(Desperado)

continued from page 1, "Found in birdnest..."

A friend offered to get it with his rollback wrecker. He was able to remove it from the muck effortlessly. He brought it to my home and unloaded it in my driveway alongside my home.
He looked at me with a silly grin on his face and said "You must be desperate".

All of the wheels were rusted up so badly that none of them turned. I opened the drivers door and a small snake came slithering out onto the driveway!

Later I hooked a good battery up to see what if anything still worked. To my amazement, the radio worked. The speaker was badly cracked so the sound was bad, but it worked! The driver's door window worked too, and that was all.

The next step was to get the car up in the air so I could make a thorough inspection of the underside. I put it up on jack stands, crawled under and started poking around. Other than the mud and undercoating coming off in chunks, the rockers and the unit body structure appeared sound. I assumed that the mud must have preserved the framework.

I wrote to Mr. William Wonder, who was writing an article each month in Ford Trader Magazine at that time. (Mr. Wonder is the foremost authority on '62-'63 "M" series Thunderbirds) I described the car and the condition to him and asked his advice on the feasibility of restoring this car. Mr Wonder replied "'63 Convertibles are very desireable collector cars and the '90's have promised to be the best years for increasing values of the third generation 'birds."

Back to Index ......Go to Page 3, "Destined for Resurection..."

Thomas G. Maruska
Duluth, Minnesota

Copyright © 1996 by Thomas Maruska