[Steve Jelf]

The good-looking mechanically crappy car rings a bell with me. It turned out that I overpaid for my touring because I didn't know enough to check some things. It's a stock 1923 touring with no modern "improvements", which is what I wanted. It had what I call a twenty-foot restoration. It looks great from twenty feet away, but when you get up close you see the Phillips screws & other modern fasteners, the plastic insulation on some of the wiring, and a few other errors. Still, it's a nice-looking car. But the guys who did the body ignored the mechanics. The front end bushings, bearings, and hangers were so worn out that when I jacked it up and shook a wheel everything flopped around like a bobble head doll. So I've reworked all that and the steering's a lot less exciting than it used to be. The NH dripped gas because the bowl was rusted through, so I rebuilt the whole thing. I stuck my finger in the rear axle filler hole and it came out with silver oil and little chunks of babbitt, so I rebuilt the rear axle.

Was the guy who sold me this car a crook? He told me it was restored in the sixties. Was he lying? Probably not. This was an older fellow with lots of dough, and he hired the work done on his vehicles. I think he was blissfully unaware of all the mechanical problems. In fact, he thought the starter was shot when all it needed was a new battery. Sometimes the guy who says a car with big defects is "restored" is lying, but sometimes he's just clueless.