The Joy of Owning an Original 100: A Conversation with a Car Enthusiast

As I sat down to talk to John, the owner of a beautiful vintage Lincoln, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and nostalgia. With hundreds of photos adorning his walls, John's passion for cars is evident in every detail. "Factory photos are your best bet," he told me, "you can be Lincoln and drive this thing." And with that, our conversation began.

For John, owning a car like this is not just about possession; it's about responsibility. He explained that he didn't really own the car, but rather had paid a sum of money to take care of it until someone else could inherit it. His job was simple: to keep the car in good condition and enjoy driving it on the weekends. "It's wonderful for a weekend drive," he said, beaming with enthusiasm.

As we talked about John's experience with the car, I couldn't help but notice his attention to detail. He had spent hours researching and learning about how to properly maintain the vehicle, from lubricating the valve to ensuring that the fuel system was clean. "Ethanol has ruined modern gas," he said, "it's like a punch in the face for these old engines." John's dedication to preserving this piece of history is inspiring, and his knowledge is invaluable.

John also spoke about the challenges of owning an original 100, from finding replacement parts to dealing with quirks and issues that modern technical manuals can't explain. "You can't just Google something and expect to find a solution," he said. "These cars have their own language, their own way of doing things." That's why John was thrilled to discover that there are still people out there who specialize in restoring and maintaining vintage cars like his.

One of the most interesting aspects of John's story is the connection he made with the previous owner, Dick. According to John, Dick had passed away, leaving behind a car that had been lovingly maintained over the years. Nick, Dick's brother, was responsible for selling the car, and John was able to negotiate a handshake deal. "It wasn't just about buying the car," John explained; "it was about preserving history." The only thing that came with the car was a giant wrench, which is still attached to it today.

As we talked, I couldn't help but notice the attention to detail in John's approach to owning this car. From cleaning the plugs to lubricating the transmission, every aspect of his maintenance routine is thoughtfully considered. "You can do a lot with a little," he said, smiling wryly. And that's exactly what John has done – taken a beautiful vintage car and made it shine.

John also spoke about the importance of connecting with other car enthusiasts. He invited me to bring my own project car to Straight Eight in Michigan, where they specialize in laser-scanning and CNC machining. "You can learn so much from others," he said. "It's like having a community of experts who understand what you're going through." For John, owning this car is not just about individuality; it's about being part of something bigger than himself.

As our conversation came to a close, I couldn't help but feel grateful for the opportunity to talk with John about his passion project. Whether you're an experienced car enthusiast or just starting out, there's always something to be learned from others. And for John, owning this beautiful vintage Lincoln is not just about enjoying the ride – it's about preserving history and sharing that knowledge with others.

In the end, it was clear that John's approach to owning a classic car like this is one of respect, responsibility, and community. Whether you're driving on the weekends or simply admiring its beauty from afar, there's no denying the allure of an original 100. And for those who are willing to put in the time and effort, it's an experience that will leave a lasting impression – like a mark on your heart that can never be erased.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwell back in the day i think you could do 65 70. not something you want to do all day i mean the speed limit was about 45 miles an hour and that's a nice cruising speed i mean it drives nicely welcome to the episode of jl's garage today my favorite kind of vehicle original and unrestored and this is unrestored you don't find them like this anymore this is the way you would find something maybe in the late 50s or early 60s been sitting for 30 years but not sitting close to 100 years 90 years this is a 1931 auburn 898a eight cylinder car you know auburn was set up el cord wanted to start a corporation like like general knows cadillac at the top and then cord and then auburn at the bottom uh this would have been the equivalent of perhaps like a chevrolet might have been in general motors but a lot of car for the money a lot of value let's meet the gentleman who rescued this and found it i saw it and contacted him and me at rex johnson rex come on in buddy how are you good thanks for having me now you live in the minneapolis area correct okay and you found it in minneapolis right in st paul yeah okay cool okay so how did you hear about what was the story was the guy a collector what was the deal he was a hot rodder uh his name was dick bredemus and he owned a small business in saint paul and he bought this car uh in 1978 and it just sat in the corner of a steel shed behind a commercial building where he and his friends would hang out and build hot rods and and unfortunately dick passed away i never got to meet him and uh i bought it from his his brother nick who inherited it and and all his other cars he had a bunch of hot rods was it outside or inside it was inside it was well stored you know he was a car guy so it was properly on jack stands underneath oh okay underneath the suspension not under the frame so you know it's easy on the bushings right yeah they did it right well it looks great how many miles on the vehicle any idea it says i believe about 38 000 on the odometer i would probably put that at 138 yeah well i don't know you know i mean 38 was a lot back in the day you know especially if you're just driving you know the speed limit was 45 miles an hour so that that might might be might be true because of 78 it was just wow that's about 30 something years old maybe a little more yeah that's pretty amazing uh nice shape i mean just some paint flaking a little bit but not bad this is the original color and the original paint that's what makes it cool this is the original color combination isn't it there's some dispute about that when we go around the car i'll show you some of the spots okay so you think this might not be an original paint job i really believe and and actually i spoke with randy emma about it when i when he saw the car right he said it's