Buried car in tulsa unearthing - today!

Post by **Rollef** » Fri Jun 15, 2007 11:52 am

This is to cool:

http://www.buriedcar.com/tulsarama.asp

What a time capsule!

Post by **BolexPlusX** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 4:01 am

Oh, Man!,

Did you see them pumping water out of the vault in the news section?

All they had to do was build it with a a drain out to the storm sewer!

-not looking good!

Post by **pinata2000** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 6:54 am

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070616/ap_ ... _belvedere

what a waste of a perfectly good car

Post by **Nigel** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 10:25 am

As far as I know concrete/cement isn't water tight. If you ask a hydrologist about how water acts in a hollow area with porous walls it is far more likely that water will fill the space than it is to be dry.

It is osmosis.

To bad that it happened to a great piece of Yankee steel.

At least it was Mopar. I would have felt really shitty if it was a GM or Ford. I guess it is fitting that it is a Plymouth.

Good Luck

Post by **S8 Booster** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 10:58 am

oh well, you can allways count on the americans....
->
Winston Churchill quotes:

Ã¢â‚¬Å“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.Ã¢â‚¬Â

Post by aj » Sat Jun 16, 2007 11:09 am

Nigel wrote:As far as I know concrete/cement isn't water tight.

Cast concrete like applied here in NL is watertight. Cellars who go into groundwater for 1.5 or 2 meter (this is Netherlands

)are made of concrete and when done right they are watertight. They hold water out while it is under pressure!

Post by **Rollef** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 2:54 pm

Nigel wrote:As far as I know concrete/cement isn't water tight. If you ask a hydrologist about how water acts in a hollow area with porous walls it is far more likely that water will fill the space than it is to be dry.

Good Luck

Well, I do happen to work as a hydrologist, but consentrate mainly at GIS systems. Concrete is not my strong point. You are describing the effects of pore preassure which are interresting in a nerdy kind of way. Not many people know about that kind of stuff. kudos.

Post by **DriveIn** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 4:03 am

I wonder if they found the microfilm and if it was legible enough to figure out what poor sap won that hunk of rust. The car and a $100 to pay to haul it to the junk yard. What a deal. They built the vault to survive a nuclear war, not keep out the water. I guess none of them expected to survive to worry about it. :roll:

Post by **BolexPlusX** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 2:05 pm

They did find the names and there is winner. The names actually weren't on microfilm, but good old paper.

The car was actually in better shape than I thought it would be when I heard it had been immersed all that time. I've seen cars subjected to salt spray in corrosion tests and after just a month they are basically unrecognizable. I guess it being fresh water helped.

Post by **MovieStuff** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 2:28 pm

BolexPlusX wrote: The car was actually in better shape than I thought it would be when I heard it had been immersed all that time. I've seen cars subjected to salt spray in corrosion tests and after just a month they are basically unrecognizable. I guess it being fresh water helped.

If the oxygen content of the water was low, it probably helped more in preventing rust than the car sitting in damp open air for 50 years, though the seats and other soft elements would be worse for it. I know a guy that does marine restorations and he says that while salt water is horrible, stagnant fresh water can actually work toward preventing deterioration of metal because without oxygen, the metal really can't rust and the water forms a seal. He said that it is not uncommon to find items in bogs and other oxygen depleted water where the metal in the bog was in better shape than the metal sticking up in open air. Dunno what the oxygen content was like in the tomb. I'm sure it's a delicate balance between too much oxygen and not enough water, etc.

Roger