Tom Maruska, the man who miraculously brought back Mercury’s one-of-a-kind 1956 XM-Turnpike Cruiser show car from the brink (or beyond) confirmed the concept car has been sold to the American Muscle Car Museum in Melbourne, Florida.

The sale comes after the Mercury concept car was bid to $350,000 at the Mecum Kissimmee sale in Florida last January and did not meet Maruska’s reserve. Maruska had previously restored the 1954 Mercury XM-800 concept car and sold it at a 2010 RM Sotheby’s auction for $390,000 ($429,000 with buyer’s commission factored in) and expected a fair amount more for the XM-Turnpike Cruiser.

While buyer and seller of the XM-Turnpike Cruiser have agreed to not disclose its sale price, Maruska said of the figure, “It’s quite a bit more than the XM-800, and it’s a lot more than the closing bid at Mecum.”

So, after ping-ponging from Maruska’s Minnesota home to the auction in Florida and back to Minnesota again, the XM-Turnpike Cruiser will return to Florida to a new, permanent home.

“It’s going to a good home, and I am glad it’s going to a museum even though it isn’t open on a daily basis,” Maruska said, “but they do open for tours and events. Over 20,000 people a year go through the place. He has 300-some cars in there so it will be well taken care of.”

Maruska said that the car won’t be shipped to its new home in Florida until the snow in Northern Minnesota melts. He expects the car will be shipped to Florida sometime in March.

Learn more about the XM-Turnpike Cruiser’s new home at https://www.americanmusclecarmuseum.com

Review Old Cars’ extensive coverage of the XM-Turnpike Cruiser restoration at https://www.oldcarsweekly.com/search?query=XM-Turnpike+Cruiser

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The post Famed 1956 Mercury concept sold appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

By Tom Maruska

After the last update there wasn’t a lot left to do except install the door and quarter panels, the carpet and the seat belts and seats. 

Once the interior was all together  I added all the fluids to the car, brake fluid, oil, transmission fluid, antifreeze, rear end oil, power steering fluid, windshield washer fluid and gas.

Now all I had to do was to see if it would run, so I double checked that the number-one cylinder was at top dead center in firing position and that the rotor in the distributor was pointing at the number one plug wire in the distributor cap.

Then I sprayed a little starting fluid in the carburetor and turned the key……

It fired immediately!  I had to spray a little starting fluid in the carburetor another time or two until the fuel pump brought the gas into the carburetor and it started and ran.  With a small adjustment to the distributor to improve the timing it starts and runs like it should.

New Exhaust

Last time I showed you the double exhaust outlet pipes I made to connect to the outlets on the lower rear quarter panels. Now that the car was running and drivable I trailered it to a local exhaust shop to have the mufflers and exhaust pipes installed connecting everything together under the car.

IT’S DONE! IT’S DONE!

With the exhaust completed the XM Turnpike Cruiser restoration officially comes to a close.

It’s been a long 3.5 years but I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. (almost)

Over the years I’ve encountered a lot of people who  embark on restoration projects and disassemble a vehicle, and in the process become overwhelmed with the amount of work it will entail, and they give up and sell the car in pieces, just like how I purchased the XMTC. None of the parts or attaching hardware is identified and often just tossed into coffee cans or lost.

If you want to restore a car, the first thing you want to do before taking anything apart is take LOTS of pictures, then as you’re taking something apart take MORE PICTURES.

I use zip-lock bags labeled like “brake booster to firewall” nuts or bolts and so on for the entire car. Then when you get around to re-installing the brake booster you can grab the bag with the correct hardware and either restore it or use new hardware but you’ll know exactly what you need. AND if you quit the project you can pass the pictures and baggies on to the next owner making his job a lot easier.

If you take one small part of the restoration and finish that to the extent you can before moving on to the next small part the project isn’t so overwhelming as is is when looking at it as a whole. If I wouldn’t have approached the XMTC that way I never would have finished it.

If anyone has any questions related to this car or restoration in general there is contact information on my website and I answer all emails and will be happy to help if I can.

Be sure to check out my website www.tommaruskacars.us for all the professional photos taken of the completed 1956 XM TURNPIKE CRUISER CONCEPT CAR.

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The post Frosting on the XM Turnpike cake appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

The 1956 Mercury XM-Turnpike Cruiser concept car is getting more colorful as the restoration progresses. Here’s what I’ve been up to the past few months:

After getting the car back on its wheels, the next thing I did was hang the doors and install the hinge opening covers. There are small, round, tubular parts that serve as wire conduits to protect the power window wiring as it goes into the doors, and I had to be mindful of these during the installation process.