likely uh it's likely one repaint but obviously many years ago yeah yeah randy ema for those who don't know randy is the premier auburn corps duesenberg especially duesenberg specialist he's a man who did all of mine and he has all the records on these so he must have been thrilled when you got it i took it to the auburn court duesenberg annual reunion in auburn uh back in september of 2021 and it was it was really cool because i've always seen you with your acd cars and and seen randy you know many times on on various shows and various videos and it was it was just serendipitous that i finally owned an auburn and i pulled up to the museum on registration day and there he was and he turned around and he saw this car and he saw it was original unrestored and he just he came over to it like a fly to a bug light well that's what's funny i thought you got to say a fly to something else so that's good bug light is better yeah bug light well you know that's the cool thing every duesenberg is accounted for but not every auburn but every single duesenberg you know i heard people go hey my uncle's got to do the work no one knows but no your uncle doesn't have it and what number is it and i'll tell you who does that i think they built 41 and 378 remain okay and he has the number but with auburn's these still pop up like this one he was not aware of it was he correct correct it was just hidden there all of all that dick's friends knew about it and yeah and coincidentally the first time i ever took it out i got it running and and my wife and i went to a local uh antique car show you know pre-15 cars and uh and when i was there there were a number of gentlemen who had showed up with other kinds of vehicles 10 or 12 and i said let's go home let's get the auburn so we bring it back and and an older gentleman comes up to me and and he says he looks at the car and he looks at me and he he knew that dick could pass away he says is that dick's car and i said yeah and he said wow because he had never seen it on the road yeah well it's pretty good let's open the hood can we open the hood on this side let's see what we got here straight eight flathead of course i see the air was much cleaner back in 1930 and what is this is this uh hot air for the carburetor that's the part of the crankcase ventilation so it would draw air through the crankcase the oil cap on the other side isn't a cap that seals it allows air in just to better clear that the blow-by from the pistons out of the engine and this is your choke but it's not hooked up obviously correct the studs were a little short for the bracket you can see how i'm kind of short on those that was after carburetor rebuild but i put it together so quick it seems like that would be that would certainly aid you when starting it wouldn't it it sure was yeah yeah yeah it looks like a newer fuel pump on there yeah and that was on it when i bought it and and uh first on that on the carburetor big shout out to uh to pat and dan ott ott yeah they run the carburetor shop in forest lake minnesota and this car would not be on the road if it wasn't for them they had 17 hours into that carburetor rebuild it they had to soak it in in chemical baths for about two weeks just to get it taken off so that's the original one that's the original carburetor okay and they hand made all the rubber seals and and newton's needles clean your glass there a little bit is that me or is it that a lot of silt in there oh no i actually had that out i had that out i completely cleaned it oh okay just colored a little bit yeah and you couldn't really get an air cleaner on there could you look at that it's right up against the steering box i've heard of other cars that have air cleaner setups or at least don't have that suction tube for the breather system because the problem is if you have enough gasoline vapor in there and i talked to a gentleman in the acd club he's got another straight aid auburn and he had a situation where he had a backfire and there was enough gas vapor in his in his crank case that it that it blew his oil cap out and blew his drain plug out and wow stuff okay yeah these are great engines are those like combings yeah yeah okay those were built in pennsylvania as well uh yeah all auburn was was originally eckerd remember eckart brothers i think they were uh they built cars and then they sold out to a consortium from chicago that became auburn and then el cord bought the auburns he was brought in to take charge of the company i remember dupont had just come out with all the wild colors model ts were black cars are gray or dark dark matted green he came out with these wild oranges and yellows and it really made what was an ordinary car exciting looking to people you know uh yeah i've got an auburn mine is 12 which is a a really fast car for its period it was 995 dollars which was a heck of a bargain back in the day i mean these did not have the build quality of the duesenberg or the packard but they certainly looked the part you know i mean they were reasonably priced you got a lot of car from the money because these were fast they had does this have a two-speed rear end it does not so this would be a little early this is 31. but it has the freewheeling right so you can okay correct yeah well it's great looking it's really neat and let's show the inside here and this is just the paint flaking here and i guess that's the original upholstery huh it is it's original upholstery and then randy believes that the rear seat was reupholstered at some point right the fabric is identical but the buttons aren't pulled down it's not tucked in okay like it would have been at the factory and but you got real wood here because actually that's where you had real wood because there was no fake wood and it was yeah real wood was cheaper than fake wood you know but to see the running boards and everything not rotted out that's pretty amazing you can step you can put all your weight on it you can just stand right on it and you got actual floor boards which are boards yeah which is kind of cool let's show the nice solid shot isn't it it is it's very the doors aren't sagging this is great and the fact that the driver's door doesn't sag that's one of the things that leads me maybe to believe it is only 38 000 original i would say i would i would not doubt the mileage especially being in a frigid environment like minnesota oh my god you know yeah i mean everything's a nice solid clunk it's so nice the guy did not get a chance to turn it into a hot rod oh it would have been chopped and all that and this is a so you got a wood roof with the fabric stretched over it yeah yep four-wheel drum brakes and they're hydraulic correct no it's all cable brake mechanic okay i guess that's right 31 that would be right yeah