My Roadsters

Here are my two roadster, a picture taken the weekend of the Grand National Roadster Show. I'm finally calling Daytons my roadster. It took a while to get over the fact that someone else built it and I have only owned it for 0.5% of its existence. It's titled to me, so technically it is mine. Daytons is still being worked on, so the hood and grill are off. The car look rough & tough stripped down. It looks like a few pictures I've seen of hot rods in the 50's where the owners threw a car together just so they could drive something.

Long Awaited Update --sorry

The roadster came home just before Thanksgiving and I have been working on it every weekend since. At first I thought I could drive it to the Mooneyes X-Mass Party in Irwindale, but alas, the car was far from done (besides it rained). Then, I thought I could get it in the Grand Nation Roadster Show at the end of January, but I was apparently too late, the Primer Palace was full. My work slowed, with no date looming I could now take my time.

Since bringing it home I’ve learned a lot about the car, some of it’s history, and more about what it is made of. I had a lot of questions the first day I saw it, unfortunately the builder was dead, so was the owner of the last seven years.

I bought the roadster from the sons of the fellow who bought the car from the supposed builder. I say supposed builder because I have doubts that Bill Bayer, the gentleman who owned the car for 50 years, actually laid the foundation of this hot rod. Reasons I won’t discuss today. But, thankfully the car has not changed much in its 50+ years of life and from the photo record I received with the purchase.

Lets look at some of the photos I’ve taken. Here is the car assembled, it has a great classic hot rod look. I like to say, “Hot rods are about the parts they are made of.” I am impressed at all the great, old parts here. Some of the first things you see a first glance, are the wheels. Red wire wheels, and not just any wheels --American made Dayton Wire Wheels. After some investigation, I believe they date back to the late 1930’s to 40’s. Next you might see the 1932 grill or the slanted windshield. That awesome windshield is probably one of a kind, probably entirely hand made. The front grill is of course an original, naturally it has had the filler smoothed on top.

Once beautiful leather seats were, unfortunately, left out in the rain for a few years. I nor the sons know why their father did this. But I’m sure it wasn’t intentional. Their father took ill a few years before his death in October 2009, and so the car hadn’t ran in years. Also gone, answers to many questions.

Working on the car, there were many unfinished projects going on. The engine was filled with paint thinner as was the gas tank. Wires were loose, and the brakes half re-built. Projects I was poised to finish happily.

Another thing you see right away is the Deuce frame. It is an original too. Remember the car was built in the 40’s or 50’s, it would be 30+ years until a ’32 frame was reproduced. The hood is a three-piece set-up common on vintage rods, this was likely made by Bill himself. The quality is at a lower standard to the foundational built, although it looks great, it is a little flimsy.

Under the hood, a 1940's Mercury flathead V8. That might account for the 1941 Mercury title the car came with. But that is no average flathead engine, in fact it isn’t an average Mercury flathead. I will discuss the engine in a future post.

This hot rod was originally built with a Model A or B 4-banger, and that is a Crager overhead-valve add-on on top. A rare item today, and to my dismay, the banger is long-gone. For a while I though the 4 cylinder was in the old garage, but it was something else –what a shame.

What next? I hope to have the car on the streets of LA very soon. I’d like to find some old two-tone red leather for the seat. I've been told it isn’t made anymore, I’ll search for it anyway, the car is worth the effort.

Where Were You All These Years?

It’s hard for me to believe what has happen to me in the last few days. Saturday I bought one of those "dream cars", like the stories you hear about a fellows finding a Cobra in an old barn. Well, early hot rods from a by-gone era are just as rare. And finding a survivor practically compete and original to the days it was built is as rare. Its former owner had just passed away a week prior and the family is liquidating his car collection. I was the lucky guy that called first!

It’s all I have been thinking about for the last few days since I saw & bought the car. I still don’t have it home yet, it’s still buried in their garage. Of course he was a hoarder, hot rodders often have that problem. But thankfully, he was smart enough not to change the car too much from it original appearance.

I still don’t have the complete picture on the history, a conversation with the widow is in order. But what I do know from talking with the son is that it was owned by a neighbor who also dead only five years ago. And this guy bought it from that widow. He drove it into the garage and it has sat there since. Whether or not the neighbor built it still has to be discussed.

I loved it from the first sight in a Craigslist ad. I knew right away, that this wasn’t an ordinary roadster. Nobody today puts those wheels on their cars today. And, I haven’t seen a padded dash on a car built in the last 40 years.

The next day, I got to see it first, it was in a packed Long Beach garage. It didn’t take much more then a peek at the partly buried roadster to know it was ALL REAL and it was old. Within five minutes it was mine.

The body, an original 1929 Ford Model A Roadster had been modified in a way that only could have been done prior to the 70’s. The car looked 10x better in person then it the two measly Craigslist pictures I saw only hours earlier (above).

The frame is an original ’32 frame, pinched to fit the body was so clean, with holes filled, no boxing inside. The grill is also an original Deuce, smoothed on top.

The engine, and 59A flathead with Edelbrock’s first performance heads, the block letter version. There is a hard to find sprint-car oil filter on it and two 97 carbs on a home-made intake.

