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This was my father's first brand new car that he bought and it has never been
out of our family. We have the original bill of sale, the original bank loan
paperwork, all the original shop manuals (my Dad did all the mechanical work
himself as we grew up), a complete maintenance history of the car, and a
pictorial history of the car. I learned to drive in it, had my first date (and
many more subsequent ones!) in it, restored it with my Dad and I doing all the
work in 1965, drove it to four years of college, then turned it back over to my
Dad who then let my brother drive it to college. In approximately 1974 my Dad
decided to do a complete restoration due to having to put a brand new wiring
harness in it. He never finished the job and wound up blocking it up in his back
yard for about 25 years. For the first 20 he was faithful to go down and crank
it up once in a while and let it run. In 1998 it had not been started in some
four years. Having been diagnosed with cancer, I learned that he was planning to
leave it to me in his will since he had almost sold it in 1965 when I bought it
from him, restored it, dropped a rebuilt engine in it, and "saved" it from
leaving our family. But it was about starting to rust, and a high school friend
of mine told me I had to do something with it quickly. And, when we tried to
start the engine the valves were frozen. We treated all the cylinders with a
healthy dose of liquid wrench and WD-40 and let it sit for a day, and
successfully cranked it the next day! It has been purring ever since! Lacking
the funds to restore it myself, my brother (Charles O. McKeown of Greenville,
SC) became half owner with me, and we restored it and presented it to my Dad in
July 2000. The original picture on the left shows Dad and me when the car was new and
I was about four years old. The other is the finished restoration which is now
parked in my garage in Lawrenceville, GA!
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