AEROBUS By Ed Cahoon CHAPTER 1 - DISCOVERY I first laid eyes on her during a Road Rally. It was lust at first sight. She looked to be 30 to 40 years old. I didn't know what I had just seen but it had eight doors and a whole lot of glass. It looked dirty and forgotten but unusually attractive. More like attractively unusual. Oh, to stop and talk to the owner to see if it was for sale, but it disappeared from view as we rounded the corner on our way to the final clue of the day's Road Rally. As far as we could tell our team was winning and there was to be no stopping now so that I could investigate a forgotten vehicle in someone's driveway. Bragging rights were at stake, not to mention certificates for free hamburgers at the local fast food outlets, and many other equally valuable prizes worth risking our lives on the streets of Sacramento. We were the Command Section team. Four enlisted members of the Technical Operations Division, a component of the United States Air Force at McClellan Air Force Base, in Sacramento, California. An organization who's job it was to keep the country safe from the threat of nuclear annihilation. We conducted fund-raising Road Rallys a couple of times each year. As an organization and a Road Rally team we were undefeated. We worked hard and we played hard. I was glad that day's Road Rally was nearly complete because I could not concentrate on anything but the car I saw. I had no idea what it was but I was anxious to go back and have a closer look at it. The objective of a Road Rally is to make it from one place to another in town, solving clues that allow your team to determine the next destination, while solving puzzles that eventually lead you to the final destination. The first team to finish wins. The Command Section remained undefeated that day. After celebrating our victory I left McClellan Air Force Base and headed straight back to the street where the car was located. I remembered the street name because it was the last clue we had to solve and a fairly easy one at that: Romance novel series. A check of our team map had quickly revealed only one Harlequin Street in town. Turning down Harlequin Street again I saw the vehicle that had so excited me. Stopping in front of the house I hopped out of my car and circled the strange vehicle several times. It was covered with a coating of dirt that suggested years of neglect. The windows were frosted from many seasons of rainwater minerals. The chrome emblems told me it was a Checker Aerobus. One of the emblems was missing along with a hubcap. My knock on the front door of the house went unanswered. I spent another 15 minutes or so looking the car over, taking a mental inventory of what it would need in order to be fixed up, still not knowing if the owner would be willing to part with it. It was in desperate need of a paint job. I have developed an eye for car spotting over the years and achieved some success knocking on doors and getting deals on neglected automobiles. I was getting excited about the prospect of doing the same with this one. I knew something about Checkers, having long been a car buff. I knew that they had not changed their body style since the late 1950's and that at one time the primary cabs in major cities were Checkers, known for their reliability. I couldn't recall if Checker was still in business and I sure couldn't figure out what year this one was. The sticker on the license plate indicated that this car had not been registered for ten years. Further confirming that was a decade-old notice of abatement on the dash requiring the owner to appear in court for an abandoned vehicle. The California Vehicle Code does not allow unregistered vehicles on public access-ways. I assumed the car sat on a street and earned the summons before being pulled into the driveway. There was a California Highway Patrol safety inspection sticker from 1975 on the windshield so the car was at least that old. There was a McClellan Air Force Base sticker on the bumper that expired almost ten years previously. The color of the sticker told me that it had been owned by an enlisted military person. Hopefully it still was because that would give me something in common with the owner and perhaps give me an edge in negotiating a purchase price. I estimated the car to be twenty-five feet long. That much dirty automobile with flat tires, a smashed window, scratched paint and missing trim elements presented a dreadful sight. Cosmetics aside I could appreciate the beauty and potential in this car. I have always desired unusual or uncommon vehicles and this certainly qualified as both. I'm one of those people who find unusual vehicles attractive. My personal theory is that most individual vehicle purchases are based on a desire by the buyer to attract attention to themselves. If I'm driving a vehicle to attract attention to myself then an unusual one is as good as an expensive, exotic one. Since my introduction to the design of automobiles, by building plastic car models as a kid, I've had a thing for station wagons. The 1957 Chevy Nomad two-door station wagon has long been on the list of cars I'd like most to own. But this was the ultimate! This was a station wagon all right but with something extra. This one had eight doors! Conventional popular wisdom dictates that fewer doors are better but there was no denying the inherent