That and a set of wings I'm sure one of those little things would fly!
John S. Rehberg, 8/31/1956 to 9/14/2022, Dad you may be gone but you're always with me...
- Thread starter PlymCrazy
- Start date
Dad owned (2) Ford Econoline vans, a 1965 and a 1966. I only remember one of them personally. The white one below is striking similar to the one I recall. Without the mags lol.
1965 Econoline
(c/o google)
And a 1966 Econoline
(c/o google)
1965 Econoline
(c/o google)
And a 1966 Econoline
(c/o google)
Here's all I could find of those Econoline vans my dad owned. I don't know if this was the '65 or '66. That's my little brother in that pic.
I do have some memories surrounding this one in particular.
One day (early 80's) this was parked in my grandparents driveway. I was roller skating around this van on the driver's side. Flying down the driveway I reached out with one hand and grabbed the mirror bracket to stop myself. This spun me around on my skates and put me on the driveway, head first. Can't recall if that wound up being a trip to the ER or not, but it drew blood and one heck of a headache for days.
I also remember it having a gumball machine in the back.
Dad made an effort to help my uncle turn his life around at the time with this van. He offered this van, free of charge, as incentive to get my uncle to come to church with us one Sunday. Dad honored his word and gave my uncle that van after seeing him in church.
Tried not to open this thread. The title has me remember my Dad. It’s been a year. Don’t know if I should cry, block, or just sigh and remember those good times.
I'm sorry about that. No harm intended. Doing this tribute is a bit outside of my comfort zone as I'm not typically a "social media guy" nor do I like to "air my business". But I'm grateful of the welcome and reception by the folks on FBBO to do such a thing. I was a bit reserved and cautious about it at first. All I can say is let it out, whatever it looks like for you. This is proving to be good way for me to process and accept the fact that dad may not be physically here any longer, he is still with me as I live on trying to honor him in the choices I make in life going forward. Thanks for stopping in on the thread. I welcome you to return often if your heart allows.
So going down the list, the following (4) cars dad owned. I have no recollection of these personally.
1965 Pontiac Bonneville
(c/o google)
1966 Cadillac Calais
(c/o google)
1966 Dodge Charger
(c/o google)
1967 Chevy Impala
(c/o google)
1965 Pontiac Bonneville
(c/o google)
1966 Cadillac Calais
(c/o google)
1966 Dodge Charger
(c/o google)
1967 Chevy Impala
(c/o google)
LOL, did you get any additional brothers or sisters after having this van?!?
Your dad certainly had a wide variety of cars!
Our baby sister did come round in 1984 so I guess it's possible. If there's any more, I'm not aware of them to date LOL.
He really did have a wide variety no doubt. I tried to forewarn at the beginning of this thread, he had a lot of cars! Some we had a while, others were much shorter lived.
Here's a 1967 Fairlane dad had. That's my mom holding me as a baby.
Cool - a 2 door hotrod!
Never really saw it like that. But I guess you can say that. Had me do a double take on the wheels and white letter tires after I read your post lol
Speaking of green, we had a 1970 Plymouth Valiant with a 225 slant 6. It was green and looked a lot like the picture below, except...
...ours was dented almost everywhere.
At one point, a delivery truck suddenly stopped, and not seeing my mom behind him, threw his truck into reverse and damaged the front end. Somehow the hood survived intact, but both front fenders were creased and the grille was toast. Then a girl in high school backed out of her parking spot without looking, hit it, and and took out the right rear quarter panel. The left rear quarter panel was damaged in another incident that I can't now remember. So both fenders and both quarter panels had fairly significant damage to them. Amazingly, the hood, trunk and all doors opened and closed fine!
This thing was a tank. It NEVER failed, always ran great and got us to where we were going. It was a good car!
...ours was dented almost everywhere.
At one point, a delivery truck suddenly stopped, and not seeing my mom behind him, threw his truck into reverse and damaged the front end. Somehow the hood survived intact, but both front fenders were creased and the grille was toast. Then a girl in high school backed out of her parking spot without looking, hit it, and and took out the right rear quarter panel. The left rear quarter panel was damaged in another incident that I can't now remember. So both fenders and both quarter panels had fairly significant damage to them. Amazingly, the hood, trunk and all doors opened and closed fine!
