FORDification - The 1967-1972 Ford Pickup Resource


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*And now for something completely different...*
*My First Car - a 1965 Dodge Coronet*

CAUTION: This is a very graphics-intensive page.
If you're on a dial-up internet connection, please be patient
while the page and images download. It's worth the wait...in my opinion.

February 18, 2006 - Yeah, I know....this is so completely un-related to anything even remotely Ford, but it's just something I wanted to share.

Tonight I finally decided to scan some pictures I took last summer when I went back to my old stomping grounds in western Nebraska. One of the highlights of the trip was visiting my very first car ever. It was a 1965 Dodge Coronet 440...and although I never got it running, I learned so much about how cars are put together that I fell in love with cars in general. After that car gave what little life it had to teach me about mechanics, it was pushed off into a ravine and flipped upside down at our old farm....but I'm getting ahead of myself here.

Anyway, while scanning these pictures tonight, I had an epiphany! I think I know what I'd like to do with my retirement...as a project, I mean. Everybody always wants to find their first car and fix it up, and I'm no different. The good news is, I know where mine's at....and it ain't goin' anywhere! I could conceivably retrieve and fix up my very first car!

So kick back for a moment and read the tale of my entry into automotive knowledge:

It was the summer of 1981, a year before my graduation from high school. That summer I spent a weekend hauling hay for a neighbor of mine. The original agreement was $50 for both days helping him haul in hay bales from the field. On one trip bringing the hay up to the homestead, I noticed a trio of old cars parked out behind his barn, one of which was the Dodge. He said it had been parked there for years, after having caught fire in the trunk area. During a lunch break I walked out to look them over and saw there was no apparent damage to anything on this car. I talked him into giving me that car in lieu of the agreed-upon wages.

The following weekend my dad and I towed the Coronet home, a trip of about 5-6 miles on gravel roads. I remember my mom dreading me dragging this home, since based on my father's description of it to her, it was a hunk of junk. However, when we pulled it into the driveway and got it disconnected and started really looking it over, my mom came out to see, and commented how it was in much better shape than she'd anticipated.

However, what proved to be it's fatal flaw was the fact that the 318 V8 was seized up. My dad and I tried for several days to get it broke loose, using diesel fuel in the cylinders to loosen up the rust, to no avail. Because I couldn't afford a replacement engine (or a rebuild), the car became my classroom. I immediately subscribed to Hot Rod magazine and spent a lot of time daydreaming about how someday it would ride again. I spent many evenings just sitting in the car, listening to far-away radio stations on my pocket transistor radio...and dreaming.

In the end, I completely disassembled this car, just to learn how things were put together. I was reading about camshafts and timing chains in Hot Rod, but hadn't even seen one in real life...so I took apart everything I could disassemble, just for the knowledge. If I couldn't unbolt/unscrew it, I cut it apart. I just wanted to see every square inch of this car and learn. The only thing I wasn't permitted to tear apart was the suspension, because my dad wanted to be able to tow it out of the driveway eventually.

After the car was pretty much completely disassembled, he and I took it out to a ravine at the back part of our property, to leave it along the side, out of sight of the house. However, I decided that it wasn't a good enough ending...I wanted something spectacular to close this chapter. I decided to push it off into the ravine. It wasn't a large ravine, maybe 15-20 feet deep, but it would do. I lined it up....and pushed! Unfortunately, it wasn't like in the movies, where it rolled a dozen times and exploded into flame. No, it rolled on it's wheels about 10 feet before getting lodged onto the trunk of a tree...and it wasn't going any farther.

I'd occasionally go out to the ravine to visit the car, when I was just going for a walk. Once I was out with a .22 rifle 'big-game hunting', and popped a few holes into the hulk.

A year later, in 1982, I graduated from high school and joined the Army. My mom and dad sold the ranch and moved into town. I figured I'd never see that car again. But I never forgot about it.

Fast forward about 7-8 years. I'd done my three years active-duty service and moved back to a nearby town, and gotten a job. As things would go, one day a couple of buddies and I had a day to kill with absolutely nothing to do, so for the heck of it we decided to go check out my car. We just parked along the gravel road and had to walk back about two miles to where it was sitting. I just wanted to get some pictures to add to the photo album, since I'd never gotten any while I still lived there. Anyway, this is what I took then:

I had to dig out the old photo album to scan the following pictures. They're not high-quality shots, due to their age and the cheap Kodak 110 camera we used, but they're all there is.

Fig. 1 - Here's where I found the Coronet, sitting next to a Ford LTD and a '50s-era Buick.

Fig. 2 - ...and here's a shot taken the morning we dragged it home. My first car!

Fig. 3 - Here's a shot my mom took of my dad and I looking over the seized-up 318.

Fig. 4 - After a week or two the Dodge was pushed over to a side of the driveway, where it sat for the next year, while I wore out a set of tools...and got an automotive education.