Then, I put the car back on jack stands and removed the wheels so I could assemble the front end and finish the brake and fuel line connections underneath.

With the wheels back on, the next order of business was to install the engine and transmission. I also placed the choke housing that I made (featured in the last update) on the carburetor to show how nice it looks now that it’s chrome-plated. Everyone thinks it’s an air cleaner, but it’s actually a choke. There is a flap in the choke’s snout that’s operated by a cable to the instrument panel that opens and closes it. There will be a 3-inch plastic tube from the choke snout to the bottom of the air cleaner, which sits in the right front of the engine bay, alongside the radiator. You’ll see that in the future.

Playing dress up

The brake and taillamp lenses above the rear window were in very good, original condition without cracks or crazing, so they were relatively easy to restore and look great back in place.

The exhaust outlet on the left lower quarter panel isn’t connected to anything yet, but it will be a functional outlet when the pipes below are complete. There is a matching outlet on the right quarter panel.

For some unknown reason, the rear quarter panel inserts were full of small dents and dings. They, of course, had to be filled and smoothed before they could be painted pearl white, as original. The edges of these long inserts are chrome plated. They, along with all the other chromed pieces on this car, were re-chromed by AIH Chrome Plating in Dubuque, Iowa.

Drama with the new windshield

When an article on the restoration appeared on Hemmings’ blog, it caught the eye of a custom glass fabricator in British Columbia, Canada. The owner contacted me and said he could make a windshield for the XM-Turnpike Cruiser. After a few emails and a quote, I agreed to have him fabricate the windshield. It turned out to be one of the biggest mistakes of my life! Let’s just say the windshield didn’t fit, and I found his business practices to be sketchy, at best. You can read all about it at on the “2-10-22 Update.”

After that fiasco, I found another fabricator in the good, ol’ U.S.A. and had them make the glass. This windshield turned out nice and is pictured in place within this article. The windshield will remain on the car until the car is nearly complete.

Interior motives, and more dress up

I started making the new leather dash covering, but didn’t get too far before getting sidetracked with refinishing the steering wheel and installing the inserts on the rear quarter panels. However, I did get all four seats reupholstered.

The steering wheel had quite a few cracks in it, which I filled with the epoxy material from Eastwood’s steering wheel repair kit. I’ve successfully used this product on a number of steering wheels in the past.

The quarter inserts really make the car look spectacular, and after I had them in place, I was able to install the taillamps. One of the previous owners had the new lenses made for the taillamps and back-up lamps, which saved me some work.

Tangle of wires

While I wasn’t working on the previously mentioned parts of the car, I would pick away at the wiring on an on-and-off basis. It’s coming along pretty well, but the next task to complete will be the dash pad so I can install the instrument panel in the car, as there is a lot of wiring to do under it. We’ll save that for next time.

Thanks for your interest in this restoration!

Learn more at www.tommaruskacars.us.

Click Here for Part 8 of the XM-Turnpike Cruiser project

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The post XM-Turnpike Cruiser: Assembly begins appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

Old Cars hits the road and celebrates the classics while bringing the sights and sounds to you.

Angelo Van Bogart was out and about in Duluth, Minnesota catching up with Old Cars’ friend, Tom Maruska. Angelo stopped by his shop to see first hand the progress Tom has made on the 1956 Mercury XM Turnpike Cruiser’s restoration. 

Many of you will recognize this project from Old Cars’ articles over the past few years. You can take a look at this ongoing restoration by clicking here. 

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The post Old Cars Out and About: 1956 XM Mercury Turnpike Cruiser concept car appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

The post Final stages of the 1956 Mercury XM Turnpike Cruiser concept car restoration appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

But before we get to that I’ll show you everything that took place getting there.I left off last time with the body in epoxy primer after sandblasting and sanding to prevent flash rust.

I decided to get my hands pretty dirty one day in late September, so I set up a makeshift table in the shop and brought in the transmission for the car and began to disassemble it to rebuild it.

It looked like the many other Ford-O-Matic transmissions I’ve rebuilt over the years, until I took the pan off. Incidentally, this is a Merc-O-Matic transmission which is exactly the same as a Ford-O-Matic except for the name. They are three-speed trannys with only two forward speeds shown on the shift indicator.

They show “L” for low and “D” for drive. When in drive it actually takes off in second gear and shifts to third at speed. The only time you get low gear is when you manually shift to “L”.

Sitting all those years turned the transmission fluid to mud and left a lot of sludge in the pan.

This photo is with the pan and filter removed.

