I thought of my paternal grandpa as an old guy from the moment I met him until he passed away at the age of 92 in 2003. It sounds cruel until you do the math: Grandpa was 37 when my dad was born, and my dad was 28 when I was born. By the time I was aware of him, Grandpa was a 70-year-old man who was hard of hearing and never tried hearing aids. Therefore, he and I never had any deep conversations, but he was my dad’s dad, and I love my dad, so I have a soft spot for Grandpa Nick as a result. Plus, any mechanical ability that nature has bestowed upon me comes right down that line of the family tree, so I’m thankful for that. Other than genetically influencing my entire life with that skill set, what else did Grandpa leave me with?
In 2009, six years after my grandpa, my grandma passed away, leaving my dad and uncles a house full of a lifetime of stuff, as most of us eventually do. Since my grandpa was a tinkerer, he had a few random parts and manuals lying around his basement, and my dad brought them home for me because he’s a cool guy and I’m an easy target for old junk he doesn’t want. In April, I decided to take a few pictures of some of the treasures that Dad found a decade ago. My favorite is the owner’s manual for Grandpa’s 1962 Ford truck. I’ve only seen one picture of the truck itself, and it wasn’t the subject of the shot, but Grandpa didn’t seem like much of a photography buff anyway.
Inside the manual is this warranty sheet for a remanufactured engine, installed in December of 1964 with a full 62,438 miles on the odometer. My first thought is that a bad engine at that mileage doesn’t say a lot for the truck, or maybe for my grandpa’s maintenance schedule. My second thought is that my grandpa drove that truck a lot over the course of two years. Of course, I don’t know if he bought the truck new or used, and my dad isn’t sure either.
In the goody bag, there were also these nice Autolite Parts and Accessories reference catalogs, which are much more interesting than they appear.
The catalogs are full of exploded component diagrams for all kinds of 1960s Fords, which is convenient because I own two.
Along with the illustrations are lists of part numbers and interchangeability charts.
I first thought I had stumbled upon a part I could use – a reconditioned fuel pump for an FE Ford.
Unfortunately, my ’63 Thunderbird has a 390 from a ’61 full-sized Ford, and neither the car nor the engine are listed on the box. Given Ford’s propensity to change parts mid-year, there is no guarantee that this will fit, and it would certainly need an ethanol-friendly rebuild anyway. I assume this is my dad’s spare part; he drove a ’63 Galaxie 500 convertible with a 352 back in the mid-’60s. Dad sometimes gives me a hard time about the 289 cylinder heads and 8″ Ford center sections I have left sitting in his garage for the past two decades, but it might be that I got that habit from somewhere.
An unusual part is this hand throttle control in this very well-preserved box.
I don’t think it’s ever been installed on a car (or truck), and I don’t know why anyone in the family would have it, but it’s here.
There are quite a few carburetor kits for Autolite 2100 two-barrels in the parts hoard, along with some water pump rebuild kits for engines I can’t imagine anyone in the family having (Lincoln 430s by my memory – those are stashed in my garage attic).
This one looks used, which is fine with me because I save all my old carburetor gaskets, too. You never know.
Here’s an outlier, a K-Mart tune up kit for ’62-’72 Chryslers. Grandpa, like my dad, was mainly a Ford guy, but my grandma drove a ’69 Newport well into the 1980s. I know this because I remember it vaguely in its 1969-approved army green (and my memory on the year and color might be a year and a shade or two off). If my Dart still had points, I could use these!
There are the obligatory maps…
…and old license plates.
Perhaps the most interesting piece of hardware in the bag is this Mallory coil. I have no clue what kind of car it would fit, but it’s pretty old.
I have far more stuff than my grandpa had, but I had a fun time looking into his past a little bit and thinking about what he drove. He never seemed to have anything very exciting, basically a series of Ford trucks, vans, and full-sized cars, along with that lone Chrysler that snuck into the fleet, but I held out hope that the old ’62 had a 292. Dad dashed my hopes when I asked him today – he remembers its being a six-cylinder – but I still must give a tip of the hat to Grandpa Nick, a fellow family member who liked to tinker.
I love pawing through old automobilia like this. When my best friend’s father moved back in the 80s he gave me a bunch of old printed material, an assortment of owners and service manuals to some of the cars he had owned. A couple of them have come in handy over the years.
I have not thought about K-Mart in years. We had a big K-Mart in Fort Wayne, and also a Mr. Wiggs, each about the same distance from my house but in opposite directions. The K-Mart was in a more congested area though, so I usually turned towards Mr. Wiggs when it came time to buy discount store car stuff.
Mr. Wiggs? I’ve never heard of that, but that’s a great name! 🙂 Our K-Mart closed about five years ago, and I think our Sears has been gone about that long, too. It’s funny to think that at one time K-Mart even had an auto section; I don’t remember ours having anything but Craftsman tools, and that was after they merged with Sears.
Believe it or not, my Dad had a new tailpipe installed on our Maverick at K-Mart. Like Sears, they did more than just tires, batteries and oil changes, as I recall.
