25 Apr
A couple of weeks ago Carl Bigg’s Mercury woodie came into the shop for a major transplant. If you read our last post, you’ll remember that both the engine and transmission had issues: near-terminal cracks in the block, missing teeth throughout the transmission, etc. While the woodie had lived a long and hearty life, a revitalization was overdue. We set out to hunt down a rebuildable block, and tore into the transmission:
23 Apr
Bill Evan’s coupe is making good progress. The trunk area has really come together; the aluminum panels are trimmed and now secured with Dzus fasteners, the fiberglass body lip has been massaged to jive with the edge of the panels, and we’ve begun routing the battery cables and wiring. After a bit of a hunt we found some nicely-made 90° elbow battery lugs that will allow us to run the cables cleanly out through the tin. The battery area will be covered by a finished, carpeted floor panel.
16 Apr
From fuzzy dice and dummy spots to license plate toppers and laminated dash knobs, accessories have always helped define a car. Unfortunately, some don’t know when to stop. It can turn an otherwise cool car into a rolling curio cabinet.
Then there are guys like Don Triolo. His cars are so subtle that it’s easy to walk right by ‘em. The exquisite craftsmanship, the perfect stance, the flawless finishes; they’re all lost on the unwashed masses. But we know, don’t we? His cars stop us dead in our tracks.
1 Apr
Woodie in the house! Carl Bigg’s ’42 Mercury has loads of character. It’s also extremely rare. Just over six hundred were built before production was cut short by World War II.
Longer and a little more luxurious than their Ford siblings, these Merc woodies were among the flagships of all of Henry’s cars. Carl’s car probably enjoyed a great life, but eventually it was literally put out to pasture. At some point in the 70’s it was rescued from its resting place in an orchard by a young surfer from Santa Clara. He treated it to an amateur restoration, then drove its wheels off; Early Ford V8 Club event tags from throughout the western U.S. decorate the maple header above the windshield.
Wabi Sabi is a Japanese idiom that describes the kind of rough, natural, imperfect beauty that only comes with age. We call it patina, and this woodie is loaded with it. Carl has done much to fix things on the car without disturbing its natural state of grace, but recently its driveline began to complain. The engine ran rough, it wouldn’t hold oil pressure, the transmission was popping out of gear. It was time for some attention. Continue reading
26 Mar
A few years back, a couple of talented guys, Ron Attebury and Dick Jones, teamed up on a high tech T-roadster they hoped to offer as a kit. The car combined a space frame tube chassis and torsion bar suspension with a svelte, track-nosed fiberglass T-roadster body. Three of the kits were produced. One was nicely finished with a 4.3 liter V6 and made it into the feature pages of the 12/93 issue of Rod & Custom. A second is somewhere in the wind, its parts scattered after the owner passed away. The third eventually made its way to the garage of our friend Mason Peters.
Continue reading
13 Mar
With few companies manufacturing speed parts, hot rodders in the ‘40’s and ‘50’s used junkyard ingenuity to coax more performance out of their cars. It didn’t take these guys long to discover that the taller ratios offered in the Lincoln-Zephyr gear clusters allowed them to wind out further in first and second gear, a definite advantage both on and off the track. The fact that a 26-tooth LZ cluster dropped right into a ’39 Ford transmission case made this conversion extremely popular.
Taller transmission ratios don’t automatically translate to better performance. Heavier cars with stock motors actually lug down under taller gears, but the kind of stripped-down, hopped-up soup jobs we drive definitely dig ‘em. Francis Bonamy’s ’36 five window falls into this latter category. With its hot flathead he has no trouble getting off the line in a hurry. We built one of our Banjo Pinion Seals for Francis. After it arrived he came back and asked if we could build him a transmission. What made the project especially cool was the fact that Francis lives in France.