yeah i think yours is yours is hydraulic mine is hydraulic yeah yeah henry ford was the one to hang onto cable brakes the longest he used to say uh the safety of steel from pedal to wheel that was his name he didn't like hydraulic and you can see why people like a little tube with fluid in it i'd rather have a big strong cable you know that's you can see why they did that spare on the back and they didn't make a model that had the dual spares isn't that correct that's correct and this was from back in the day when you could do options all at cart now everybody is just accustomed to you get package a b or c when you buy a car but back then you could get dual horns dual side spares trunk racks single wheel on the back right you know whatever whatever different combination you want single stop light in the rear dual stop lights you could you could just pick and choose and and this is not a well optioned car you know as far as auburns go this is far from this is actually not even far from the most rare this is this would be the most common yeah four-door not a convertible not not a uh being the most common now makes it rare because nobody saved them you know they were sort of everybody wanted the two-seater open car you know like i've got an eight-liter bentley over there mullin or sedan then the 80s they all got chopped up into le mans replicas now people oh they want to find a mulliner it's worth some money you know and what is about 85 horsepower uh 98 because that was the 898. oh cool so yeah eight cylinder 98 horsepower just like your 12 160 yeah 12 cylinders 160 horse yeah yeah comprehensive dashboard very nice and the windshield opens up it does any thought of how do you stop that corrosion on there maybe some uh clear coat i'm open to ideas yeah clear coat will do it yeah that'll do it do you think you'll restore it no no it's uh restored cars they're beautiful they're wonderful but if this was restored i think when i went to the acd festival this was interesting and there were beautiful 898s yeah and 898as there and they're beautifully restored i talked to a couple of the owners of them and they'd spent 10 years painstakingly restoring them and they're beautiful cars but they're not they're not interesting and yeah yeah you know i could spend x restoring this and when i would get done it'd be worth half of x yeah yeah i mean you're only original once you even have the original radiator don't you look at that that honeycomb it's amazing that wasn't rotted out was it all all the fluids drained it was drained it was all properly stored they didn't take the fuel out of the tank so i had to flush that pretty heavily but the tank's okay you have to replace it nope wow so it really is all original very nice see let's close the hood let me shut this and we'll come around take a look and so the grill is just laser straight there's not a single dent in this yeah it's really amazing and it's missing some pieces here's where a hand crank would have been there should be an emblem there um oh that's where the emblem goes there and the hand crank wasn't so much to start it but to time it through but you could start it if you were like george reeves or superman or something yeah yeah i like the two-tone see that's a that's another thing you know the other side of this the other side of this hood panel is a different color so i don't know if was it damaged at some point but this is laser straight so yeah where did that come from why'd that happen i don't know yeah well you never quite know but it's okay looks like original plate from 31. i got that at an auction in st paul wow that was great do you know if it was so new in saint paul i have no idea prior history prior to 1978 is that the gentleman bought it from another gentleman who worked at the snap-on tool plant in wisconsin and what do we got here that's its original world war ii gas ration sticker still in the window yeah that's pretty neat it looks like someone tried to peel it off on the inside at one point but on the bottom of the inside of the sticker facing the passenger it says is this trip really necessary oh that's fine because remember if you're just driving around wasting gas you're hurting the boys in europe yeah that probably is a repaint i don't know if sure the original paint would flake just quite like that that's the theory and then also there's just a little bit of scuff in the metal and so because of that scuff you know at the factory they would have stamped it right and it'd be done right but then because there's a little bit of scuff it means somebody probably worked that metal at some point right and repainted it and when i when i first got this car running i called up a lifelong friend of mine scott i've known him since i was born and uh our fathers were best friends and i said scott i got the car run and i'm gonna bring it over so i drive over to scott's house he and his wife bridget come out his wife bridget comes up to it and she goes when are you gonna paint it and she took this big piece of paint and just broke it right off and that's why you see so much metal there yeah yeah it's just uh yeah you know you should go into her shoe closet hey look at the heel on this thing yeah and i guess that's original glass too to the best of my knowledge it wouldn't be is that safety glass probably not thirty thirty one i don't know when the safety glass came well it just looks great i mean it's nice and straight and it gives you an idea of exactly how it was built and how it was done but i had a lot of high priced features you know they are it's so funny they always talk about the low price field the mid price field and the high price field you know nobody talks like that anymore but like i said the wood the wood is beautiful the kind of art decoy door handles i imagine you'd be able to find an original handle piece here you're missing both those huh all four of the window cranks are missing the small knobs the one for the windshield fell off i have that okay but it shuts nice and solid very nice yeah it's like a bank vault oh yeah yeah and i love this rear window here does that rear one go down no i don't think so no it doesn't it does have the cowl vent too from the from the front cowl so you can run the lever underneath and get some air on your feet yeah yeah very nice i call it 740 air conditioning yeah yeah seven windows 40 miles an hour that's what you got let's take a look at the rear of the vehicle yeah it's a good sized car from the back i love you got the original plates that's really neat there was a box of six full six boxes of plates at an auction there were a few guys looking to bid on them and uh the auctioneer was coming around and i had sifted through i saw those and i said all i want are these anybody who buys