Got a call from a guy in Redding who was cleaning out his dad's attic and found some Crosley stuff that had been stored away fifty years ago: three transmissions, a pile of rear ends and a box of brake stuff (looks like mostly 6" plus one disc). He's hoping to get $375 for all- I told him that was a bit optmistic, so he's open to offers.
I don't know much about this 1948 sedan for sale in Vermont- seller says it has new tires, runs, the floors are good and there are a few dents. It also has a boat gas tank- a lil trick that kept my '49 convertible going for years. At $1500 seems like you'd be hard pressed to go wrong. And for the newbies- that hood ornament ain't rare, it's wrong. Certainly puts this Phoenix, AZ ad for a 1948 sedan in a different light. Seller claims 30,000 original miles (not all that unusual for a Crosley, actually), but the five year old photos, lack of interior photos, missing hub caps (and is that a missing rear window?) don't exactly inspire confidence... especially when the asking price is triple that of the Vermont car. Maybe it's Braje equipped and the interior is really nice and we just aren't seeing it. Great color. Those do look like CA plates, so it appears to have had a history of living in the dry country. Sedans are awfully cool- I'd never been that excited about them until I saw Dave Wheeler's Slo Cal Special at a meet a few years back- the economy of design in the sedans is really a thing of beauty.
I started the DMV paperwork to get a set of correct vintage plates assigned to the Plymouth back in August when I bought the car. After six months of hoops and hurdles, I got the approval (and registration stickers) this past week. The directions from DMV were vague about how to display the original '62 sticker, the '56 on the plate itself AND the two new stickers (for month of expire and year). I've usually seen the extra tags displayed on a metal tab that sticks up above the plate, but I didn't have that option with the recessed design of the Savoy's rear. I ended up fabricating two little 'wings' that stick off the sides.. not ideal, but that was about the only place they fit, so that's where they went.
I bought those plates in a San Francisco junk shop for $35 almost 15 years ago. I bought a 1951 set the same day- I've got those slated for my Super Sport if I ever get it finished.
Getting back on a year ago now I got an email from a guy I barely knew. Bob Price is in the Crosley Club and I'd spoken with him on a couple of occasions- I knew him best because I once missed buying a nice Crosley wagon that he had for sale by a couple of hours! He got hold of me because he still had a spare Crosley engine in his garage that wasn't much use now that the car was gone, and he wondered if I might be interested in it. Bob had had the engine rebuilt, but the crank got damaged before the engine was put back together, so the motor had never been fired. The top end was still brand new.Last year I was BROKE. Liv and I had been publishing a local magazine for about two years, and had lost money every step of the way. (Wow, can you spend a lot of money putting out a magazine about local arts and culture in the middle of an economic downturn!) We were doing it as a labor of love, so some loss was OK, but when it was losing almost as much as I was making at my day job it really started to hurt. So, when Bob offered the engine at a ridiculously low price (a fraction of the machine work cost) at first I said no, saying I didn't know when I'd be able to pay. Bob graciously offered to hold the engine, and I promised to pay when I got my tax return.
A few months went by, I got my taxes back and Bob and I started playing email tag about picking up the engine. First he was going overseas on vacation, and then when he got back I was going on my trip to Bonneville. As emails went back and forth, he kept finding more stuff in the garage and throwing it in the deal. By the time I left on my vacation he was holding the engine, the back seat for a wagon and a box of assorted Crosley bits. When I got back from Bonneville I was so busy tinkering with my '62 Plymouth daily driver I didn't follow up right away- I just flat forgot. A couple of months went by and Bob sent an email saying that if I didn't want the motor he'd be OK to sell it to someone else- I was so mortified that I asked him to at least let me send the $ so he wasn't waiting for the cash! I sent a check and we coordinated a pick up. Now mind you, Bob is only about two and a half hours away, but at this point we'd failed to connect for about seven months. Cut to about a month ago. Bob found me on Facebook (I finally got an account in December) and we ogled each other's pictures of vehicles- including a great shot of Bob in a VespaCar circa 1962. Commenting on one another's FB pages it somehow or another came up that Bob had never cashed the check I'd sent! Given the depressing state of my bank account, I check it as infrequently as possible, so I'd never noticed. At this point I felt so embarrassed I was ready to drive to San Leandro that second to get the parts. Bob wouldn't hear of it. "I haven't been to the Sacramento Railroad Museum in a long time- I'll drop the motor off on the way." So, long story short, Bob and family stopped by my house a few days later with a couple hundred pounds of Crosley parts in the back of their car. Bob wouldn't take any gas money, nor accept my offer to take the whole bunch to lunch. They helped me unload the engine, seat, box of parts and even a stray radiator, poked around my messy garage and looked at all my decaying Crosley projects and then headed on their way. Bob did at least let me direct them to the best (and cheapest!) Mexican food in a 200 mile radius. For all I know he still hasn't cashed that check.
The weird thing is, that's how it always is with Crosley people.
I've been involved with Crosleys for almost 15 years now, and it has been one continuous stream of interesting, thoughtful, and almost perversely helpful folks from day one. Scott Schultz, the first Crosley nut I ever met, answered my want ad with offers to sell me a car or help me find one, and never stopped offering whatever help he could- without ever wanting anything other than camaraderie. When his health finally made it too difficult for him to work on cars, he called and said, "I got two sheds of used Crosley stuff- come get it." It was over a ton of parts, and he wouldn't take a dime for them. Scott also put me in touch with Gordon Becher, another great guy who couldn't do enough to help me out. When I had trouble finding a Crosley to buy he not only clued me in to secret stashes of Crosleys that only he knew about, but even went and looked at them with me since I really had no idea what I was looking at at that point. And that's just the first two guys I met! I could come up with 50 more people like that and still not mention half the great people I've met through Crosleys.
