My sister and I revisited the yard up in New York near her house where I pulled the nose off the green pickup last fall. I’d called ahead to ask the owner if he had a manual steering column for a manual-shift truck, and he said he didn’t, but the yard is too cool not to go back to, and I only saw a third of it the last time I was there, so I made plans to return. We were lucky to get a warm, overcast day amidst a week of snow and rain, so we didn’t have to bundle up completely, but we wore muck boots because we knew it would be wet.
After talking with him a bit at the gate, we grabbed some tools and headed into the yard. This time we were unaccompanied so we could walk at our own pace. As I mentioned the first time I went, he’s got a ton of Studebaker rolling stock back there—Commanders and Hawks and Champions and Larks and even a square-light Avanti—but he’s probably got the largest collection of Studebaker trucks on the east coast.
We walked to the outside edges of his collection this time, taking advantage of the fact that nothing had started growing. The amount and selection of vehicles back there is pretty amazing. He’s got prewar Packards next to 60’s sedans, a couple of toothy porthole Buicks, hulking Hudsons… the list goes on.
I did find the steering column I wanted in an otherwise untouched ’62 pickup that was missing its floorboards and asked him about it, but he said he wanted to keep the truck whole. I also looked at the pickup I’d done surgery on last time and considered pulling the tailgate but ultimately passed on it, opting to leave with just the other taillight bucket which was in excellent shape.
I could have spent days in that yard, and I will go back the next time I’m up here. For now, I’ve got about an hour of footage to go through for the next video. Meanwhile, there’s a guy parting out a pickup outside of Pittsburgh with the exact column I need, so I’ve got to organize a trip out that way to pull it depending on his price.