this box i'll whatever you want i'll pay you and uh one guy bought all six boxes he just gave them to me oh that was nice yeah that was very nice that's great that spare tire is not gonna do anybody any good is it i said says stop right on the little light there very nicely done can we fire it up take it for a ride absolutely let's give it a shot start it up wow look at that yeah again thanks to thanks to the carburetor shop thanks to the carburetor shop it pulls away nicely you know these always had more power than the a lot of other cars in the period i mean you could drive this around la today nope this car probably what do you figure to do i've never maxed it out i've just treated this engine like a almost like it's made of glass well back in the day i think you could do 65 70. not something you want to do all day i mean the speed limit was about 45 miles an hour and that's a nice cruising speed i mean it drives nicely it's amazing how clean the windshield is i mean free of any sort of nicks or chips yeah it is definitely one beautiful piece of this car i almost wonder if it was broken and replaced i don't know now it's got that stick that stickers got to be oh yeah because it's 60 years old that's true so back too is it 138 or 38 that's a sign of 38 yeah just it rides so nice it's it's all original it's all there but it it goes down the road good it doesn't pull right brakes have a little right pull but i'm gonna get the wheels off it and i found a found some people that can do relining of the shoes and the guy that's gonna do the shoes he told me he said machine the drums and tell me which wheel they're going on before you bring them so i can match the temperature of the shoe yeah it's called arcing them yeah you know another good thing to do is get it up on a lift and get some oil and a paint brush and just paint those leaf springs let the oil soak in there you can get a screwdriver in between it you know spray penetrate in there just so it moves around and if you see the stuff coming out that's a good sign you know you want to then they're not eating themselves as you drive right right people need to put gators on them you know what those are oh your leather covers yeah yeah your sedan has that right right yeah yeah that's the same year as this 31 no and that's an honest 100 mile an hour car we've hit 100 in that car wow well off the speedometers might be 92 or something but i mean a hundred and that you know you're moving yeah 50 in this you know where you're moving i don't think i've ever had it to 50. i mean right now we're probably going 30 35. well you probably added a 50 would be fun to get the speedometer fixed you ever unscrew the back while you're driving to see if the cable is moving no i have because it might just be a broken cable and nothing wrong with your speedometer and i think that's high that's highly likely i think you know that cable sat for so long got some rust in there yeah because it broke the first time i drove it yeah i remember looking at the needle and thinking wow the speedometer works and then the needle just crashed to zero while i was still driving steering box feels very good old car it's a really good old car yeah it's a great old car my constant joke about this is that no one joined the auburn court duesenberg club for less money than i did yeah with soul exceptions being like you shared off camera we were chatting that uh of a guy buying a car for 25 bucks back in the 60s and you still have yeah yeah in nine years this will be a 100 year old car i know you have to get i have to host a birthday party for this thing that shifts very nicely sometimes when i come down to second gear from the third it'll pop out if i get on it a little bit but it's a great san diego ice cream car yeah these tires are pretty old you might want to replace those because you know you hit the brakes one day entire burst so you slide and then you then you chew up your wheel too you know yeah it would be nice too just to have nice bright white walls i think these have white walls in 31 i don't think so i think that's a later thing maybe i'm not sure on that not sure i've never seen any other cars in period with white walls that seems to be sort of a 1950s kind of affectation i don't know have you ever seen pictures of one with in the books or anything gosh i've seen so many pictures but i guess i've never noticed yeah yeah or never looked for the authentic true period correct restoration yeah i've seen hundreds and hundreds of photos in these cars but yeah factory photos are your best bet oh yeah you can be lincoln and drive this thing look at this all kinds of lay head it's wonderful for a weekend drive don't take it too far treat it nice and yeah yeah you know i just all i did for this was i i paid a sum of money to buy it but i don't really own it it's i paid that sum of money so that i get the honor of being this car's caretaker then my job is just to take care of it and then someday i'm dead and gone and somebody else will take it over you know they used to sell a thing called a cylinder lubricator for these old cars it would shoot a dollop of oil into the gas or to lubricate the valve and these valves do need to be lubricated because modern gas is so dry with the ethanol it's really the worst thing you can possibly do you know in california can you get can you buy non-oxygen now in minnesota we can buy ethanol free oh yeah well if you can put that in do that cool but you do want to put a little lubricant in the fuel i do need to get the uh the chassis lubricator working i forcibly lubricated it by disconnecting it and uh but it's full of atf and you know with the with the vacuum actuated pump on it and it doesn't work because if it did i'd see moving into the kingpins right so i've got to get uh i got to get a pump for that but i spoke with uh forget his name forgive me a gentleman that owns uh straight eight in uh michigan okay and he has those uh laser scanned and uh cnc and he remakes it that's great yeah so now we can now i can get a replacement just drop down a little bit yeah 189 that's just about the right temperature i was so worried about it when i first started it up i had an infrared heat gun and i was just i was looking at everything and looking for hot and cold spots on the radiator just trying to make sure that everything was good before i really took it for any kind of mileage probably only driven the car 60 70 miles it's wonderful to be able to preserve these cars oh yeah it's a great thing you know and one one really fun part about this is there's so many people who had seen this car for so many years in uh in dick's garage yeah all his friends coming over building hot rods he was a by all accounts just a great guy how old a guy was he when he died maybe