Now that you mention it, I might have gotten the first battery for my ’65 Mustang at K-Mart back in ’94…or maybe they put the starter on my mom’s ’88 Mustang. I had totally forgotten that they even had a service center; I think it operated under the Penske label. Funny how some things just get lost inside your head.
K-Mart ran their own service centers until the early 00’s If I remember correctly and then they sold the operation to Penske who ran it out of the K-Mart stores that still had the service centers.
Back around 2005 I had a four-wheel alignment performed on my wife’s Escort at a K-Mart.
The local K-Mart closed a few years ago; the one in my birthplace of Cape Girardeau, MO, closed earlier this year, one of the last ones in the state to close.
A K-Mart 15 miles away from me just closed last November. It’s kind of sad in its own right, but it’s also sad that those buildings and lots are going to sit vacant forever.
They aren’t going to sit vacant for ever.
In my area one of the first K-Marts to close was pretty quickly turned into a Wallmart. The next one to fall was turned into a Hardware store also in short order. One of the next K-Marts to close was quickly turned into a Safeway. They built a cheesy facade to close off the service center doors on the side of that one. One that closed last year is already a furniture store.
One of the early Sears to close in W. WA had its service center and part of the 1st floor turned into a classic car dealer. One that closed near 2 years ago they started demolition within a month of it closing and have built a new building. Haven’t been by there to see what may be in it.
Another Sears had its stand alone service center turned into the Tesla service center and the parking lot was half full of Teslas, and this was before the store was even closed.
The most recent K-Mart to close in my area is still vacant, but I expect Walmart or a grocery store to take its place as they have just built a couple of massive apartment complexes within walking distance, and it has great freeway visibility and access.
There was also a story floating around that Amazon may be looking to turn some of those old K-Marts and Sears into distribution centers. I’m not sure about turning them into full distribution centers but I can see them turning into Amazon Fresh distribution centers in some areas.
There is a grocery store locally that the chain that owned it turned into their home delivery distribution center as that took off in that city big time and they have had that closed to the public store in operation for a decade or more so there definitely is a precedent.
Certainly some will sit empty for decades, but many are/were in what is now a prime location.
The K-Mart two miles from me has been repurposed into an Orscheln store, a family owned regional chain of farm and home stores. The building was ideal for them and in a great location.
Scoutdude is right as some of these old K-Marts being on prime real estate.
It might just be my area, but the main businesses buying real estate in my town are marijuana dispensaries, and our K-Marts were too big for that. 🙂
I wonder if the people making the site selection for those K-marts oh so many years ago bought them just because the land was cheap on the outskirts of town next to the freeway or that they expected a commercial area to eventually grow up around them. Some of them around here did draw in development early on but others sat by themselves for 20-30 years before any significant development happened near them.
I know Fred Meyer in the PNW purchased land like it was going out of style in the late 60’s through early 80’s. Again it was land on the outskirts of town or in a tiny town. Once they felt the population was sufficient near a given parcel they would build a store. Some took 20-30 years until they actually built a store but in many of those cases it too became the seed that attracted a commercial area to develop around it.
@Aaron well it would make for a good grow operation, if zoning were to allow it and neighbors don’t throw a fit.
Ha ha! Neighbors in my city wouldn’t throw a fit at all. I can’t go for a walk without smelling a certain fragrant odor from houses and cars several times. 🙂
There was an article in the NY Times a while back about the travails of Sears, and I suspect that it applies to K-Mart as well.
The point that stayed with me is that, though the company appears moribund, they control some prime real estate (prime before the virus, anyway) and may be more valuable to its CEO and investors in liquidated form than as an operating business. That may explain why they don’t seem to be spending much money on their stores.
A sears not far from me was turned into an REI last year, though a K-Mart in a less-prosperous mall remains mothballed.
The K-Mart in Bangor was built on the edge of a cow pasture on the edge of town. It took a few years, but eventually most of the big-box developments came to that area. No cows now! When K-Mart closed it was bought by a nearby car dealer. It’s now an overflow lot for new ProMasters.
@FE203 the real estate was the target all along. Many of the most valuable properties were sold to another company, controlled by Lambert, Seritage Properties, who started to pursue redevelopment of the locations long before the stores closed.
The store I mentioned that has been used as a Tesla storage lot they started the process of getting their redevelopment plans approved almost as quickly as that new company was set up. As soon as the store was marked for closing the notice signs went up.
The K-Mart in Santa Rosa, CA did not sit vacant. In 2007 it burned down in a wildfire. For a while it looked as though Lowe’s was going to buy the property and build a store, but they either got cold feet or waited too long because the property has been sold and is going to become a Native American health center.
I had to look it up, Mr. Wiggs was a small chain mostly in northern Ohio and eastern Indiana. K-Mart was much bigger (with an HQ in Troy Michigan, as I recall). It really was the Wal-Mart of suburban America in the 1960s.
The Mr. Wiggs out on Illinois Road and West Jefferson Blvd. I knew it well. Wasn’t there one out on Coliseum Blvd East? Mr. Wiggs — Wiggies, we called it — was a sort of cut-rate K-Mart and has been gone for a looong time.