Fig. 5 - Another view of it's home in the driveway. You can see my dad's '71 F250 Custom in the background, complete with homemade stock rack. (This is the truck which inspired me to find the truck I'm building now.)

Fig. 6 - A very bad picture of the interior, but it's the only one I have.

Fig. 7 - As you can see, the front frame horns centered itself onto a tree trunk and wedged itself there pretty solidly.

Fig. 8 - Here's a view from the other side of the ravine. If you look closely in the top part of the photo, you can see a wooden deck I constructed with junk lumber that had also been dumped into this ravine. I'd come here sometimes when I wanted to be alone.

Fig. 9 - Just thought I'd toss this pic in. About 1/2-mile from where my car was setting, I had a treehouse. You can just barely see me posing on the ground next to the trunk.

OK, now let's fast forward again about 9-10 years. It's 2005 and I'm now 40 years old. I've moved away to the other end of the state and I am married. We have a one-year-old son with another one on the way. My wife and I take a drive back to this area to visit family, and I decide to show her the house where I grew up...and my first car. It seemed like a fun way to kill an afternoon, so my wife and my daughter Clarissa drove up to the farmhouse and talked with the woman living there now with her husband. They'd done EXTENSIVE remodeling of the house, almost doubling it's square footage. After a few minutes, I received permission to walk back to where my car was parked. This trip was mainly just to grab a souvenir...I wanted something from this car that I could hang on my wall and reminisce. These are the pictures I got that day:

Fig. 10 - As we approach the ravine we can see the tail end of the car poking up (yellow arrow). In the foreground you can see the fuel tank and a fender . Down in the lower left corner you can see the remnants of the front seat.

Fig. 11 - WOW! Somebody's gone through a lot of work pulling my car off the tree trunk (yellow arrow) and then rolling it over onto it's roof...the very thing I'd wanted to do 25 years earlier!

Fig. 12 - And here's the car as it appears today (more or less). Rolled onto it's roof, the trunk lid popped open and all the chrome side trim is falling out.

Fig. 13 - You can see the passenger-side is riddled with bullet holes from the .22

Fig. 14 - When the car was pulled off the tree and rolled over, it rolled 1-1/2 times. This tree prevented it from doing the last half-roll, where it would have landed on it's feet...although his back feet are kinda missing right now!

Fig. 15 - Along the side of the ravine lay the original hood, engine block and L/F fender. Also hiding in the grass here I find the plastic glovebox door...still intact. Oh, and the intake manifold splash tray.

Fig. 16 - The transmission and driveshaft are still in place. I don't recall removing the rearend though. If I did, then it's laying around this ravine somewhere. If somebody else rolled this over to get the rearend, then the original is long gone. If someone wanted to salvage this car, all they'd have to do is bolt a set of tires onto the front, bolt on a rearend and wheels/tires and then roll it over into the bottom of the ravine. He could then attach a winch from the top and roll it on out.

The thing that blows my mind is how incredibly rustfree this car is! There is no rust ANYWHERE...aside from the inevitable surface rust. Granted, this car's going to have it's share of dents from being rolled over...and of course there's the issue of repairing a couple dozen bullet holes...but if someone were so inclined to attempt to salvage this car, there would be no rust repair, which would be much harder and time-consuming than working out some dents on good solid steel body panels. And because most of the original components are still there....this could conceivably be re-born as a numbers-matching car, at least as far as the engine/tranny go. I'm not sure if the original rearend is still around or not.

Fig. 17 - My daughter Clarissa, took this obligatory 'posing' shot, while Mary goes exploring.....and wandering off.....and disappearing, while she's 7 months pregnant!

Fig. 18 - The side of the ravine is littered with the Dodge's parts. Fenders, hood, steering column and wheel, seat, fuel tank, brake pedal assembly.....it's all here. Just from making a really quick inventory, I'd say all the the major needed components to reassemble the car are here, aside from possibly a MIA rearend.

Fig. 19 - One of the original cylinder heads is found overgrown with prairie grass.

Fig. 20 - COOL! I found a couple of the car's original hubcaps! One of them has a few bullet holes in it...but both are now proudly hanging on the wall in the den.

Fig. 21 - A view inside through the back window. You can see the interior is pretty much gone. The dash was cut up, so it would need replaced. The seat frames are intact, but would need all new springs, padding, etc.

Fig. 22 - Here's a shot of the original engine block on the side of the ravine, next to one of the rust-free fenders.

Fig. 23 - My daughter checks out the remnants of dad's first car

Fig. 24 - Remember the treehouse shown up in Fig. 9? Here's a shot taken of it 10 years later. Not much left of it anymore....and man, was it a workout getting my old bones up the tree for this picture!

The '65 Coronet pictured above is the '440' trim level model. There is also a slightly-fancier '500' model, which has slightly different exterior trim (taillights, side trim, etc.). Pictured here are several restored examples of the '440' version, for visual reference...to get an idea of what the above car would look like after a complete going-over.

Here are some images of a nicely-restored '500' model.