This thing was a tank. It NEVER failed, always ran great and got us to where we were going. It was a good car!
Sorry for the delay Hawk. I don't recall seeing a notification on this last post and am just seeing this now. I absolutely love the way these Valiants look from behind. And have always heard of those slant 6's lasting forever. The front end is the same as my '71 Duster. Part of the reason I bought that Duster is because of a '70 Duster that we took in to restore back in around 1990.
As I hear of everything that happened to that Valiant you mentioned, and considering the black tape your dad did as a "touch-up" on the 2-stroke screamer you guys had lol...Does anything stand out as a "repair or adjustment" you guys had to make to the Valiant subsequent to any of those fender benders? Tie wire? Ratchet straps? Sheet metal screws and rolled aluminum? Don't ask...use your imagination and I'm sure you can figure out why I mention all that.
My list says this '67 Pontiac dad had was a Bonneville, but I swear it was a Catalina.
That's me with our dogs "Dawn" and "Kotter" at the time. Dawn is the Shepard on the right and Kotter the smaller black dog on the left.
This Pontiac had a 389 in it. The story about this car that sticks out the most is when we were heading down the expressway in Rochester, early one evening IIRC. Around 1977/1978. Dad was driving, mom on passenger side. I was in the back seat behind dad. Dad flicked a cigarette butt out his window and the butt came back in through the rear window right next to me on the seat. The wind from the highway speeds blowing on the cigarette embers quickly caused the back seat to begin to smolder and fill the car with smoke. I don't recall flames but the seat was burning. Dad pulled the car over. Mom pulled me out of the passenger rear door as dad came around the corner and promptly extinguished the smoldering seat with some of his "finely filtered beer" he'd obviously been holding in. Killed (2) birds with one stone I guess you could say.
That's me with our dogs "Dawn" and "Kotter" at the time. Dawn is the Shepard on the right and Kotter the smaller black dog on the left.
This Pontiac had a 389 in it. The story about this car that sticks out the most is when we were heading down the expressway in Rochester, early one evening IIRC. Around 1977/1978. Dad was driving, mom on passenger side. I was in the back seat behind dad. Dad flicked a cigarette butt out his window and the butt came back in through the rear window right next to me on the seat. The wind from the highway speeds blowing on the cigarette embers quickly caused the back seat to begin to smolder and fill the car with smoke. I don't recall flames but the seat was burning. Dad pulled the car over. Mom pulled me out of the passenger rear door as dad came around the corner and promptly extinguished the smoldering seat with some of his "finely filtered beer" he'd obviously been holding in. Killed (2) birds with one stone I guess you could say.
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The 389 would have been the Catalina that year, a brother of a buddy had a '67 Grand Prix convertible back in the day, and it had a 400, Bonneville would have been the same or bigger, if I have my GM stuff straight.
So the funny thing is my dad was not what I would call a 'handy' guy. Smart as a whip, but not into fixing cars. But he did work to keep them on the road, and if there was something he could do, he would do it to save a few bucks. We were certainly not rich when I grew up (although we thankfully never struggled to put food on the table), so he did what he could to save money. Cars were a necessity that he did as cheaply as possible.
Although the electricians tape was probably the most "stand out" thing he did that is fun to remember, he did deal with the grille on the valiant. As I stated, the truck crushed the front end of the car except for the hood. The grille was toast, and the headlights no longer were aimed correctly. I remember bending metal so they were close to where they should be aimed. We then used some twine to hold the remains of the grill together. The car then went to the mechanic who re-aimed the headlights. Then it was back in service!
I have no doubt you dad did a few similar things to keep your cars on the road. Do any things stand out to you?
To name a few (if I think longer I know I’ll remember more)
1) Soup cans to repair exhausts
2) The oil “sprinkler system” as described in the ‘62 Chevy post earlier in this thread
3) Floor patches with roll sheet metal and rivets
4) Backing off on the throttle to get the vacuum operated wipers to come back around the curve of the windshield on an old 50’s car
5) Plumbers wire to replace exhaust hangers
6) Coat hanger for radio antenna
7) Bungee cord or rope to hold a door with a broken latch shut
…..All on cars that weren’t worth the money of a more permanent repair
Haha. Yeah, another repair that I recall from the "green machine" Valiant was that it started to have more backpressure from cylinder/ ring wear. The solution? Drill a hole in the oil fill cap to relieve some of the excess pressure! My dad didn't come up with the solution, but carried it out on the recommendation of the mechanic that worked on our cars.