I purchased a complete rebuild kit with new clutches and steels as well as the bands and a filter from FATSCO.com. They are a great source for old Ford Transmission parts.

There are step by step instructions in the shop manual which are very easy to follow for complete disassembly of all the sub-assemblies and reassembly.

Every assembly was completely disassembled and thoroughly cleaned. All new seals and gaskets were installed.

The empty case was glass bead blasted on the outside before thoroughly cleaning inside and outside and then a coat of cast iron paint was applied to the outside.

This is the valve body completely disassembled; it’s the most complex assembly in the transmission.

And here is a shot with everything cleaned and back where it belongs.

The torque converter was also disassembled, cleaned, re-sealed and reassembled. It’s an air-cooled torque converter with fins on it, and the bell housing has vents in it to circulate the air for cooling the transmission. There are no cooling lines between the transmission and radiator like later cars have.

Sometime in October I got the engine back from Midwest Engine Rebuilders in Duluth.

I painted it and installed the new valve covers, exhaust manifolds and a few other parts.

You’ll recall from an earlier update how the valve covers were made.

You may also recall from an earlier update that sometime in the cars early past someone stole the dual quad intake manifold, carburetors, choke housing and valve covers from the XMTC.

Those too were one-off parts that were specially built to fit under the hood of the XMTC.

I tried to fit a standard 1956 2X4 intake and carbs under the hood, but I would have had to put a hood scoop on the car. I checked with Holley and Edelbrock to see if they had carburetors that may be short enough to fit under the hood, but they would require ½” thick adapter plates to fit the intake manifold so that would leave the tops of the air horns level with the underside of the hood, leaving no space to get air into the carburetors.

So after some thought I decided to install a single 4bbl carburetor on the engine.

Hopefully the guy who stole the original parts will read this update and maybe get religion and return the parts to me, but that’s probably not likely. So until that happens I’ll have to live with the single 4bbl intake and a ’56 Mercury Carter carburetor on the car.

I fabricated a new choke housing to fit the Carter and it’s at AIH Chrome Plating in Dubuque, Iowa right now getting plated.

This is the inside of the choke housing fitted around the carburetor air horn and secondary diaphragm.

There will be a choke flap in the hole on the snout connected to a cable and to a knob on the dash.

While I was sidetracking from preparing the body for paint, I also rebuilt the dash gauges.

The original paint on the back of the faces was cracked and peeling.

Fortunately, the numbers and dashes on the faces were engraved in the back side of the gauges. I was able to first sand all of the white paint off down to the plastic, and then the orange paint in the engraved numbers was easily picked out of the grooves with a dental pick. I hand painted orange paint back into the engraved areas, and then sprayed a matching off-white backing over the backs of the gauges. They turned out beautiful.

The gauges have a jeweled (aka engine turning) aluminum trim over the center of them. The jeweling had been somehow faded away, so I went to work re-jeweling them. Years ago when I restored the 1963 Thunderbird Italien Concept car, I learned how to do the jeweling as that car had a lot of it on the dash, door panels and exterior trim, so these couple small pieces were a breeze.

In this photo the piece on the left is freshly jeweled. Notice how much sharper it is than the piece on the right.

Here is the speedometer completed. Notice that I reset the odometer to all “0s”

I was able to find NOS gauges for the fuel, temp, oil and amps on eBay, so all gauges will be fresh. I even replaced the tick-tock mechanism in the clock that no longer worked with a modern quartz movement.

I think I mentioned in one of my earlier updates that my son-in-law has one of those 3D printers. I sent him the three different dash knobs I needed and voila! He made perfect copies.

They will all be painted pearl white and the two largest will have lights inside which are the turn signal indicators.

Fortunately, I had one good one of each for him to copy.

Next, I moved on to the power window mechanisms, since one of them had a couple broken teeth on one of the gears, I began with that one. I removed the gear from the assembly, filed a square notch where the broken gear was, and drilled a 1/8” hole in the center of the notch.

Next I took a grade-8 bolt and machined ½” of it down to fit tightly in the 1/8” hole I drilled. Then I ground the top of it the approximate dimensions of the missing tooth. I applied a dab of JB Weld on the peg and drove the new tooth into the hole. Finally I used the Dremel tool to refine the shape. I had to do this for two of the teeth.

Then I assembled the window mechanisms with new motors.

Almost all of the components for the car are rebuilt/refinished now so it’s time to get the main parts ready.

The entire car was covered with body filler (a small area at a time of course) and sanded first with 36 grit paper followed by a second or third spreading and then 80-grit sand paper, followed by another or two spreading’s and sanding with 180-grit sand paper.