And which K-Mart? The one by Southtown, Glenbrook or on Coliseum Blvd East? Was there one out west, on Illinois Road? I’ve forgotten! It’s been a while.
Hand throttle controls in the 50s and 60s were often fitted to cars with air conditioning, so you could raise the idle to keep the engine from overheating in traffic. This one seems to belong to that genre.
The California Highway Patrol specified auxiliary hand throttles in their Dodges with 440 engines in the late 60s to early 70s. By the last years of the 440, 1976-1978 when it went into the smaller B- body, it was no longer on the patrol cars.
I found an owner’s manual for my ’66 F100 some years ago; it’s actually been helpful once or twice.
It would be interesting to know why the six in your grandpa’s truck went out at that mileage. Hard to say; could be a fluke, or who knows? But that kind f thing was a lot less rare back then now.
Yeah it could be as simple as someone not tightening the drain plug properly. Or it could be that it didn’t actually fail but was a little down on power and oil consumption was up so it was replaced before it could have a chance to fail.
My dad doesn’t remember anything about it, so I unfortunately think we’ll never know. I was looking through the service schedules in the owner’s manual recently, and it’s amazing how things changed in just a year or two. You needed to grease about a billion things every 1000 miles on that truck, but by 1963, my T-Bird had 100,000 mile lubrication for the front suspension. The T-Bird cost enough that they could use better stuff though.
One thing that did a lot of engines in back then was those oil can spouts. Gas stations and backyard mechanics all used them and they got dirty. If not properly cleaned it was likely pouring contaminants into your crankcase. Today’s plastic bottles with a pour spout built in are much better
I think the best finds are those catalogs, I love the exploded diagrams.
The hand throttle was typically installed in trucks with a PTO or maybe an electric winch but also used as a poor man’s cruise control back before cruise control was really a thing. I managed to find used ones that I have installed in my Scouts, if for no other reason to have a knob under the illuminated Throttle window. But also good when jump starting another vehicle.
What a cool trove! Reminds me of some of the treasures my own grandpa picked up over the years (and his own tendency to neglect his cars—extra laff points because he was a mechanical engineer of some renown).
It’s fun and easy to rebuild a fuel pump. Good kits come from Then & Now Automotive.
I’ve used their kits before to rebuild my ’53 Buick’s combination fuel/vacuum pump. Good stuff, and a lot of people recommend them.
Aaron, what an amazing treasure trove of mementos from your late grandfather. Just the branding and logos on some of these things is amazing. The Sohio gas station. The old K-Mart logo, from back when they were the “Target” of that generation. The type fonts on the ’62 Ford Truck manual. It’s all golden. Thanks for sharing these treasures with us.
While cleaning out my grandma’s basement several years ago, I found a 1934 Trouble-Shooting guide to auto repair from Socony-Vacuum.
I smile at all this stuff because–except for the Mallory coil–it’s “of my lifetime.” Especially appealing because of all the Ford items.
When you clean out someone’s belongings you get to know them in one additional, unique way, regardless of what your living relationship was like. Very sweet of you to share all this today, AARON65!
We have Kmarts in Australia with no connection to the US brand. I had the misfortune to work in their Automotive section for 3 months in 1983. We weren’t permitted to use Kmart branded parts in service work. That was how confident they were in their product.
I had the great pleasure of telling the foreman where he could insert Kmart one afternoon and walked out. Leaving the lazy SOB to finish off the afternoon’s work. One burnt bridge I still look back on with pleasure.
I must have missed this one the first time around. I lived with my grandparents while at college – Grandpa passed the summer after my freshman year. I have a few of his tools, including a 10″ section of railroad track he must have used as a surrogate anvil (he retired as a mechanic from Southern Railway with 45 years on both steam and diesels). Also have a few tools that were my Uncle’s, who foolishly left them in the garden shed at Grandpa’s.
When we moved my Dad to a care facility in 2016 for his dementia, my brothers and I all drove down and spent a week cleaning out his house to put it up for sale. Dad would not let us clean anything out prior to this, so it was a monumental task. Since I have an extensive set of tools, I gave my brothers first dibs on his tools, but still ended up with almost all his old Craftsman tools as well as old-school timing guns, dwell meters and even a nice set of dial calipers. I plan to clean up his old Craftsman toolbox and put a basic set of tools in it to give my grandson (currently 5) in a few years.
One of the tools I found was the home-made valve grinder Dad made to rebuild the ’71 Vega engine (the first time, same car that was given me for my first car). It was a threaded rod onto which he stuck a rubber suction cup (off a toy bow & arrow set!). That assembly was chucked in a manual hand drill, and I remember Dad having me sit and carefully grind out the valves in his tiny garage workshop when I was maybe 11 or 12.
A homemade valve grinder…I love the “makin’ it work” sensibilities of our older generations. There are still quite a few people out there who do that sort of thing today, but it doesn’t seem as prevalent. Obviously, far fewer people need to do valve jobs these days – reliability has almost made the home-taught mechanic obsolete. Let’s keep those old cars going, if nothing else but for the skill set!