The popularity of this conversion wiped out the supply of OEM 26 and even rarer 25 tooth LZ clusters years ago, but reproduction units are now available. We located one at a reputable supplier, and went off to hunt down a ’39 trans to build. Our buddy Brian Eakin had one available and, like all Brian’s stuff, it was in immaculate condition. The thrust washer faces were cherry as was the case and all the components we’d be using. ’39 transmissions come in two flavors: Standard and Deluxe. The Standard uses the old-style synchros and narrow shift fork. The Deluxe uses the later versions. While our new box was in great shape, it was a Standard. To be able to update the synchros, we’d need both a mainshaft and shift fork out of a Deluxe. We’d also need a ’36 style bearing retainer and rear mount so the trans would drop right into Francis’ chassis. Paul Jennings, one of the veteran Ford authorities in our area, came through with the parts. Continue reading
27 Feb
If you’ve been following the build on Bill Evans’ coupe, you saw in our last post that we’d progressed into the trunk area with fabrication of the trunk’s aluminum side and rear panels. The cockpit of the car, originally designed by Chip Foose, features broad, swooping expanses of brushed aluminum, trimmed with leather inserts. (You’ll find several photos of the interior metalwork here). The same motif carries into the trunk. Follow along as Gary hammers out and welds up these panels.
The body of the car is vintage fiberglass from Poliform and is, as you can see from our earlier posts, heavily modified. Unfortunately, much of the work was left rough. It’s taken a good deal of labor and a lot of itching but the aluminum-to-fiberglass fit is coming together.
Although not nearly as photogenic, we’ve made a lot of progress on the wiring, too. We’re close to conquering the snake farm that energizes the coupe’s audio visual system/computers/back-up camera/GPS/remote controls/etc, etc. Check back in, we’ll keep you posted.
11 Feb
The hot rod and woodie worlds are circles that intersect. We know a number of guys that have their feet firmly planted in both. It was in the woodie world a few years back that I stumbled across a compete ’40 Ford chassis. By complete I mean it included the engine, trans, rear end, brakes, wheels, tires, gas tank – everything. The old owner wanted a brand new, air-bagged, disc-braked, 350/350 chassis for his car. He didn’t want any of “that old flathead crap.” I saw it as the beginnings of a traditional coupe or roadster build, so I jumped on it.
I have a pair of original Deuce frame rails that these parts will eventually go into, so I put the ’40 frame up for sale. A customer wanted it for his ’40 coupe and let us build it for him. We set it up with split wishbones and a dropped axle, a parallel leaf rear end, and a center cross member modified to accept his modern 350 transmission.
Chassis Engineering (West Branch, Iowa) is the go-to source for the parts needed to convert these frames. CE stuff is well designed, sturdy, and proven. They call their parts “bolt-on” components, but anyone that’s built a car knows what that means. We thought you might like to follow along as we “bolt” this project together. Continue reading
31 Jan
We arrived back at the shop last night after a long, six-day trip to this year’s Grand National Roadster Show. Gary and I helped Jim Tipper display his Brasher & Cummings ’33 Willys Gasser. Showing a car is a lot of work. Jim has been organizing photos and memorabilia since last summer and the installation took more than a few hours. It was well worth it. We shared our ride home in Jim’s Crew Cab with a giant purple best-of-class trophy.
I met this snazzy trophy queen on set-up day. She was more than happy to pose with Jim’s color-coordinated coupe.
This year the show’s promoters once again cut a deal with the Southern California weather gods. Temperatures soared into the 80’s and remained pegged there throughout the weekend. Hundreds of hot rods and customs drove onto the fairgrounds to park between the buildings, adding to the 500 cars, trucks and bikes already on display. There was no way you could see it all in a day. Continue reading
13 Dec
My Uncle Tommy Lorbeer wasn’t really kin. He was my dad’s best friend. Tommy raced with my dad at the lakes in the late 30′s, flew a P-38 in WWII, drove a Porsche in the early 50′s, and had the first VW Van in Riverside. He was alway ahead of the curve. As kids, we’d never heard a stereo system before when he flew a fighter jet from the left speaker to the right — at full volume. Man, we all hit the floor. In 1940 he bought a newfangled toy, an 8mm camera, and took it out to Harper Dry Lake. My cousin found the reel and I had it digitized. My son Connor edited it and added the sound. Enjoy: