Sunday, Sept. 26, 2026

I took the 55 wagon to Springfield Friday afternoon, picked up my wife at her work, then drove to the OilPros car cruise. They had a really nice event. The crowd was small, but according to the business owner, this was the best turnout they had had all summer.

The cruise was nice, as I said. They had a food truck that had excellent food; a bouncy house that the kids in attendance really, REALLY enjoyed. My wife ran into some people from her work she knew and everyone was friendly. It was great to see the kids have a place to play and new people to talk cars with.

It was really good to attend an event with the type of things that I’ve been advocating for — a food truck and something for the kids. Oh, and live music, from 5:30 to 8 p.m. My daughter joined us in the 1995 Suzuki; its equipped with a historic vehicle plate, so despite the fact it wasn’t very clean, she parked it next to my wagon for “display,” LOL.

Tomorrow is our monthly Whiskey City Cruisers event. I haven’t promoed it, but probably should. My son is coming to take photos.

TAILGATE DONE, CARGO FLOOR NEXT. While I’m not super happy with the tailgate, I’ve decided to let it be for now. I cut the 1/2 inch plywood for the cargo area and while its isn’t secured, its coming together. I have to secure the plywood with screws.

I used the 12-inch tiles with 16 black-and-white squares per tile, and those seem to be a good scale for the tail gate and I think it’ll be fine for the cargo flooring too.

The factor used something like six screws to secure the flooring between the rear seat and the spare tire cover — each properly positioned so none of the screws hit the fuel tank that lies beneath the cargo floor. This week I’m going to remove the plywood and see if I can locate the original screw locations. Once I have that done, I’ll secure the plywood.

The factory had trimmed most of the plywood with 1/2-inch chrome angle trim to dress up the edges. They used to reproduce that trim, but it was discontinued; besides, at $1,700 a set it wasn’t exactly cheap.

I’m going to see if I can locate some trim that can serve the same purpose. There’s going to be something on the order of 1/2-inch gap (or more) on both sides of the cargo flooring; the factory had a wide molding that installed to cover the gap. I don’t know that I’ll be able to locate something appropriate, so I may just wind up filling that gap with black silicone caulk.

The spare tire cover is cut to size, and should work ok. There are two side pieces of plywood that fill the gap on both sides of the cover; for these to fit propertly, I will need to cut and notch the ends that meet with the tailgate area.

SCREWS VS. GLUE? I’ve worried that a wayward screw securing the flooring could wind up puncturing the fuel tank. I’ve considered two alternative ways to secure the flooring — the first way would be to set it in place with good quality construction cement. This method — if it would hold the flooring adequately — would avoid the screw problem entirely.

The second attachment method would be use epoxy magnets on the bottom side of the plywood. The magnets would be fine and strong enough to secure the plywood. The caulking on the edges would help hold it in place as well.

The black-and-white tile has peel-and-stick backing, but I plan to apply vinyl cement to the flooring everywhere.

REAR SEAT WORK. The fold-down rear seat will need some substantial work. The seat back and bottom are already 1/2-inch plywood, though those surfaces still have the original vinyl on them. I’ll need to strip that original vinyl and prep those surfaces for the black-and-white tile.

The rear seat is missing some of the metal trim; I’m going to find something to replace the missing original trim, especially around the spare tire cover. Wish me luck!

CHINESE CARB UPDATE. I need to do a video update regarding the Chinese Edelbrock carb I’ve been using since last summer. So far, so good — though I haven’t put a tremendous amount of mileage on the car this season. But so far the car runs reasonably well. There are times I get a little hiccup, and I’m not sure if that’s carb related or iginition related.

I do have my original Edelbrock carb available …. I bought a rebuild kit for it last year but haven’t touched it. Despite the reports of problems with the Chinese manufactured carbs, I still cannot complain about mine. Hiccups aside, it still runs 10 times better than that original carb EVER did.

And frankly, my next move may be to try another Chinese clone carb — this time, I’ll go with the Chinese version of the AVS2 carb.

MY FIRST 55 CHEVY VIDEO PROJECT. A video I’m planning now is to do a history of my first 55 Chevy — and the amazing parallels between my first seeing the car and the way Arnie met Christine in the movie based on the Stephen King novel, “Christine.”

I paid $1,600 for that car, and probably put about six times that much into the car before I called it “done” (for the time being).

TOMORROW’S CRUISE. The weather will be near perfect, so I expect a nice crowd.