The XMTC is a pretty damn big car with a lot of area to do! It took several months to get it right.

Here’s what it looked like just before the two coats of high build primer went on. There was also a guide coat of a very watered down dark colors prayed over the primer which again is sanded with 180-grit sandpaper on long boards. The idea is to sand enough to get all the guide coat off and leave a clear gray finish. Any depressions will show as dark spots as you can see in the circle of this picture of the partially sanded roof:

That area went away with a little more sanding. Had it not, I would have spread a small amount of filler on it and re-sanded it.

The next step was to spray another 2 coats of sealer over everything and wet sand it with a small block and 400-600 grit sandpaper. After which came a good cleaning. Only then it was ready for paint.

And here are a couple pictures in living color:

There’s still a lot of work to do to the finish before calling it done. When you paint in a shop such as mine, it’s unavoidable to get some dust in the finish.

The good news is with today’s paint products and a little elbow grease, they can be cleaned up.

It’s called color sanding and buffing. I’ll do 3-4 sandings on the paint starting with 800-grit, then 1000 followed by 1500 and finally 2000-grit sanding’s.

After the sanding’s 2-3 buffing’s are required with different grit buffing compounds. I still have a lot of work to do before I begin reassembly of the car.

Stay tuned for future updates. You can see all earlier updates on my website www.tommaruskacars.us

Thanks for reading! 

Click Here for Part 7 of the XM-Turnpike Cruiser project

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The post XM-Turnpike Cruiser: Now in color! appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

Story and photos By Tom Maruska

While waiting for less humid weather in order to sandblast parts to the 1956 Mercury XM-Turnpike Cruiser concept car, I moved on to restoring and rebuilding many of the components to the dream car. When the weather is humid, the sandblaster clogs from the moisture in the air mixing with the sand. That makes the job miserable as I have to constantly disassemble the sandblaster to unclog it.

So, I moved on to tackling the motors in the butterfly roof window panels. The motor was inoperable and as can be seen in the photos, its interior was pretty rusty. I took the motor completely apart and sandblasted the case inside and out (the sandblasting cabinet for small parts doesn’t clog up), cleaned the armature and brushes, soldered new wires in place and painted and reassembled the motors. When completed, they both ran as new. The rest of the butterfly operating mechanisms were also cleaned, repainted and greased for years of smooth operation.

An item that was difficult to make was the acrylic dividers that rest on a chrome bar and separate the quarter window glass from the acrylic windows at the rear corners of the car’s roof. They’re intended to give the illusion that there’s nothing there while they are actually supporting the roof, as well as acting as dividers between the two types of windows. The original chrome steel supports were too far gone for the chrome shop (AIH Chrome Plating in Dubuque, Iowa) to plate. The shop sent them back and told me to make new ones, which I did.

Recreating the steel supports was relatively simple; the acrylic coverings, however, were not. There is an acrylic divider between the rear glass quarter windows and the acrylic glass rear corner windows. It’s going to be a tricky part to reconstruct because it has to be polished in all crevasses to make it as clear as glass. I purchased a small piece of 3/4-inch Plexiglas from a vendor on eBay and using an original piece for a pattern, I used my table saw to cut the basic shape and then cut out the grooves and notch. The difficult part was sanding and polishing the acrylic inside the grooves and notch to end up with them perfectly smooth and clear in order to get the desired effect when installed on the car. They mount over a chrome bar and the idea is to make them seem transparent and as if they don’t exist, giving a wide-open view from inside as well as outside the car with no blind spots.

All of this work to recreate the acrylic windows had me thinking about a place not too far away me, in Lakeville, Minn., that specialized in making acrylic displays for retail stores. The business was Masterglas and the owner, Steve, was a “car guy” and would make custom acrylic parts for various car projects. For instance, he made some of the domes for Ed “Big Daddy” Roth’s cars as well as cockpits for small aircraft. I heard about him while I was restoring the Thunderbird Italien concept car on which the large rear window was acrylic. At the time I contacted him, he was more than happy to make the Italien window and then later, when I was restoring the Mercury XM-800 concept car, he also made the windshield and back glass for that project. When I purchased the XM-Turnpike Cruiser and again had the need to have acrylic windows made, I called Masterglas only to find out that Steve had passed away and they were shutting down his business.

