Rare Parts In Strange Places

[Tracker1]

Bought an early '70s Trans Am with a 400 small block chevy. It had deep groove 1969 big-block pulleys and a '69 camaro power steering pump on it.

[chevyman0429]

My Father bought a rusted out 87 monte ss for who knows what and it sat at his place for a couple years. One day I ask about it and he says if u want that pile of sh@t u can have it. I drag it home and decided to look into the motor and turned out it was a 69 DZ 302 with all the original (except valve covers) accessories.

[72heavychevy]

I had a craigslist ad up for some 2nd gen camaro parts for sale (including some extra bumpers that came with my car, but they were rough), noting at the bottom I was looking for a nice pair of '74-77 bumpers for my car.

Well a month or two goes by, I sell some parts, and randomly get a call asking if I was still looking for bumpers. He said he had an NOS pair of bumpers with NOS rubber strips (note the rubber pieces alone are $200 each for repops!) sitting in the rafters of his barn, original GM boxes and all!! He said "give me 100 bucks and your old bumpers and we have a deal" - his car wasn't going to be done anytime soon and mine looked "good enough".

The story doesn't end there either. I drove an hour or two to the middle of nowhere Kansas and wait for the guy to show up at a local truck stop. All the sudden I see this Lincoln Town Car roll up with the trunk wide open and the Camaro bumpers hanging way out the back held in with bungee cords. I was shocked. Luckily he had towels wrapped around them so they were fine, it just looked quite odd. We traded bumpers and he was happy as could be to end up with an extra 100 bucks.

I've still got those bumpers on my car today. Every once and awhile I get asked how I got them so nice and polished up (the anodizing on these bumpers likes to cloud up over time if left outside) and I tell them that story.

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by 72heavychevy

He said he had an NOS pair of bumpers with NOS rubber strips (note the rubber pieces alone are $200 each for repops!) sitting in the rafters of his barn...

I wasn't going to tell this story, but speaking of "bumpers in the rafter of a barn..."

The rear bumper on my '04 Silverado 2500HD is a little tweaked; not too bad but bad enough I notice and I compare with everybody else's rear bumper that I see.

I looked for a replacement and sort of accidentally bought a new (China) bumper off ebay. It didn't fit right and rusted before I even backed it out of the garage, so I threw it away and put my original tweaked bumper back on (after I had drug it around on the concrete because I thought I was going to throw it away).

My brother-in-law Denny got my Dad's truck after Dad passed. I stopped by Denny and Jenny's the other day and Dad's old truck was sitting there. As I walked past I noticed and remembered that Dad had removed the rear bumper and installed a fiberglass rear roll pan in its place.



I asked Denny "hey - do you still have the rear bumper off Dad's truck?"

He said "yes- it's hanging there in the barn, over the boat".

Score! So now I have a new take-off original GM, straight, rust free bumper (of known provenance) for the back of my truck.

K

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

I wasn't going to tell this story, but speaking of "bumpers in the rafter of a barn..."

The rear bumper on my '04 Silverado 2500HD is a little tweaked; not too bad but bad enough I notice and I compare with everybody else's rear bumper that I see.

I looked for a replacement and sort of accidentally bought a new (China) bumper off ebay. It didn't fit right and rusted before I even backed it out of the garage, so I threw it away and put my original tweaked bumper back on (after I had drug it around on the concrete because I thought I was going to throw it away).

My brother-in-law Denny got my Dad's truck after Dad passed. I stopped by Denny and Jenny's the other day and Dad's old truck was sitting there. As I walked past I noticed and remembered that Dad had removed the rear bumper and installed a fiberglass rear roll pan in its place.



I asked Denny "hey - do you still have the rear bumper off Dad's truck?"

He said "yes- it's hanging there in the barn, over the boat".

Score! So now I have a new take-off original GM, straight, rust free bumper (of known provenance) for the back of my truck.

K

Bumper didn't fit.



Apparently the stepside version is ever so slightly narrower than the fleetside version.

K

[SuperNovaSS]

When I lived in Hawaii, I ran out of gas when test driving a old Blazer we just did an engine swap in. I was a mile or two from the house and did not have a phone with me so I decided to walk back. On the walk, I saw a 62 Nova wagon that had 70s plates on it. It had rolled over down an embankment decades before I came across it and was just left there. It had been completely overtaken by jungle but had a complete heater delete and radio delete. The heater delete paid for 3 of my college courses.

Jason

[Bill Pritchard]

In the early 80's I was in the midst of restoring a 70 Dodge Challenger R/T, factory Hemi car that I bought from the original owner. One of the few things that was MIA when I bought the car was the original radiator, p/n 2998956 which came on only Hemi cars or 440's with HD cooling. This was obviously in the days before internet searches, so it was a bit tougher to locate stuff. Finally found a guy in Grand Rapids MI who said he had one. Drove up there from the Chicago suburbs and sure enough he had it. I asked where he got it. He had it left from parting out a Panther Pink 70 Cuda 440-6 convertible because it was kinda rusty. Even then I thought 'wow, that seems like a pretty rare car to part out'.

[Charley Lillard]

......,,,

[67since67]

Originally Posted by Charley Lillard

......,,,

That's actually a pretty cool idea...

[SuperNovaSS]

Charley,

Were those horn buttons used as wheel center caps? I love the use of the original clips to fasten them but if seems like they may fly off under speed?

Jason