Homemade relief valve, but stuck open lol
Dad had a 1968 Chevy C/10 pickup. It had a straight-6 in it, 3-speed on the column. More of a gold in color as I recall.
If you'll recall the '53 Chevy hood we used as a sled from back on page 2 of this thread? This '68 pickup was the vehicle I remember most pulling us around on that hood. Early on owning this truck dad removed the rotted box and replaced it with a homemade wooden bed.
One Super Bowl Sunday dad took my brother and I down a snow covered, unmaintained, seasonal road for some joyriding, looking for some snowbanks to barrel through with the truck. We'd get stuck, get out and shovel, then move forward a few feet and repeat. Did this for several hours back and forth on that road. Got pretty exhausting to say the least. Cops drove by, seeing us from a distance. They didn't even blink an eye as they'd get stuck themselves when even attempting to come confront us about all the "fun" we were having. We finally worked our way towards the base of a pretty steep and icy hill on that road. Dad got a running start with the truck and made it about half way up the hill before coming to a halt, spinning the tires. He was able to stop the truck in that spot, surprisingly without sliding back down. He typically had some salt bags in the bed of the truck he was hoping to spread on the ground, in our attempt to get up that hill. But when he realized the salt bags weren't there as expected, he was pretty disappointed. So we had to back down the hill in defeat. But the grand finale of this story is when we finally were on our way off that road that day. The last bit of excitement was a tall snowbank that was several feet near the exit of the road. Dad had my brother and I get out of the truck and stand on the side of the road. For safety? Or just to get a better view? Only dad knows I guess. He then backed up and got a running start and hit that snowbank, launching that truck into the air. Almost Dukes style. Could barely see the truck with the snowstorm that the initial impact made. But I'm obviously here to tell the story so it ended well. Truck made it home in one piece surprisingly. And so did we.
The truck looked very much like this, color and all, when dad first brought it home.
(c/o google)
Dad eventually made a homemade bed for the back very similar to this one.
(c/o google)
If you'll recall the '53 Chevy hood we used as a sled from back on page 2 of this thread? This '68 pickup was the vehicle I remember most pulling us around on that hood. Early on owning this truck dad removed the rotted box and replaced it with a homemade wooden bed.
One Super Bowl Sunday dad took my brother and I down a snow covered, unmaintained, seasonal road for some joyriding, looking for some snowbanks to barrel through with the truck. We'd get stuck, get out and shovel, then move forward a few feet and repeat. Did this for several hours back and forth on that road. Got pretty exhausting to say the least. Cops drove by, seeing us from a distance. They didn't even blink an eye as they'd get stuck themselves when even attempting to come confront us about all the "fun" we were having. We finally worked our way towards the base of a pretty steep and icy hill on that road. Dad got a running start with the truck and made it about half way up the hill before coming to a halt, spinning the tires. He was able to stop the truck in that spot, surprisingly without sliding back down. He typically had some salt bags in the bed of the truck he was hoping to spread on the ground, in our attempt to get up that hill. But when he realized the salt bags weren't there as expected, he was pretty disappointed. So we had to back down the hill in defeat. But the grand finale of this story is when we finally were on our way off that road that day. The last bit of excitement was a tall snowbank that was several feet near the exit of the road. Dad had my brother and I get out of the truck and stand on the side of the road. For safety? Or just to get a better view? Only dad knows I guess. He then backed up and got a running start and hit that snowbank, launching that truck into the air. Almost Dukes style. Could barely see the truck with the snowstorm that the initial impact made. But I'm obviously here to tell the story so it ended well. Truck made it home in one piece surprisingly. And so did we.
The truck looked very much like this, color and all, when dad first brought it home.
(c/o google)
Dad eventually made a homemade bed for the back very similar to this one.
(c/o google)
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