Man Buys Salvage Ford on Ebay and Pays Tribute to a Legend

Meet the owner Don Falloon from Citrus Heights, CA. He is currently a guide at the California State Railroad Museum, but have also been a race announcer, NASCAR historian and an aspiring author. Here is Don in his own words about his Ford Galaxie and "Porject Fireball."

I found the car on Ebay where it was advertised as a salvage vehicle, only 200 miles from my home. The history of the Galaxie was that it had been stolen and subsequently torched by the thieves. With its burned-out interior and moderate fire and smoke damage throughout, it became the perfect starting point to finally build my dream.

Having recently married a woman with 5 kids as part of the bargain, the car had to be built on a shoestring budget. I purchased this Ford Galaxie on October 1, 2006 and dove into the project. I sold my '66 Ranchero for my funds and got to work, gutting the interior, cleaning the engine bay (the car's original 289 remains the powerplant today - remember, this is a budget build!), removing all of the chrome and filling the 161 holes left behind.

Here's the kicker: prior to this I had never welded or worked with bondo, so I would learn as I went.

I installed a 6-point roll cage, cleaned and dressed up the motor (new intake, carb, shorty 5.0 headers, Cobra dress-up parts, Unilite distributor) and sealed any rust I located. I custom mixed the paint to closely match what few color pictures I could find, sprayed it on the hottest day of 2007 and then applied custom-cut vinyl decals to reproduce the original race car as close as possible.

The whole project from beginning to end was done in 9 months for less than $4,000 and debuted the car at the 2007 San Jose Grand Prix where I was serving as a color announcer for the Historic Stock Car Racing Series. I even paced the charity race of retired Winston Cup cars.

Written by Don Falloon
Author of Hiding Behind Thunder and Heart of Ezdar