Pick a pocket or two
1926 Chrysler Imperial E80
Owned by Stewart Perry (c/o classic.cars@bauermedia.co.uk) Time owned One year, nine months Latest/total mileage 0/144,000 Latest/total costs £370/£1000 Previously Engine dropped off for rebuild
With the engine away I turned my attention to the gearbox. Disturbingly, as we took it further apart, we started to find metal flakes in the oil and in the bottom of the box, which turned out to be from a damaged bronze bush – no big deal. Sadly, once the gears were out and cleaned for inspection, we discovered that there was significant wear on the pocket gear. Yet again, this wasn’t going to be an easy fix. Pocket gears are difficult to cut when making a new one, because of the teeth on both the outside for the lower ratios and inside for when top gear is engaged.
As all this was happening, I was contacted by a friend in New South Wales who had spotted what he believed to be the remains of a Chrysler Imperial at an upcoming farm clearance auction, with no reserve. Initially I tried to find someone else to buy it, because I didn’t need a whole second car and I hoped someone might take it on and restore it. Sadly, no-one else was interested, so I resigned myself to placing a low bid, wondering if it might have serviceable valve lifters and a good pocket gear.
Mid-morning Saturday my phone lit up with the auctioneer’s call. Bidding opened at $200 (£115), which I can only assume was a scrap metal merchant, or someone looking for ‘yard art’ – how tragic that would be! From there the bids flowed thick and fast until I won it at $650 (£370). With the excitement of the auction over, I had to work out how to get it off the farm, 500 miles away, before the week-long deadline.
My father and I hired a trailer and took the next Tuesday off work. Monday night we headed north and by 1am we had covered 450 miles, so rolled out our swags for a short nap. We arrived at 7am.
After going up a muddy track, we were greeted by the Chrysler wreck on top of a hill with dozens of other cars waiting to go to their new homes. We were in a rush to get back so didn’t have much time to look at the car. It was in very bad shape, and it was looking like the only viable option would be to donate its parts to my other car than sell it for restoration.
As we were leaving, my brother rang asking if we could make a stop on the New South Wales south coast to pick up a set of bargain Minilites for his E-type that he’d found on Gumtree that morning. He assured me it would only add an hour to our trip. What none of us realised was that this detour would take us via the Jerrawangala National Park and its mountain ranges, which turned out to make for a more exciting trip than planned. The very steep and narrow roads were not especially suited to a Land Cruiser towing two tonnes of vintage Chrysler!
After covering more than 1000 miles in 27 hours, we finally pushed the wreck off the trailer and into the garage to be worried about after some hard-earned rest.