Then there is the interior, cracking ox-blood color Naugahyde stuffed with cotton filling. An original ’39 Deluxe wheels, a 60 year old 8000 RPM Stewart Warner tach strapped to the column. All vintage, all old, all really-really old –I had sensory overload!

Now the wheels, the Pièce De Résistance, a set of super-early Dayton wire wheels, almost too rare to believe. I have only seen one other rod with wheels like these in the past ten years, and that was in a magazine. Knock-offs, could be race wheels, I don’t know yet. But I do know, this car, with those wheels will command attention by themselves.

I bring it home in a few days. More to come...

Flatheads In The Park

I would like to focus your attention on the engine that started it all; the Ford V8, a.k.a. the flathead.

October 11, 2009 was the annual Throttlers Car Club car show at Johnny Carson Park in Burbank. It’s the best local show and that attracts the best in traditional hot rodding from surrounding neighborhoods. A smallish show… under two hundred cars. But what it lacks in size it makes up in nostalgia.

Above, two great looking V8s from members of the Burbank Choppers car club. A lot of effort has to be spent keeping polished aluminum engine parts bright.

This one is in Vern Hammond’s ’34 chopped coupe, also a member of the Choppers. His car has got to be one of the more famous of the traditional cars of today. The 4x2 Sharp brand intake means business. And those Evans heads were one of the better performing heads of the day.

Here’s a pre ’39 V8-60, 21-stud engine with a Thickstun intake. It was in front of a 26/27 Model T roadster body on a 1932 frame, with a chopped ‘28/29 Model A grill. A daring combination, and worth some attention. He’s got all the right parts for a correct vintage rod.

This looks like a ’49-53 8BA engine with 59A type cylinder heads. I like the Mallory distributor. This was in a channeled ’28 A-bone with a truck grill. It would look better with an old radiator cap and vintage looking ignition wires.

Here is a great looking 21-stud engine with polished stock heads, likely a 1937 or ’38. Evans triple intake manifold, Stromberg 97s, and a Spalding magneto. I don’t mean to be picky, but the radiator overflow is totally out of place.

The engine on the left has a Edmunds intake with stands that elevate the Holley 94 carbs, and Eddie Meyer heads. The engine on the right has Edmunds heads combined with the Edmunds intake with 97 carbs, as wells as a Fil-Cool-Ator oil filter unit on the firewall.

Opinions In Rodding: Vintage or Nostalgic?

A lot of people might think those two adjectives may mean the same thing when it comes to hot rodding. But in fact they couldn’t be more different.
A “vintage” hot rod may be a rod built a long time ago or a car built today with vintage parts. Any car that has raced on the dry lakes of southern California in the 30’s-60’s for example, and has survived through today, is certainly a vintage hot rod. The Doane Spencer ’32 roadster may be the most famous of those cars these days.
While a nostalgic hot rod on the other hand, is a car constructed more recently and looks like it was built in another place it time. A good example might be Jimmy Shine’s ’34 Ford pick-up with it’s Ford flathead V8, a red painted steel wheels.
I call my ’29 a ‘nostalgic hot rod’, and like to say it looks like an early 50’s street roadster.
There a lot of guys I’ve met recently who are building era-specific cars. The popularity among younger car builders is growing do in part to the focused coverage by popular rodding magazines like Rod & Custom, Street Rodder, and newer periodicals like Hot Rod Deluxe. The latter only covers cars & shows that are predominantly 1940-60’s nostalgic & vintage hot rods & customs.
The father of all rodding mags, Hot Rod Magazine, covers hot rodding maybe too broadly, and includes the entire spectrum of domestic car performance building. Which is exactly what they were doing when the magazine started in 1947, so I have to give them credit for staying focused. But what was new then, is nostalgic now. A lot has changed since 1947, souping cars today is mainstream America in every sense of the term. And so may be building an ol’scool hot rod soon.
Although the number is still very small, building pre-1940’s cars into vintage street machine seems to be on the rise. And fervent to avoid the rat rod stigma, guys are taking more effort to add old parts in a manner to make them look purposeful and with respect to way it was done in the past. There are some who like to take nostalgic to new heights with themes never on vintage cars like aviation focused cars, referring to WWII fighter planes. I won’t argue, they don’t hearken to times past, but they tend to be too showy and unrealistic.
“Rat Rods”, the scorn of in the hot rodding community, is the modern day term that defines a barely drivable, unfinished, rough & rusty car. Often built by individuals with little or no sense of rodding history, having only basic mechanical knowledge, and light on funds to do the job right. Typically using a junkyard 1970’s or newer engine, and often having 1920 to 30’s sheet metal hanging off a homemade frame, the car will have a minimal interior. More time is spent placing adornments such as skulls, flames, or lightening holes then replacing leaking gaskets or completing a weld bead. Air-bad suspensions, crudely chopped tops, and misuse of modern car parts is a tale-tell sign you are looking at a rat rod.
But “rats” are only one facet on the automotive cultural gem, and there are many. Tomorrow builders will do things differently… or maybe not. For what has been before, will be again. And as long as there are open plains with American iron in them waiting for the day they can be resurrected again --there will be someone with a pick-up truck and a run-away imagination willing to take the challenge.