STILL RUNNING
Car and truck show draws a crowd for a good cause
BALLSTON LAKE, N.Y. » There is a certain sound made by American cars that were built before 1970, and for many people hearing the sound of those engines and seeing all that chrome is an attraction that’s near impossible to resist.
The members of the Adirondack A’s Model “A” Club are aware of that attraction. They use it as part of a fundraiser for the club’s youth program, which takes Model A’s, tears them down to nuts and bolts, and fully restores them.
On Sunday, the club held its fourth annual car and truck show at Lakeside Farms Cider Mill, 366 Schauber Road. With about 60 fully restored autos and trucks, the event drew crowds of believers from its 9 a.m. opening to the 2 p.m. closing.
Model “A” Fords were the highlight of the show and they held a prominent spot in the event’s first row of vehicles.
“Model A’s were built between 1928 and 1931,” said club president Marv Livingston. “They’re more comfortable than a Model T. The Model T was really a carriage with a motor on it. Model A’s are more like a modern car. They have three-speed transmission and four wheel brakes.”
Livingston said the club formed around 35 years ago when a group of local aficionados who loved to
restore them got together and formed a club. The youth program started in 2009.
“We get a group of kids from middle school through high school, around 12 to 18 years old, and we rebuild a Model ‘A’ every two years,” Livingston said. “We meet every other Saturday from fall to spring. The last one we rebuilt took about eight weeks.”
Livingston said there is a lot of mentoring that goes on and pointed to photographs of past groups, which included boys and girls working on one of the club’s projects.
“That’s Natalie there doing the welding,” Livingston said. “I can’t recall her last name but I do remember that she was the best welder in that group. We teach them to use tools, how to weld, and how to take an engine apart. Then we sell the car to fund the next one.”
Pointing to one of the restored autos that has yet to be sold he noted that the club makes a few changes with its projects as a nod to safety.
“We use safety glass instead of the original plate glass and we have turn signals and two tail lights,” he said. “The original car only had one.”
Two of the young mechanics who worked on the restorations were at the show and discussed their attraction for spending Saturdays with old cars.
“I always had a passion for cars,” said Lucas Rysedorph, 14, and a freshman at Shenendehowa High School West this fall. “I worked on the 1930 Model “A” Roadster for the 2017-2018 project. I really looked forward to working on it every other weekend. I helped take the motor apart and I just love welding. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. I can’t wait ‘til the next one in October 2019.”
Rysedorph’s father James was looking at some of the club’s cars on display, and agreed with is son that working on the restoration project was beneficial.
“The club was one of the best things he’s done,” James Rysedorph said.
Another youthful restorer at the show was Noah Lake, 14 Lake is a student at the Waldorf School of Saratoga Springs. He worked on the 1930 Roadster as part of the group with Rysedorph.
“The most fun is building them, seeing what’s inside,” he said. “I really like seeing how to build them. There’s a special sound to them, a throaty sound.”
In the rows of cars and trucks behind the Model “A’s”, Jeff and Beth Stehr were looking inside the hood of a restored 1966 Pontiac GTO.
“They’ve changed the valve cover,” Beth Stehr said pointing to the engine.
Asked how she knew that, Stehr laughed and said as a youngster growing up her father taught all his children how to keep older cars running.
“We learned the simple things,” she said, “how to change the oil, replace the plugs, do tune ups, change a tire, keep it on the road. I used to work on my Plymouth Volare and a VW Bug. I couldn’t do any of that stuff on the new cars now.”
One of the most unique vehicles in the show was Gary Rubin’s 1963 Chevrolet, Corvair 95 Rampside truck. He entered the show with other members of the Corvair Club of the Capital District.
Rubin said he’s had the truck for three years after finding it in Minnesota. The car company made just 2,046 of them in 1963 he said.
“These were really designed to be delivery trucks,” he said. “It was competition for the Ford van. This was one was used as an appliance truck. When I got it there were no brakes so watching it come off the trailer was something else.”
Rubin said since the vehicle was really built to be a local delivery truck its aerodynamics are not the best.
“It doesn’t go real fast up the Northway, it only has 85 horsepower, so you have to think before you go up a hill,” he said, “but it has some nice features.”
He pointed to the record player and a stack of 45s in the cab. “It floats,” he said. Rubin said he received photographs of the car before purchasing it from the previous owner in Minnesota and had few fears of what he was being told of the truck’s condition.
“When you’re dealing with Corvair people, they’re very honest people,” he said.