late 60s he never met him no i never met him just met his brother nick nick is very gracious you know one of those guys that you can you can do a handshake deal with you know we did a handshake and he wasn't appointed to you know have legal authority to sell the car yet but he could just tell your handshake and hand them yeah yeah transmission is very i believe this is 38 000 miles lisa well transmission is so nice i'm not crunching gears here you know i wish i had a copy of the of the title from when from when dick bought it but they didn't have anything the only thing he had the only thing that nick had on the car the brother he had the title and he had a little manila envelope with a carburetor gasket in it and that was it that's fine luckily it did come with the giant wrench that it takes to take off the to take off the center lug for the wheel so i got that and there's no uh this might have had no titles when these were sold you do that way better than i do i i've hit a i've hit a grind on that a few times just pause let the reds go all the way down also i would clean those plugs you get a bit of a hesitation like it's loading up like you're not running it enough rpm i appreciate all the advice it's all these like i said i got all this new car knowledge but uh you know old cars they got they got quirks they've got they've got issues they've got little things that you need to know that you can't just do a google search for and see in a technical manual hey i want to thank johnson for bringing this to us this is kind of like a street grab one of those cars you hear about you see it on the street i invited him to bring it here and he brought it all the way here so thank you thanks for preserving this piece of history it's nice to see a nice 100 original i mean anybody wanted to restore these could look at yours and see exactly how it went together what color the wires were you know so many little things that people changed over the years so thank you my friends huhwell back in the day i think you could do 65 70. not something you want to do all day i mean the speed limit was about 45 miles an hour and that's a nice cruising speed i mean it drives nicely welcome to the episode of jl's garage today my favorite kind of vehicle original and unrestored and this is unrestored you don't find them like this anymore this is the way you would find something maybe in the late 50s or early 60s been sitting for 30 years but not sitting close to 100 years 90 years this is a 1931 auburn 898a eight cylinder car you know auburn was set up el cord wanted to start a corporation like like general knows cadillac at the top and then cord and then auburn at the bottom uh this would have been the equivalent of perhaps like a chevrolet might have been in general motors but a lot of car for the money a lot of value let's meet the gentleman who rescued this and found it i saw it and contacted him and me at rex johnson rex come on in buddy how are you good thanks for having me now you live in the minneapolis area correct okay and you found it in minneapolis right in st paul yeah okay cool okay so how did you hear about what was the story was the guy a collector what was the deal he was a hot rodder uh his name was dick bredemus and he owned a small business in saint paul and he bought this car uh in 1978 and it just sat in the corner of a steel shed behind a commercial building where he and his friends would hang out and build hot rods and and unfortunately dick passed away i never got to meet him and uh i bought it from his his brother nick who inherited it and and all his other cars he had a bunch of hot rods was it outside or inside it was inside it was well stored you know he was a car guy so it was properly on jack stands underneath oh okay underneath the suspension not under the frame so you know it's easy on the bushings right yeah they did it right well it looks great how many miles on the vehicle any idea it says i believe about 38 000 on the odometer i would probably put that at 138 yeah well i don't know you know i mean 38 was a lot back in the day you know especially if you're just driving you know the speed limit was 45 miles an hour so that that might might be might be true because of 78 it was just wow that's about 30 something years old maybe a little more yeah that's pretty amazing uh nice shape i mean just some paint flaking a little bit but not bad this is the original color and the original paint that's what makes it cool this is the original color combination isn't it there's some dispute about that when we go around the car i'll show you some of the spots okay so you think this might not be an original paint job i really believe and and actually i spoke with randy emma about it when i when he saw the car right he said it's likely uh it's likely one repaint but obviously many years ago yeah yeah randy ema for those who don't know randy is the premier auburn corps duesenberg especially duesenberg specialist he's a man who did all of mine and he has all the records on these so he must have been thrilled when you got it i took it to the auburn court duesenberg annual reunion in auburn uh back in september of 2021 and it was it was really cool because i've always seen you with your acd cars and and seen randy you know many times on on various shows and various videos and it was it was just serendipitous that i finally owned an auburn and i pulled up to the museum on registration day and there he was and he turned around and he saw this car and he saw it was original unrestored and he just he came over to it like a fly to a bug light well that's what's funny i thought you got to say a fly to something else so that's good bug light is better yeah bug light well you know that's the cool thing every duesenberg is accounted for but not every auburn but every single duesenberg you know i heard people go hey my uncle's got to do the work no one knows but no your uncle doesn't have it and what number is it and i'll tell you who does that i think they built 41 and 378 remain okay and he has the number but with auburn's these still pop up like this one he was not aware of it was he correct correct it was just hidden there all of all that dick's friends knew about it and yeah and coincidentally the first time i ever took it out i got it running and and my wife and i went to a local uh antique car show you know pre-15 cars and uh and when i was there there were a number of gentlemen who had showed up with other kinds of vehicles 10 or 12 and i said let's go home let's get the auburn so we bring it back and and an older gentleman comes up to me and and he says he looks at the car and he looks at me and he he knew that dick could pass away he says is that dick's car and i said yeah and he said wow because he had