There's an old joke: How do you tell a Porsche from a porcupine? With a porcupine the pricks are on the outside! You could never tell that joke about Crosleys. There is something about wanting to drive a ridiculously underpowered and inarguably funny-looking half-century old car that seems to attract the best folks- or perhaps just repels the assholes. Whatever it is, I cherish it, and Bob Price is just the latest of the fine folks I've met through Powel Crosley's 'Fine Car'.
Good news... Service Motors has announced that they have had a run of Crosley engine bearings manufactured and they are now in stock! Crosley bearings have been getting hard to find for over a decade... some sizes had become near-impossible to get. Prices for certain sizes had gotten silly on Ebay, and every engine builder I know has been hoarding bearings for their projects. I'm sure the Crosley racing community is breathing a sigh of relief.
Kudos to Butch and Fonda at Service for coming through in an hour of need!
I spend somewhere near 40% of my waking hours obsessing over old cars. Usually, this obsessing revolves around an improbable American micro car from the midcentury period-- the Crosley. My fascination began with a quest to strip down my life by driving the world's simplest car.
Turns out that nothing is as simple as it seems.
Got a call from a guy in Redding who was cleaning out his dad's attic and found some Crosley stuff that had been stored away fifty years ago: three transmissions, a pile of rear ends and a box of brake stuff (looks like mostly 6" plus one disc). He's hoping to get $375 for all- I told him that was a bit optmistic, so he's open to offers. 
I don't know much about this 1948 sedan for sale in Vermont- seller says it has new tires, runs, the floors are good and there are a few dents. It also has a boat gas tank- a lil trick that kept my '49 convertible going for years. At $1500 seems like you'd be hard pressed to go wrong. And for the newbies- that hood ornament ain't rare, it's wrong.
Certainly puts this Phoenix, AZ ad for a 1948 sedan in a different light. Seller claims 30,000 original miles (not all that unusual for a Crosley, actually), but the five year old photos, lack of interior photos, missing hub caps (and is that a missing rear window?) don't exactly inspire confidence... especially when the asking price is triple that of the Vermont car. Maybe it's Braje equipped and the interior is really nice and we just aren't seeing it. Great color.
Those do look like CA plates, so it appears to have had a history of living in the dry country. Sedans are awfully cool- I'd never been that excited about them until I saw Dave Wheeler's Slo Cal Special at a meet a few years back- the economy of design in the sedans is really a thing of beauty.
I started the DMV paperwork to get a set of correct vintage plates assigned to the Plymouth back in August when I bought the car. After six months of hoops and hurdles, I got the approval (and registration stickers) this past week.
The directions from DMV were vague about how to display the original '62 sticker, the '56 on the plate itself AND the two new stickers (for month of expire and year). I've usually seen the extra tags displayed on a metal tab that sticks up above the plate, but I didn't have that option with the recessed design of the Savoy's rear. I ended up fabricating two little 'wings' that stick off the sides.. not ideal, but that was about the only place they fit, so that's where they went.
Last year I was BROKE. Liv and I had been publishing a local magazine for about two years, and had lost money every step of the way. (Wow, can you spend a lot of money putting out a magazine about local arts and culture in the middle of an economic downturn!) We were doing it as a labor of love, so some loss was OK, but when it was losing almost as much as I was making at my day job it really started to hurt. So, when Bob offered the engine at a ridiculously low price (a fraction of the machine work cost) at first I said no, saying I didn't know when I'd be able to pay. Bob graciously offered to hold the engine, and I promised to pay when I got my tax return.
When I got back from Bonneville I was so busy tinkering with my '62 Plymouth daily driver I didn't follow up right away- I just flat forgot. A couple of months went by and Bob sent an email saying that if I didn't want the motor he'd be OK to sell it to someone else- I was so mortified that I asked him to at least let me send the $ so he wasn't waiting for the cash! I sent a check and we coordinated a pick up. Now mind you, Bob is only about two and a half hours away, but at this point we'd failed to connect for about seven months.
Cut to about a month ago. Bob found me on Facebook (I finally got an account in December) and we ogled each other's pictures of vehicles- including a great shot of Bob in a VespaCar circa 1962. Commenting on one another's FB pages it somehow or another came up that Bob had never cashed the check I'd sent! Given the depressing state of my bank account, I check it as infrequently as possible, so I'd never noticed. At this point I felt so embarrassed I was ready to drive to San Leandro that second to get the parts. Bob wouldn't hear of it. "I haven't been to the Sacramento Railroad Museum in a long time- I'll drop the motor off on the way."
So, long story short, Bob and family stopped by my house a few days later with a couple hundred pounds of Crosley parts in the back of their car. Bob wouldn't take any gas money, nor accept my offer to take the whole bunch to lunch. They helped me unload the engine, seat, box of parts and even a stray radiator, poked around my messy garage and looked at all my decaying Crosley projects and then headed on their way. Bob did at least let me direct them to the best (and cheapest!) Mexican food in a 200 mile radius. For all I know he still hasn't cashed that check.
Bob Price and his wife Rube
Good news... Service Motors has announced that they have had a run of Crosley engine bearings manufactured and they are now in stock! Crosley bearings have been getting hard to find for over a decade... some sizes had become near-impossible to get. Prices for certain sizes had gotten silly on Ebay, and every engine builder I know has been hoarding bearings for their projects. I'm sure the Crosley racing community is breathing a sigh of relief.