That sent me searching the country and even Canada looking for a place, hopefully within driving distance, to make the acrylic windows for this project. I found one place in California and another in British Columbia. Their prices were reasonable, but the kicker was that I had to ship these heavy and fragile plaster molds across or out of the country and if they got broken in transit, I’d be starting all over. Then I got the hair-brained idea to build my own oven large enough to accommodate the sheets of acrylic in the size I needed to make the XM-Turnpike Cruiser’s windows. I searched on Craigslist and found two electric ranges nearby for free. I brought them home and stripped them of the side panels, heating elements, oven controls, door hinges, seals and insulation. I purchased two sheets of 18-gauge sheet metal and went to work cutting and welding and built my own oven big enough to accommodate my needs.

As a test for my new oven, I used a piece of old Plexiglas I had in the shop and it turned out fine. Except for the scratches from laying around the shop for a couple years, the test piece would have been a good window. I put off forming the actual windows until a later date.

The XM-Turnpike Cruiser has unique conduits for the power window wiring as it enters the doors. There are also unique covers for the door hinge openings in the A pillars. These items were quite rusty and I had to rebuild them before the doors are properly in place. I also made new door sill plates.

I kept busy over the next few weeks rebuilding other component parts for the car. These parts included the master cylinder and brake booster. It’s a Bendix Treadlevac booster as commonly used on a lot of Ford Motor Co. and General Motors products of the day.

With all of the aforementioned parts restored and ready to reinstall on the car, I figured I better get back to getting the car ready for them. By then, the humidity had dropped and the weather was perfect for sandblasting.

I do the sandblasting in my shop and to contain the sand, I erect a “tent” over the car using the same tubular framework you see over vendor spaces at swap meets and other outdoor events. I wrap it with clear 4-mil poly and tape it to the floor. I have an exhaust fan in the sidewall of the shop and I construct a “duct” to it from the tent.

Once the sandblasting was completed, I left the tent in place and sprayed epoxy primer on the exterior of the car and its body parts. Then I sprayed the interior with KBS Coatings rust proofing paint and that will be the finished interior color. Every bit of the metal in the passenger compartment will be covered by carpet, panels and the headliner so the color doesn’t matter.

The next step will be refinishing the exterior of the body and getting it ready for paint. As you probably know, it’s a rather time-consuming, boring procedure comprised of spreading body filler (aka Bondo) over the entire surface of the body, waiting for it to harden and then sanding about 98 percent of it off and doing it again and again and again until it’s, as the saying goes, “laser straight.” You probably won’t hear from me again until the paint is on and assembly has begun. I can’t wait for that point in the restoration!

Click Here for Part 6 of the XM-Turnpike Cruiser project

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The post XM-Turnpike Cruiser: Restoring bits and pieces appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

Club pub shares revelations from Mercury concept car rehab

Tom Maruska could write a book about his project, and maybe he will. The second of his installments on the Mercury XM-Turnpike Cruiser concept car recently surfaced in Quicksilver (spring 2019 edition), official publication of the International Mercury Owners Association, P.O. Box 1245 Northbrook, IL 60065-1245 (info@mercuryclub.com). Todd Haefer serves the club as editor.

What Maruska obtained was a hulk able to move only because its suspension parts were kept intact. Beyond that, disassembly had taken place even before 1983, and severe rust had taken a toll. Still, it was a concept car, one of the rare type that mystified onlookers at bygone auto shows and which contributed in some degree to subsequent production advancements, as was the case with more than a few such vehicles.

The 1956 show car had a hidden surprise, according to Maruska. “The nuts and bolts that hold the car together are all metric.” That in itself was odd for an American show car in the 1950s. Or, was it?”

Said Maruska, “You may recall that Ford had Carrozeria Ghia in Turin, Italy, build the body. The bolts on the chassis are all SAE, as Ford sent the chassis and running gear, along with body hardware (hinges and latches), to Ghia to use as a platform….”

Then came another revelation. “Nearly all of the parts to be chromed are fabricated from brass, as it’s much easier to work with than other harder metals. Some of the trim pieces on the XM-800 were also made from brass. The only parts that are steel are the front and rear bumpers.”

To prove the power of the press, Maruska added this insight, which may be instructional for readers. “I ran across a vendor’s advertisement in Old Cars Weekly magazine. It was AIH Chrome Plating in Dubuque, Iowa. They advertised that if you sent them your parts so they could quote you a price for the plating, and you didn’t like the price, they would ship the parts back to you at their expense.”

Maruska tried it. He sent key parts on his project. Back came the quote. He gave it a whirl to see the results. “I’ve been using AIH ever since.”

At the time of his writing, he had hauled 193 parts to that plater. “It’s a much larger operation than I thought it would be and it was neat and clean and well organized, unlike other chrome shops I’ve visited.”

Maruska provides more insights on his project at www.tommaruskacars.us. It is worth the visit!

The post Club Clips: June 20, 2019 Edition appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.