coolness of this one. I was making mental calculations on what would have to be replaced on the car in order to make it road-worthy, starting with the four tires that had good tread on them but were extremely weather-beaten and completely flat. They would probably have to be replaced before the car could be moved at all. Of the fourteen pieces of glass on the car only one was broken and it was a flat side window which could be replaced easily. If the curved windshield had been broken it would have disqualified the whole vehicle until I could determine the availability of a replacement. The Aerobus chrome emblem was missing from the tailgate but the two on the front fenders were intact. The front driver's-side door was unlocked and peering inside I noticed that everything seemed in perfect original condition. The upholstery had no holes in it and the carpet seemed intact and unworn, though faded. The odometer read just a little over 50,000 miles. That was hard to believe for a car as old as this one looked. I would have assumed that the odometer had turned over at least once on a car this old were it not for the excellent condition of the upholstery and carpet. There was no mailbox at the house and no name on the house. No clues that might let me phone later for information. With great reluctance I left the place, anxious to return later and find someone at home. The next day was Saturday and my wife, Vilma, had to work unexpectedly. I enjoyed those days for the freedom it allowed me from the "honey-dos". "Honey do this, honey do that, let's drive here, let's go buy that". We have a close relationship and don't do many things apart from one another so time alone was rare. We'd been married for twenty years. She was from the Philippines where I'd spent eleven of my twenty years in the Air Force. On this Saturday all I could think about was returning to get another look at the car and perhaps catch someone at home. As I turned the corner onto Harlequin Street, with my son Charlie, my excitement increased. There was someone in the front yard! It was an older oriental man sitting under the trees. He appeared to be Filipino. Not wanting to appear to be too anxious or interested in the car I rolled up to the curb, feigned ignorance, and called out from my window, "What kind of car is that?" "It's a Checker" was all he said. "It is for sale?" "Yeah, I'll sell it." He said, in a tone that seemed to imply that he would sell it if the offer were high enough. Suppressing my eagerness I asked, "How much?" "Five hundred dollars." The words seemed to come out in slow motion. My heart leapt! I wanted to jump right out of my car and pay him on the spot. Be cool now. Go slow. Turn off the engine and get out. Slowly. Show some detached interest. Try not to appear too eager. I walked up and introduced myself. His name was Jaime. He pronounced the J like an H. "Are you a Filipino?" I asked. Hoping to establish a familiar connection from all my years there and gain another negotiating edge. "No I'm from Guam." He stood up from his chair using a cane to right himself and them leaned on it with a firm two-handed grip. "Were you in the Air Force?" "Yes, I retired as a Master Sergeant many years ago." "Does it run?" I asked, trying to project an attitude of indifference. "Well yeah," Jaime offered. "At least it did ten years ago when I parked it. I had it out on the street for three years and it was going to be towed by the county so about seven years ago I drove it into the driveway." "That was probably good anyway because when it was on the street vandals broke that one window and pulled the emblem off the back. You can see where they bent the emblem trying to get it off the hood but they couldn't pull it off. I guess it's held on a lot better. They also stole one hubcap." Jaime went on describing things wrong with the car, giving me ammunition for a counter-offer. "I'm the second owner. I bought it from a mental hospital that used it on weekends to drive patients around." "What year is it?" I asked in as detached a tone as I could muster. "It's a 1972." Was his reply, which later turned out to be wrong by two years. I did some more quick calculations and considered the odds of the car ever being able to run again. I knew that the brakes would likely be void of fluid. I wondered where I could get brake parts for a Checker. The engine could be rusted and seized internally. Ten years was a long time to leave a car unattended. Ten years without registering a vehicle, or at least keeping the account current by paying an annual five dollar fee for non-operation, could add up to significant penalties and back registration totaling more than the car could ever be worth. Still five hundred was a fair price. I could build a trailer out of the long chassis and still be money ahead. Being a bargain hunter I considered offering him less than he was asking but decided instead to offer him a deposit to buy me some time to get a better idea on what the car needed. Time to see just how much of a money pit this thing might become. That and I still needed the tacit approval of Vilma. I'll dicker the price later, I thought to myself. I opened the hood and through a cloud of spider webs I could see that it was a Chevrolet engine. This was good news. I was very familiar with Chevies. I rebuilt the engine myself in my last Chevy. I