2017 West Coast Crosley Meet Report - Part 2

Jewell Park, the site for this year's meet, is a one-block green space just off the main drag in Pacific Grove. It has a small activities building in one corner and a bandstand on another - the rest is grass, with big trees on the edges of the park. Club pres. Rick Alexander had worked with the local Chamber of Commerce to get permission for the show and I knew the cars would look great on the grass - like a mini Concours. I rolled up a little before 8AM and waited for everyone to arrive - This will go down as the first time in history that I was the first one there!

The Crosley Cruise: 2015 West Coast Crosley Club Meet - Part 2

I headed over for the Crosley Cruise kickoff at Thomi's Cafe on Sunday morning.  As luck would have it, my station wagon had developed a slight water pump leak over the weekend - I greased the zerk fitting and kept my eye on the temp gauge.  Luckily I'd brought a jug of water just in case, and borrowed another from Mike Blackburn who had decided at the last minute not to do the tour.  Mike's water jug sprung a leak as soon as I loaded it in the car.  So far, so good.

2015 Orange Blossom Special - Fillmore Spring Meet

Back in the good old days (in this case the mid-eighties) shortly after the West Coast Crosley Club first got going, the powers that be decided to try having two club meets per year - the big meet in September, plus a smaller, more low key meet in the Spring.  Trouble was, there weren't that many members back then, so the Spring Meet never really caught on.  No one remembers exactly when they gave up, but sometime before 1990 we were back to one meet per year.

Twenty-five years later (more or less), we decided to try again.

2012 West Coast Crosley Meet: Wow!

Last year I pitched the idea of having the Crosley Club's annual West Coast Meet in the quaint Gold Country town of Sutter Creek.  Liv and I have had a lot of fun daytrips in that area and it didn't take much imagination to picture Crosleys buzzing through those Gold Rush towns and zipping along in the Sierra Nevada foothills.  We put it up to a vote at last year's meet and the club members said 'go for it!'

Too Good to Be True? $30 Les Schwab Powdercoat

Last year, I had an epiphany:  The best way to finish my '51 Super Sports project is to start from the ground up.  And by that, I mean tires.  And wheels.  And then axles. And then the frame.  And etc, etc, etc...  I'll just restore pieces in order and keep bolting stuff back together until there's nothing left to bolt on.  Simple, right?

Zero and his Super Sports

This is the coolest Crosley postcard I've seen in a while: the Zero Candy Crosley.  Zero was the name of 'The Little Hollywood Candyman' who drove this customized Super Sports as his promo vehicle.  I wouldn't pay 25 bucks for it, but if you want to, it's for sale here on Ebay with a $24.99 Buy-it-Now.

Crosley Postcards

I'm a total OCD collector/hoarder type, but I do my best NOT to collect everything with a picture of a Crosley car on it.  I do pretty well when it comes to newer stuff, but I can't seem to stop buying old magazines with the occasional Crosley photo.  I do manage to pass up most postcards for the simple reason that I can save scans that look almost as good as the originals.  I thought I'd share a batch of stuff I've saved up... enjoy!

A Fine Car parked in front of a Superb Motor Hotel.

Crazy 'Art Car' that started out as a '51 or '52 Crosley.

Promo postcard for the 'Dashing' Crosley HotShot.

Prewar Pickup.

 A portholed super Sports... and then of course you need a stamp:

Another Field Find: New Jersey Super Sports

Checked back in on Lazlobasset's NJ rust field find and discovered that he'd posted more photos, including a Super Sports that's doing its best to return to the earth before the crusher comes.

Hope some east coaster can save all these cars before they get crushed...

Resto Debate: HotShot and Super Sports Floor Covers

There has been a vigorous debate raging over at the Crosley Gang Yahoo Group for the past couple of days, begun when 'Cutworm' posed a seemingly simple query:

"All my Hotshots either have or show signs of carpet being glued to the floorpan.  I also have pics from Wauseon showing black carpets used. Is this right? What about the goofy cover over the trans-shifter assemblies?"

Determining what would be factory-correct is easy for almost any other auto of the period, but like so many other details of Crosley build history, there are no stats, no notes in the manuals or parts catalogs, and dang few factory photos. What were the floors of Crosley roadsters covered with when they came from the factory?  I'd always believed that they came with rubber mats, but I realized that I didn't really know.

User L. E. Hardee weighed in, saying that he didn't believe any Crosley came from the factory with carpets.  "Black rubber mats are what I have seen," he said, and then offered an interesting tidbit:  "The drive shaft hump was just paint."  Phil Rowland disagreed, noting that while rubber mats were correct,  the drive shaft hump was definitely covered.  Club prez Dave Anspach and Pete Berard came in on Hardee's side: uncovered hump.

Phil took it to the next level, actually digging out some documentation. Sure enough, Tom McCahill's 1949 Mechanix Illustrated review of the HotShot shows rubber covering the hump.  Jim Bollman jumped in with even more detail:

"...no regularly built Crosley ever was delivered from the factory with carpeting. That is not to say someone might have pulled strings to get a one off or a dealer may have added carpeting to get a premium price.

"The June 1951 Mechanics Illustrated shows very clear pictures of the interior and it shows a pebbly surfaces rubber mat that is one piece over the hump and all. I have seen the same material in a very original HS (have 35 mm slides around somewhere showing it). I also managed to salvage a small piece of the material from a mat that was beyond saving, for my files, it has a fiber material attached to the back side to absorb noise and retain moisture to insure a rusted out floor."

Then Phil went even one better, adding personal side to the story. "I looked over a NEW '49 Hotshot in a Crosley dealer showroom and remember it well.  It definitely had a rubber mat covering the tunnel.  It surprises me that so many people believe otherwise.  Must be they're too young to have been there back then.  I have advantage being 80 years old."  I did a little digging myself, and in a Crosley factory photo it sure looks like the hump is covered with a rubber mat.

Pretty amazing that the conversation started without a consensus and ended with that question definitively solved, details on the exact coverings used, and even including a photo of factory-correct interior from the period. 

As if that wasn't enough, the conversation then shifted to a discussion of the material on the storage area behind the seats.  'Brawnybug' quickly responded with a description and then a photo from his very original Super Sports: "Here's a picture of the material covering the floor and fender wells....  It's gray and stipple textured, kind of a linear pattern."

And there we left it.  This is the sort of thing that used to only happen among experts at the annual Crosley Club meets - now it's any time, and all out in a public forum, documented for everyone.   This has become THE site for Crosley nuts, and it's really pretty amazing.  The Crosley Gang rules!