5/28/2026

Greetings finders! We have a very special guest this week, a 1957 MGA, in beautiful red. Picked up last summer by my Father in Law, its spent most of the year toodling around, getting shined back up and small tidbits getting fixed up. The real big debut we were aiming for was the Spring Kickoff Intermarque Club Show. It takes place in (somewhat) nearby Osseo and is a must see every spring. Very unique showings! Unfortunately, due to life being the way that it is, he was not able to attend that weekend but asked me nicely to bring it instead. I was more than happy to, its such a fun little car to enjoy; hardly an ask at all. Despite it being bulletproof all last summer, I figured the smart money was on driving it around a few days prior to the event. Test for the classic British Motoring issues, as it were. Perhaps that was a jinx in and of itself... ultimately the car broke down about 2 minutes from my house. Crushingly close to home but I had to tow it the rest of the way home. No addition fuel or starting fluid got it going beyond sputtering on the ether so it had to be a fuel issue of some sort. A short amount of digging around revealed dry carb bowls and it turned out predictably that the carbs we're not getting fuel at all from the line. Perhaps silt at the bottom of the tank, and clogged the filter. Perhaps I was little too spirited in a corner, and the pump sucked wind instead of fuel and gave it up right there.

I won't bury the lead any further, and we all read the title! Fuel filter made no change so it was back to Oreilly's for a new 3psi pump. I am suspect that its the correct pressure, I feel like I am loading up sitting with the clutch in, but thats a future me problem. I did my best to tidy up the wiring a little bit but the car has been converted (blissfully) to neg ground 12v, so a fellow amateur electrician can't be blamed for a bit of scuffed grounds. I was just elated to find out that fuel happily pumped all over my garage floor once it was swapped in! After confirming fuel at the carbs once the hoses were correctly affixed this time, we pulled the start lever (one of the coolest mechanisms on the car, in my opinion) and it was like nothing had happened.

Just like that, we were back on the road. Bummed we did not get to get the car to the Intermarque show, but the in-house wife's Field Find, the 82 Alfa, showed off her paint repair with aplomb. Now it is more than ready for its replacement big debut, the Back to the 50's! I will be bringing my 63 corvair to the show, and the MGA should be right there with us...presuming they both work on the big day.

5/8/2026

Happy May everyone! With the lengthening days and (slightly) warming temps, I thought it would be a fab idea to get the Datsun out of winter storage and get after it a little bit. I had one pending project in mind once I got it home, a new engine filter as well as a new assembly to put it on. However, upon getting it out and letting it warm up while moving some things around, I noticed a bit of a fuel smell and it turned out the old filter, still bearing what looked like OEM katakana marking from Nissan/Datsun in 1976, had finally given it up. Turned the car off post-haste, and ripped it out!

I was able to successfully strech the top half of the fuel line to meet the metal line from the tank in the meantime and limped it gently to the nearest O'Reilly's. There, they were able to get me a MicroGuard 33022 which fit perfectly in the OEM clamp, and was rated to deal with the some random number over 50 psi of fuel pressure these cars require. Hooked back in with fresh line, and it fired right up!

With the crisis averted, I spent the following morning replacing the intake made mostly from Home-Depot grade DIY parts (had served me well for over a decade and a half) and the most cooked K&N filter I have ever seen in my life! Probably was a solid 5 years overdue on this project let me tell you, clean or replace your filters BEFORE they look like this!

The kit here is from Godzilla Raceworks, and they sent me a collection of parts, two different tube lengths and all the band clamps I could ask for. I have a non-stock Bosch Intake/MAF/TPS on the car so I wasn't sure what would work and the guys at Godzilla were super accomodating. Either way, once I got the correct combination assembled, easy as tightening it all down. Turned out great, check for leaks with a bit of carb cleaner, then while I was in there gave the rad support a spray of black as it was showing a bit of surface rust in a few spots. The engine bay doesn't match the paint anyway, and I care far more about fighting the rust than keeping the OEM silver engine bay that has been scuffed up by many prior owners! Let me know if you think that I ought to actually someday tape it all over and paint the bay the exterior green or a nice flat color.

4/27/2026

Not to leave a quiet weekend relaxing, we decided to tackle a 70s Suzuki GT185 that my dad and I brought home for him this winter.

The big plan for the day was just to get the carbeurators on, the tank on, and the rest put back together. To our absolute shock, the lights and electrical all functioned the moment we got the battery in. With that windfall fresh in our minds, we decided to go all the way and fully reassemble the bike. We didn't expect much but it looked really good. The only thing we managed to get ourselves stuck on is how the tank strap works on these bikes. I don't think there was a more embarassing thing to have gotten stuck on but we managed to solve it temporarily with a zip tie. If you have ANY idea how it works by ANY chance, please drop me a line via email.