wondered if this one was original. "That's a Chevy 350 small-block," said Jaime, seeming to read my mind, "that's the original engine. It's a good strong one." I didn't answer him because I was lost in thought over how to phrase an offer of a deposit and buy myself some time to run some tests on the car. "Have you kept it registered?" I asked, hoping that he had just kept all the paperwork and stickers in the house rather than in or on the vehicle. "No I haven't bothered since I stopped using it ten years ago." "That could be expensive to bring current." I expressed with genuine concern. "I'm interested in the car," I offered after a while. "Would you be willing to take a non-refundable deposit of fifty dollars until I can see if I can make it run? If the engine is seized or something else prevents me from taking it out of here you can keep the money." "Sure, I'll do that." With the agreement made I was anxious to get started. I didn't come prepared with tools or anything else and I figured Charlie wasn't interested in sitting around watching dad work on an old car. I returned to the car and told him the deal I had just made. "Well, it's a pretty cool looking car." "You think so?" I was surprised. "Would you ride in that?" "Well, not the way it looks right now but if you fix it up I would." Great, let's go home and get some tools and come back and start." He started groaning and complaining about wasting a whole day. "What is it going to take to get it running?" "I don't know, We'll have to come back and see." I went home and gathered up my toolbox, coveralls, tire pump and vinyl gloves. The gloves were a relatively new thing for me. The older I get, the less I like having dirty hands, and hands stay dirty for a long time after a day of mechanical work. So I buy vinyl gloves by the gross and go through about half a dozen in a day of work. When they tear or get too dirty I simply peel them off inside out, throw them away, and slip on a new pair. As long as I catch the tears in the thumb and index finger before too much dirt gets through the holes my hands can look as clean by the end of the day as when I started. From the wrists to the elbows is quite another matter. When I first started using the gloves it was difficult to work without the discreet tactile reference for doing fine work like starting a nut in a blind area but I have gotten used to it now and can even work on the car in winter with leather gloves on. Charlie decided he'd rather play video games at home and let me go have my fun trying to start the beast that he was not convinced could ever be fully cool. So I was off with my material. Turning the corner onto Harlequin Street I was real anxious to get started. I was excited to finally have another project car to work on. It had been about five years since I had done any serious car work, and longer than that since I had done it for fun. First item out was my portable tire compressor. I hooked it up to my car's cigarette lighter and connected it to one tire after another and watched as each one gradually rose off the concrete driveway. I was surprised that the tires inflated at all because they were so cracked and weather-beaten after ten years sitting in the sun. The noise of my compressor brought Jaime out. After exchanging greetings and small talk about the car he offered, "Those tires were five hundred dollars. They're eight-ply." "When did you buy them?" "Ten years ago, just before I parked it for the last time." "Wow, too bad you wasted all that money." "Yeah, of course I didn't intend to let it sit, but one thing led to another and then I was too sick to work on it and the weeks turned into months and then years. I'd still keep it now if I could work on it myself like I used to. I can't afford to have someone else do the work." "Do you have the keys?" I asked. "Sure, they're inside, I'll go get them" As each tire inflated I became more surprised and hopeful that they would hold. Their condition, with all the cracks in the sidewalls, did not give me a comfortable feeling and again I considered their expense as part of the cost of getting this vehicle on the road. Noticing the exposed nuts on one wheel I wondered how to factor the replacement cost of a Checker hubcap into my mental tally. I was sure it wouldn't be cheap. After a while each corner of the car was up and all the bugs that had made their homes under the flattened tires were scurrying for new shelter. The car looked significantly better just being up onto round tires. It was very high off the ground. One aspect of Checker automobiles, I later learned, was that they were built high off the ground to keep the drive shaft completely under the car instead of creating a hump down the middle of the passenger compartment. This made the loading and unloading of passengers far swifter and more comfortable. The middle passenger in the seat also did not have to straddle the hump. This feature was particularly attractive for all the thousands of four-door Checker sedans being used as taxicabs. This vehicle looked like a safari wagon sitting so much further off the ground and being so much longer than a normal car. Now I was able to lay underneath the car and inspect for rust and other defects. Everything seemed to be in order except for all the spiders. The whole undercarriage was a tangle of spider webs. The only spiders I