fetching tools for him. And if we weren't already out in the garage with him it wasn't uncommon to hear him holler up to the house "Send the boy out here!"

This past week I got to spend a couple of days in the garage with my dad repairing Xterra v1.0, I have to admit it was kind of fun spending the day out in the garage getting my hands covered in grease & oil.





p.s. Anyone interested in a 2001 Nissan Xterra XE V6 with a 156,000 miles on it?