Once it was all buttoned up, we gave it a few bajillion kicks. The starter isn't working, but it coughed and sputtered. After many small tweaks with zero change we figured we ought to maybe check if the prior owner left the spark plug wires reversed as there is no other easy way to make symptoms so closely resemble an engine's timing being 180* out. Sure enough, it fired! What a glorious sound it was too! We spent the rest of the time tweaking the idle. With a real battery and some air in the tires, this thing might just be a runner. Either way, huge progress and a great way to close out a fun weekend.

4/25/2026

Howdy all, as promised, we took the rides mentioned in my last post to autocross. We were both entered in XB, which is normal for me, but is a far overcompetitive class for my dad's Shelby which we will be reclassing to GST in the next event. The weather wasn't super ideal but we managed to get very lucky as the second and fourth run group of the day to get more or less dry surface conditions. Not super warm and we struggled mightily getting warmth into the tires of either car. That being said, by the afternoon, we managed to get our times down from the low 40s to 37 seconds for the Celica and 38 for the Dodge! This was good for roughly ~100th place out of 150 entrants, which is a pretty solid day as far as we were considered and we managed to not break anything.

The mighty 1980's combatants showing up to grid.

The big changes for the day were on my Dad's Shelby where he dialed in a 25psi front 40psi rear that really helped him get SOME grip at all. I meanwhile, mostly shredded my poor 4th season bridgestones half to death sawing through corners trying not to lift. Tons of fun and autocross will always be a good way to spend a saturday! I did manage to cut a cone and DNF myself for one run, but that was a real mystery on how I let that happen. It clocked in as a 37, which I definitely worried was too good to be true. Was very proud to have gotten down to 37 by the end of the day as a result.

Ultimately, though we never tend to post impressive finishes, it was fun knocking at the door of some very very fast cars with our very, VERY slow ones! A few more degrees, fresher tires, and any parking lot with better grip and I think we might have cracked the top 100. However, that might just be wishful thinking... We will have to see how the cars compare and stack up later in the summer. Take a quick peek at some of my competition in the image below, overall it is such a great group that runs out here. If you're in the area and interested in trying Autox out sometime, check the club out at MNAutox.com.

4/24/2026

Long haitus as I was out of the country visiting family in Argentina. Thanks for checking back in. The Celica is out of storage with fresh gas, newly checked over fluids, and the Bridgestones-on-Rotas back on for my impeding failure to compete in XB!

Photo Credit: J.E. Simonson of the MNOddball FB group, thank you for the lovely photo!

For the always necessary pre-autox shakedown, drove to a car meet at a burger shop. The meet in question was MNOddballs' season opener, (which one can search up the group on Facebook or Instagram) and its a fabulous little club of weird, outcast cars, and their cool owners. This was the first meet I managed to get the Celica to, and I loved it! There was a Lada, a lifted Smart car, RHD awd vans, a very cool Mitsu minitruck, a Toyota Sera...the list goes on.

All being said, the Celica did great, its running well. An additional Field Finds Alumnus, my dad's Dodge Shelby Turbo Charger, came with! It, arguably, fit in far better than even the junky Celica ST rust bucket to the show's vibe. It is my dad's faithful Autox chariot as well. All in all, wish us luck at Autox tomorrow, and we will see what sort of projects we create with our questionable driving in our questionable cars.

P.S. Weigh in via email if I should come up with a clever term for the FF fleet and "alumni". Perhaps they are the "Found" as a group... brainstorming will happen while waiting between the AutoX runs.

4/1/2026

Thanks for visiting Field Finds! Heres the first project since the founding of the site this week. Hopefully this is one of many to come!

The project at hand started with the cool, albiet broken, Bose Delco CD Radio in the z28. I tried a few different things to clean the connections and the buttons with contact cleaner. This revived the volume knob but the display was hopeless. Ultimately, the plan for this car is a road trip machine so the plan b of a new (unfortunately touchscreen) double DIN unit from Crutchfield was a go. The first step was removing the panels and cutting out this subdash support. After trying multiple different cutting tools, I settled on a removed hacksaw blade to saw it out as cleanly as possible.

Following that, I could get the USB port I purchased drilled into the top of the "cassette holder", which I still don't understand why the CD equipped car came with. The idea here is a low profile look should I decide to remove the cables and phone mount for a car show.

Finally, connected up the supplied harness, adjusted the levels for bose-amp-compatible connector that Crutchfield sells (an absolute godsend!) and got to wiggling the dash back together. I am pretty happy with how it turned out, it looks very clean with the radio sitting receded within the dash, and the dash being the same shape as factory. Additionally, besides the cut out subdash, the install is entirely reversible and that subdash will not affect the mounting of the factory radio. It may squeak more without it, but I don't really intend to find out. The added benefit of the phone mount location besides not sticking an ugly mount on the dash with a wire hanging down, is that it is out of the way, to not distract, yet easy to hook up.

Thanks again for checking out my first post, and hopefully as the weather warms this summer I will get more up!