never seen it on the road yeah well it's pretty good let's open the hood can we open the hood on this side let's see what we got here straight eight flathead of course i see the air was much cleaner back in 1930 and what is this is this uh hot air for the carburetor that's the part of the crankcase ventilation so it would draw air through the crankcase the oil cap on the other side isn't a cap that seals it allows air in just to better clear that the blow-by from the pistons out of the engine and this is your choke but it's not hooked up obviously correct the studs were a little short for the bracket you can see how i'm kind of short on those that was after carburetor rebuild but i put it together so quick it seems like that would be that would certainly aid you when starting it wouldn't it it sure was yeah yeah yeah it looks like a newer fuel pump on there yeah and that was on it when i bought it and and uh first on that on the carburetor big shout out to uh to pat and dan ott ott yeah they run the carburetor shop in forest lake minnesota and this car would not be on the road if it wasn't for them they had 17 hours into that carburetor rebuild it they had to soak it in in chemical baths for about two weeks just to get it taken off so that's the original one that's the original carburetor okay and they hand made all the rubber seals and and newton's needles clean your glass there a little bit is that me or is it that a lot of silt in there oh no i actually had that out i had that out i completely cleaned it oh okay just colored a little bit yeah and you couldn't really get an air cleaner on there could you look at that it's right up against the steering box i've heard of other cars that have air cleaner setups or at least don't have that suction tube for the breather system because the problem is if you have enough gasoline vapor in there and i talked to a gentleman in the acd club he's got another straight aid auburn and he had a situation where he had a backfire and there was enough gas vapor in his in his crank case that it that it blew his oil cap out and blew his drain plug out and wow stuff okay yeah these are great engines are those like combings yeah yeah okay those were built in pennsylvania as well uh yeah all auburn was was originally eckerd remember eckart brothers i think they were uh they built cars and then they sold out to a consortium from chicago that became auburn and then el cord bought the auburns he was brought in to take charge of the company i remember dupont had just come out with all the wild colors model ts were black cars are gray or dark dark matted green he came out with these wild oranges and yellows and it really made what was an ordinary car exciting looking to people you know uh yeah i've got an auburn mine is 12 which is a a really fast car for its period it was 995 dollars which was a heck of a bargain back in the day i mean these did not have the build quality of the duesenberg or the packard but they certainly looked the part you know i mean they were reasonably priced you got a lot of car from the money because these were fast they had does this have a two-speed rear end it does not so this would be a little early this is 31. but it has the freewheeling right so you can okay correct yeah well it's great looking it's really neat and let's show the inside here and this is just the paint flaking here and i guess that's the original upholstery huh it is it's original upholstery and then randy believes that the rear seat was reupholstered at some point right the fabric is identical but the buttons aren't pulled down it's not tucked in okay like it would have been at the factory and but you got real wood here because actually that's where you had real wood because there was no fake wood and it was yeah real wood was cheaper than fake wood you know but to see the running boards and everything not rotted out that's pretty amazing you can step you can put all your weight on it you can just stand right on it and you got actual floor boards which are boards yeah which is kind of cool let's show the nice solid shot isn't it it is it's very the doors aren't sagging this is great and the fact that the driver's door doesn't sag that's one of the things that leads me maybe to believe it is only 38 000 original i would say i would i would not doubt the mileage especially being in a frigid environment like minnesota oh my god you know yeah i mean everything's a nice solid clunk it's so nice the guy did not get a chance to turn it into a hot rod oh it would have been chopped and all that and this is a so you got a wood roof with the fabric stretched over it yeah yep four-wheel drum brakes and they're hydraulic correct no it's all cable brake mechanic okay i guess that's right 31 that would be right yeah yeah i think yours is yours is hydraulic mine is hydraulic yeah yeah henry ford was the one to hang onto cable brakes the longest he used to say uh the safety of steel from pedal to wheel that was his name he didn't like hydraulic and you can see why people like a little tube with fluid in it i'd rather have a big strong cable you know that's you can see why they did that spare on the back and they didn't make a model that had the dual spares isn't that correct that's correct and this was from back in the day when you could do options all at cart now everybody is just accustomed to you get package a b or c when you buy a car but back then you could get dual horns dual side spares trunk racks single wheel on the back right you know whatever whatever different combination you want single stop light in the rear dual stop lights you could you could just pick and choose and and this is not a well optioned car you know as far as auburns go this is far from this is actually not even far from the most rare this is this would be the most common yeah four-door not a convertible not not a uh being the most common now makes it rare because nobody saved them you know they were sort of everybody wanted the two-seater open car you know like i've got an eight-liter bentley over there mullin or sedan then the 80s they all got chopped up into le mans replicas now people oh they want to find a mulliner it's worth some money you know and what is about 85 horsepower uh 98 because that was the 898. oh cool so yeah eight cylinder 98 horsepower just like your 12 160 yeah 12 cylinders 160 horse yeah yeah comprehensive dashboard very nice and the windshield opens up it does any thought of how do you stop that corrosion on there maybe some uh clear coat i'm open to ideas yeah clear coat will do it yeah that'll do it do you think you'll restore it no no it's uh restored cars they're beautiful they're wonderful but if this was restored i think when i went to the acd festival this was interesting