What Did You Do With Your Tbird Today?

[4LOWBIRDS+7]

Today’s mission was scrubbed. Some idiot (me) left the Bluetooth FM transmitter on when he left the car. Dead battery is being charged.

Thanks for clearing that up.

[2K2BIRD]

Rosetta and I took a little top down jaunt over to Muskogee, OK just to get out of the house and keep Jewel's battery charged.

We stopped by the campus of Bacone College to look around. It is a private liberal arts college in Muskogee that was founded in 1880 as the Indian University. It is the oldest continuously operating institution of higher education in Oklahoma. The school has historic ties to the Amercan Baptist Church. One of the main buildings on the campus is a beautiful chapel.

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[4LOWBIRDS+7]

We took the Inca Gold top down to the Church picnic. Then a long cruise around the lake and over into North Carolina. Beautiful scenery and a great thunderstorm with lots of rain.

[007Cruiser]

We took the Inca Gold top down to the Church picnic. Then a long cruise around the lake and over into North Carolina. Beautiful scenery and a great thunderstorm with lots of rain.

Ice cream for your dessert? We’re about to have stuffed peppers with mashed potatoes and carrots.

[Bobnoir1]

Attempted to remove headlights in anticipation of removing the bumper cover.
The attaching slides won’t budge. Rock them, compress them, use mechanic’s
language, but no movement whatsoever.
Crow bar?

[4LOWBIRDS+7]

Attempted to remove headlights in anticipation of removing the bumper cover.
The attaching slides won’t budge. Rock them, compress them, use mechanic’s
language, but no movement whatsoever.
Crow bar?

A little WD-40 and a large pair of channel locks.

[hippy_mailman]

when you find the best way to grab the slide----BRUTE FORCE!!! they will come out. first time I did it a practically fell over when they broke loose

+ what Ron said

[2Redbirds57/02]

I took this one out for a spin today.

[Bobnoir1]

when you find the best way to grab the slide----BRUTE FORCE!!! they will come out. first time I did it a practically fell over when they broke loose

+ what Ron said

Yeah, I have tried the channel lock approach with a board cushioning on the underlying structures (plastics and metal. Channel locks wrapped in microfiber cloth to prevent gouging of the slide. Oooooooooomph, no go, yet. I'll try WD-40 or other goose grease. As a friend of mine used to say, "pickup truck tight".

[2K2BIRD]

We had an eventful time in our retro today. We started the day by planning to meet Bill & Becky Green in Siloam Springs, AR for lunch. When I started to back Jewel out of the garage an intermittent miss was very obvious. A week or so ago the same thing happened but I hadn't driven the car in awhile and it seemed to clear up within a few miles so I chalked it up to just needing to be driven. I didn't know whether it would do it again or not. Well, obviously it did. I decided to go on to meet Bill & Becky just to see if I could get a check engine light. No light, but the miss was really obvious under load.

During lunch we decided to go to Bill & Becky's and change the COPs. The code reader didn't pick up the failing COP(s) without a check engine light, so changing all 8 was the logical thing to do. I had 4 new Motorcraft COPs and plugs in the car along with 8 of the Amazon cheapies. All we needed were 4 more plugs. We got the car back to Bill's garage and headed to Autozone while the engine cooled down. They didn't have Motorcraft plugs in stock so we went with the Bosch equivalent. As an experiment we put the 4 Motorcraft plugs and COPs in the passenger side and the off brand COPs & Bosch plugs in the driver's side. All in all it took a little over 2 hours to accomplish everything. There wasn't any oil or water to be found in the plug wells. We'll see how the two sides compare to each other over time.

I have to give the Motorcraft COPs/plugs that were in there two thumbs up!! The passenger side were last changed out in May 2010 when the car had 60,220 miles on it at the Ford dealer in Murphysboro, TN. The driver's side were changed out in early July 2011 when the car had 68,600 miles in Gary Himes' garage. Today when we changed them the car had 165,380 miles on the odometer!! That's 105,160 on 4 of them and 96,780 on the other 4 (+ 3% to account for the 55 series tires).

While we were working on the car, the gals went to a couple of Becky's favorite antique/vintage shops to see what kind of bargains they could find.

Fortunately, it was a relatively cool summer day. That sure helped us out working on the car and it made for a pleasant, smooth top-down ride home.

Can't thank Bill & Becky enough for the help and hospitality. They and so many other great friends are the reason TBN is so special.

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[007Cruiser]

Glad you got it fixed. You wouldn’t want to do that here today. Hot as blazes with high humidity. Very typical for June in Jersey.

[Poco]

I took the Bird for my first cruise-in on Father's Day. It had been 14 years since I went to a car show. I won a raffle prize and met some really nice Mustanger's. My daughter drove my 03" Terminator and that car hasn't been driven in two years, (just around the block is all). I keep it stored at the family cabin. But it was fun to get out show off our Ford's.

[2K2BIRD]

Today our Sooner Thunderbird Club got our kicks on Route 66. Twelve retrobirds, one baby bird and one Explorer traveled a short stretch of the Mother Road. For the most part we tried to practice social distancing, but after not having a gathering for over 3 month's it was hard to do so. We stopped at Pops, a large convenience store/restaurant that specializes in soda pop from all over the world, for a photo op and souvenirs. From there we traveled about a mile down the road to the Arcadia Round Barn.

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Next on the agenda was a visit the OK County 66. This place is the personal collection of Mr. John Hargrove. It can best be described as a hodgepodge of folk art, automotive memorabilia, cars, and assorted junk. John is very accommodating and loves to show folks around his collection. To get an idea of his interesting sense of humor, John's daily driver 32 Ford street rod's Oklahoma license plate reads TOURIST. Also on the property is a Volkswagen Beetle half buried in the ground reminiscent of the Cadillac Ranch near Amarillo, TX and a VW Bus painted to resemble Fillmore from the Cars movies. He also has a completely original 1915 Model T that sports a current Oklahoma license plate.

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It was good to see our old members and to meet some new ones. One of the new ones brought out his relatively new to him beautifully restored '55 and the other came in their blinged out retro. Everyone enjoyed themselves for a few hours. It was well worth our 5 hour round trip drive in an African sand storm to be a part of it.

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[007Cruiser]

Today my ‘75 got some much needed TLC. A good washing and I began the huge task of polishing the entire body. The portion that I finished looks much better. Bit by bit as they say.

[snowbird]

This morning I finally changed my first coil and plug ( # 4 cylinder as instructed by the OBD reader ) Goes like stink again with no hesitation / surging missing etc. _ Got the code for throttle body last fall and cleaned that with some cleaner / lubed the butterfly shaft . All is good now and no more check engine light . Not a bad job but that last cylinder on the right side is bit tricky to remove the plug . Thought I was halfway down to the garage floor .

Stay safe all of you out there . If you need something to do or place to go , Gene may need hand with that land yaght .