Swapping old auto stuff and stories at Kansas Sunflower meet

Before you get inside the doors, you see men carting newly bought treasures to their pickups.

Jeremy Barrett of Louisburg towed out a long oval-shaped gas tank. It has metal knobs worn smooth from use. The tank came from an ancient Fordson tractor. Before Barrett could leave the Kansas Pavilions, five people tried to buy the tank from him, he said. He plans to put it on a 1937 Dodge street rod.

A sea of mostly vintage auto and transportation items, tools and Americana — that’s what you’ll see at the Kansas Sunflower Swap Meet for Charity. The swap meet — at Kansas Pavilions and at Hartman Arena, both off I-135 — opened Friday. It continues from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday.

“You can see everything down here,” said Butch Lytle, who has been putting up a booth at the swap meet for more than 30 years. Lytle, of Colony, north of Iola, began collecting and selling auto-related stuff as a hobby in the late 1970s. He kept acquiring parts from junkyards and swap meets. Now, the parts are vintage and sought-after.

Along his booth, he was offering everything from skeleton keys to sculpted hood ornaments, one for a Packard.

Lytle has traveled the swap-meet circuit from New England to California. “I want to see the country,” the 72-year-old retiree said.

Further along the booths, Tim Unruh of McPherson had amassed his own interesting stuff. One captivating piece: a tin, windup toy roadster made by Strauss Mechanical Toys. It’s circa 1920.

“That’s a very rare car,” Unruh told a white-haired man gazing at the toy. The driver in the toy car leans aggressively forward behind the wheel, as if he is propelling himself. The price of the toy on Friday: $300.

At another booth, someone put up a poster with photos of dozens of antique cars and trucks for sale, including a 1957 four-door Desoto. “Complete, good parts/project car, $2800,” it said under the photo of the Desoto, a car that hasn’t been made for almost 60 years.

One of the most historic and uniquely Wichita displays at the swap meet is a 1919 Jones Six-Sixty five-passenger touring car. It had a top speed of 60 mph. It has a shiny red body with black fenders and running boards.

The auto is one of eight known surviving Jones cars built in Wichita from 1914 to 1921, said owner Phil Knighton.

Years ago, he bought it from a man in Corpus Christi, who got it from someone who left it covered behind a house in Miami, Okla. It took four to five years to restore it, said Knighton, a walking encyclopedia of Jones car history.

He became fascinated with Jones cars in 1960 after writing a college research paper about the Jones company. Back then, Knighton said, “I never thought I’d own one.”

He deftly opened the hood and beamed at the nearly 100-year-old Continental aluminum-block engine.

This story was originally published February 3, 2017 at 6:27 PM with the headline "Swapping old auto stuff and stories at Kansas Sunflower meet."