and there were beautiful 898s yeah and 898as there and they're beautifully restored i talked to a couple of the owners of them and they'd spent 10 years painstakingly restoring them and they're beautiful cars but they're not they're not interesting and yeah yeah you know i could spend x restoring this and when i would get done it'd be worth half of x yeah yeah i mean you're only original once you even have the original radiator don't you look at that that honeycomb it's amazing that wasn't rotted out was it all all the fluids drained it was drained it was all properly stored they didn't take the fuel out of the tank so i had to flush that pretty heavily but the tank's okay you have to replace it nope wow so it really is all original very nice see let's close the hood let me shut this and we'll come around take a look and so the grill is just laser straight there's not a single dent in this yeah it's really amazing and it's missing some pieces here's where a hand crank would have been there should be an emblem there um oh that's where the emblem goes there and the hand crank wasn't so much to start it but to time it through but you could start it if you were like george reeves or superman or something yeah yeah i like the two-tone see that's a that's another thing you know the other side of this the other side of this hood panel is a different color so i don't know if was it damaged at some point but this is laser straight so yeah where did that come from why'd that happen i don't know yeah well you never quite know but it's okay looks like original plate from 31. i got that at an auction in st paul wow that was great do you know if it was so new in saint paul i have no idea prior history prior to 1978 is that the gentleman bought it from another gentleman who worked at the snap-on tool plant in wisconsin and what do we got here that's its original world war ii gas ration sticker still in the window yeah that's pretty neat it looks like someone tried to peel it off on the inside at one point but on the bottom of the inside of the sticker facing the passenger it says is this trip really necessary oh that's fine because remember if you're just driving around wasting gas you're hurting the boys in europe yeah that probably is a repaint i don't know if sure the original paint would flake just quite like that that's the theory and then also there's just a little bit of scuff in the metal and so because of that scuff you know at the factory they would have stamped it right and it'd be done right but then because there's a little bit of scuff it means somebody probably worked that metal at some point right and repainted it and when i when i first got this car running i called up a lifelong friend of mine scott i've known him since i was born and uh our fathers were best friends and i said scott i got the car run and i'm gonna bring it over so i drive over to scott's house he and his wife bridget come out his wife bridget comes up to it and she goes when are you gonna paint it and she took this big piece of paint and just broke it right off and that's why you see so much metal there yeah yeah it's just uh yeah you know you should go into her shoe closet hey look at the heel on this thing yeah and i guess that's original glass too to the best of my knowledge it wouldn't be is that safety glass probably not thirty thirty one i don't know when the safety glass came well it just looks great i mean it's nice and straight and it gives you an idea of exactly how it was built and how it was done but i had a lot of high priced features you know they are it's so funny they always talk about the low price field the mid price field and the high price field you know nobody talks like that anymore but like i said the wood the wood is beautiful the kind of art decoy door handles i imagine you'd be able to find an original handle piece here you're missing both those huh all four of the window cranks are missing the small knobs the one for the windshield fell off i have that okay but it shuts nice and solid very nice yeah it's like a bank vault oh yeah yeah and i love this rear window here does that rear one go down no i don't think so no it doesn't it does have the cowl vent too from the from the front cowl so you can run the lever underneath and get some air on your feet yeah yeah very nice i call it 740 air conditioning yeah yeah seven windows 40 miles an hour that's what you got let's take a look at the rear of the vehicle yeah it's a good sized car from the back i love you got the original plates that's really neat there was a box of six full six boxes of plates at an auction there were a few guys looking to bid on them and uh the auctioneer was coming around and i had sifted through i saw those and i said all i want are these anybody who buys this box i'll whatever you want i'll pay you and uh one guy bought all six boxes he just gave them to me oh that was nice yeah that was very nice that's great that spare tire is not gonna do anybody any good is it i said says stop right on the little light there very nicely done can we fire it up take it for a ride absolutely let's give it a shot start it up wow look at that yeah again thanks to thanks to the carburetor shop thanks to the carburetor shop it pulls away nicely you know these always had more power than the a lot of other cars in the period i mean you could drive this around la today nope this car probably what do you figure to do i've never maxed it out i've just treated this engine like a almost like it's made of glass well back in the day i think you could do 65 70. not something you want to do all day i mean the speed limit was about 45 miles an hour and that's a nice cruising speed i mean it drives nicely it's amazing how clean the windshield is i mean free of any sort of nicks or chips yeah it is definitely one beautiful piece of this car i almost wonder if it was broken and replaced i don't know now it's got that stick that stickers got to be oh yeah because it's 60 years old that's true so back too is it 138 or 38 that's a sign of 38 yeah just it rides so nice it's it's all original it's all there but it it goes down the road good it doesn't pull right brakes have a little right pull but i'm gonna get the wheels off it and i found a found some people that can do relining of the shoes and the guy that's gonna do the shoes he told me he said machine the drums and tell me which wheel they're going on before you bring them so i can match the temperature of the shoe yeah it's called arcing them yeah you know another good thing to do is get it up on a lift and get some oil and a paint brush and just paint those leaf springs let the oil soak in there you can get a screwdriver in between it you know spray penetrate in there just so it moves around and if you