saw were Black Widows, fairly common in California. I grabbed a broom sitting beside Jaime's garage and began sweeping away the webs to get a better look. Nothing seemed out of place or modified. Everything was intact and there was only the normal dusting of surface rust on everything. Cars in California don't rust as fast as in other parts of the country, which I suspect is a big reason that there is so much car activity in the state. The only thing that seemed like it would need work was the last 6 feet or so of tailpipe. The part that loops over the rear axle was rotten and would need to be replaced. That was not disappointing. The end of a tailpipe always rusts out first, and tailpipe is not expensive. More important was that apparently the underside of the car had not been tampered with by unskilled workers or others taking shortcuts on a repair. Everything seemed original. I was pleased by my inspection and my optimism for the project rose just a little. I still considered that any car that sat for 10 years could not be expected to perform very well without total reconstruction. One of the best shade-tree mechanics I've ever known gave me some simple advice about engines. He told me that you only need two things for an engine to run: gas and spark. With that in mind I set about inspecting the fuel system. The gas tank in the Checker has a drain plug, a feature not found on many cars since the early fifties. I unscrewed the drain plug to check the fuel quality and nothing happened. I banged on the tank and shook the car as much as I could and determined that there was fluid in there. It could just as well have been water for as long as the car sat. Then too, sitting on the road it could have had any number of things poured into it by the same vandals who broke the window and tore bits off the car. There was a locking gas cap on the filler tube but it was the wrong size and was a sloppy fit and easily removed by anyone who fiddled with it as I did since Jaime hadn't come back outside with the keys yet. Looking up into the hole where the drain plug had been I noticed it was obstructed. I got a long screwdriver and poked it up into the hole. It met resistance so I pushed a little harder and could feel the screwdriver slowly pushing its way through something. Like pushing a finger into an inflated balloon. Finally the screwdriver broke through and the foulest smelling, pungent brown fluid came leaking down the screwdriver and my arm before I could get out of the way. It smelled a little like gasoline but different. I got much more of it on me before I could get the drain plug screwed back in. I have a good memory for odors and I had never smelled this one before. It was a petrochemical odor but very unusual. I couldn't figure out what could smell this foul but I knew that using the tank would be ill advised until I got it cleaned out. So here I was, faced with a major delay in getting the car running. The tank would have to come out of the car in order to clean it properly. Little did I suspect what that would involve. I just hoped that foul stuff had not been pumped into the engine seven years ago when Jaime moved it in off the street. With the gas tank that messed up the carburetor and fuel pump certainly could be bad as well especially since there was no fuel filter anywhere in the line that I could see. Add tank cleaning to the mental list of things to do later along with checking or rebuilding the carburetor.. Since I was done with the fuel line for the day I decided to see what else needed attention. I realized it would not be wise to start the car after so long sitting without getting some lubrication worked into the engine. I felt it would be a good idea to remove all the spark plugs one at a time, check them, and spray solvent into each cylinder of the engine. I figured the solvent could soak into the engine and loosen things up for as long as it took me to get the fuel delivery problem solved. Each plug came out and the physical inspection seemed okay. No sign of oil fouling or rich burning of gasoline. The tips of the plugs were in good condition. It looked like they had been installed not very long before the car was parked ten years ago. The plugs were old but, made of metal and ceramic without any moving parts, there was not much that could be wrong with them. Despite everything looking so good on the car, ten years of neglect must have worn heavy internally. I took each cylinder in turn, removing the spark plug and generously soaking the combustion chamber with solvent. I hoped that it would soak completely around the rings surrounding each piston and ensure that I could one day start this car without having rings that had rusted to the cylinder walls. Bad rings require the most complete engine dismantling of any part that might need to be replaced. If the rings were bad on this car the whole engine would have to come out and be completely rebuilt. I worked the small plastic straw out of the tape holster on the side of the can of solvent and into the nozzle end, extending the reach and accuracy of the nutrient. I gave a long spray of the life-giving fluid into each cylinder. Far more solvent than I would have dared put in had I thought I would be starting it soon but I was beginning to realize that it would be at least a few more Saturdays before I would move this vehicle. |
