Today was supposed to be a quick and easy one, because my wife is about 10 days from having our daughter… so naturally we decided to road-test my brother’s ’63 Ford Galaxie that’s been sitting for about a year. It’s a $2,000 patina special with a simple 289 two-barrel, and it actually fired up with a battery and a little fuel—after we skipped “prime” and went straight to “flooded.” Then we did the logical thing: rinsed it off, topped it with gas, and aimed it 65 miles toward the shop. The drive was… exciting. The steering was so loose it felt like the tie rods were a suggestion, the brakes weren’t exactly confidence-inspiring, and the fuel gauge was basically decorative. Once we survived and got it on the lift, we found the real problem: the power steering control valve was absolutely smoked, to the point where it’s a common failure on these and I’m amazed we lived. The good news is we didn’t have to buy the $600–$1,000 replacement—O’Reilly had a $31 rebuild kit, and a simple adjustment took a ton of the slop out. While we were in there, we knocked out brake work too: wheel cylinder replacement and a fresh rear axle brake line using copper-nickel line, plus a recap on straightening, flaring, and bending lines the way we do it in the shop. It’s real wrenching, real fixes, and then we find out if this old Ford is actually ready to be a road car again.