see the stuff coming out that's a good sign you know you want to then they're not eating themselves as you drive right right people need to put gators on them you know what those are oh your leather covers yeah yeah your sedan has that right right yeah yeah that's the same year as this 31 no and that's an honest 100 mile an hour car we've hit 100 in that car wow well off the speedometers might be 92 or something but i mean a hundred and that you know you're moving yeah 50 in this you know where you're moving i don't think i've ever had it to 50. i mean right now we're probably going 30 35. well you probably added a 50 would be fun to get the speedometer fixed you ever unscrew the back while you're driving to see if the cable is moving no i have because it might just be a broken cable and nothing wrong with your speedometer and i think that's high that's highly likely i think you know that cable sat for so long got some rust in there yeah because it broke the first time i drove it yeah i remember looking at the needle and thinking wow the speedometer works and then the needle just crashed to zero while i was still driving steering box feels very good old car it's a really good old car yeah it's a great old car my constant joke about this is that no one joined the auburn court duesenberg club for less money than i did yeah with soul exceptions being like you shared off camera we were chatting that uh of a guy buying a car for 25 bucks back in the 60s and you still have yeah yeah in nine years this will be a 100 year old car i know you have to get i have to host a birthday party for this thing that shifts very nicely sometimes when i come down to second gear from the third it'll pop out if i get on it a little bit but it's a great san diego ice cream car yeah these tires are pretty old you might want to replace those because you know you hit the brakes one day entire burst so you slide and then you then you chew up your wheel too you know yeah it would be nice too just to have nice bright white walls i think these have white walls in 31 i don't think so i think that's a later thing maybe i'm not sure on that not sure i've never seen any other cars in period with white walls that seems to be sort of a 1950s kind of affectation i don't know have you ever seen pictures of one with in the books or anything gosh i've seen so many pictures but i guess i've never noticed yeah yeah or never looked for the authentic true period correct restoration yeah i've seen hundreds and hundreds of photos in these cars but yeah factory photos are your best bet oh yeah you can be lincoln and drive this thing look at this all kinds of lay head it's wonderful for a weekend drive don't take it too far treat it nice and yeah yeah you know i just all i did for this was i i paid a sum of money to buy it but i don't really own it it's i paid that sum of money so that i get the honor of being this car's caretaker then my job is just to take care of it and then someday i'm dead and gone and somebody else will take it over you know they used to sell a thing called a cylinder lubricator for these old cars it would shoot a dollop of oil into the gas or to lubricate the valve and these valves do need to be lubricated because modern gas is so dry with the ethanol it's really the worst thing you can possibly do you know in california can you get can you buy non-oxygen now in minnesota we can buy ethanol free oh yeah well if you can put that in do that cool but you do want to put a little lubricant in the fuel i do need to get the uh the chassis lubricator working i forcibly lubricated it by disconnecting it and uh but it's full of atf and you know with the with the vacuum actuated pump on it and it doesn't work because if it did i'd see moving into the kingpins right so i've got to get uh i got to get a pump for that but i spoke with uh forget his name forgive me a gentleman that owns uh straight eight in uh michigan okay and he has those uh laser scanned and uh cnc and he remakes it that's great yeah so now we can now i can get a replacement just drop down a little bit yeah 189 that's just about the right temperature i was so worried about it when i first started it up i had an infrared heat gun and i was just i was looking at everything and looking for hot and cold spots on the radiator just trying to make sure that everything was good before i really took it for any kind of mileage probably only driven the car 60 70 miles it's wonderful to be able to preserve these cars oh yeah it's a great thing you know and one one really fun part about this is there's so many people who had seen this car for so many years in uh in dick's garage yeah all his friends coming over building hot rods he was a by all accounts just a great guy how old a guy was he when he died maybe late 60s he never met him no i never met him just met his brother nick nick is very gracious you know one of those guys that you can you can do a handshake deal with you know we did a handshake and he wasn't appointed to you know have legal authority to sell the car yet but he could just tell your handshake and hand them yeah yeah transmission is very i believe this is 38 000 miles lisa well transmission is so nice i'm not crunching gears here you know i wish i had a copy of the of the title from when from when dick bought it but they didn't have anything the only thing he had the only thing that nick had on the car the brother he had the title and he had a little manila envelope with a carburetor gasket in it and that was it that's fine luckily it did come with the giant wrench that it takes to take off the to take off the center lug for the wheel so i got that and there's no uh this might have had no titles when these were sold you do that way better than i do i i've hit a i've hit a grind on that a few times just pause let the reds go all the way down also i would clean those plugs you get a bit of a hesitation like it's loading up like you're not running it enough rpm i appreciate all the advice it's all these like i said i got all this new car knowledge but uh you know old cars they got they got quirks they've got they've got issues they've got little things that you need to know that you can't just do a google search for and see in a technical manual hey i want to thank johnson for bringing this to us this is kind of like a street grab one of those cars you hear about you see it on the street i invited him to bring it here and he brought it all the way here so thank you thanks for preserving this piece of history it's nice to see a nice 100 original i mean anybody wanted to restore these could look at yours and see exactly how it went together what color the wires were you know so many little things that people changed over the years so thank you my friends huh\n"