Day 5 at the ‘08 LA Roadster Show
By Tim Davis
Semi-Pro Karaoke Singer

I actually had 2 people ask me at SoCal’s open house tonight why I didn’t post Day 4. I’ve become a quasi-celebrity…. In LA, the land of celebrity -  How big must I be in Omaha at this point?

OK sports fans – two reasons for no blog last night – first and foremost, the Lakers lost. I was pretty upset by that. They had a 24 point lead at one point in the first half, and the pissed it all away. I really like Kobe, but honestly, if you put Ray Allen on a 29 year old Jordan, MJ would get 50+ every night. And probably 12 assists and about 7 rebounds. The second reason for no blog is no internet service at the hotel. I was going to write something brief after returning to the hotel from the game…..but I could not get access. I posted on the HAMB from my phone…but I am certainly not going to type a 2000 word blog entry on my tiny querty keyboard on the HTC smartphone.

So let me rewind to Thursday – first event of the day was repairing the lights on on Chile Verde. That name is officially stuck by the way. For some crazy reason, we had no turn signals when the head lamps were on, and when the head lamps were on, the rear bulbs had the brake lights illuminated – not the tail lamps. I spent about an hour on the phone with the tech guys at EZ wiring – and we chased it all down – apparently we have a short somewhere, but short(no pun intended) of pulling the harness out of the rear of the chassis, we decided to live with the lack of signals at night and press through the event as is.

After repairing the signals, we headed over to the Kennedy Brothers Bomb Factory. I really like these guys – they love traditional hot rods, completely independent of the 1950’s culture. They are just a couple of SoCal surfers that like old Fords. I totally identify with these guys. I recently attended an event in Florida, hosted by one of the local clubs, and I just can’t get into the rockabilly/greaser lifestyle…wth girls tatt’ed up trying to emulate pinup models…I don’t get it…and I’m not wearing a costume to enjoy my hot rod.

Rant over.

Sinatra and Davinci (the Italian Greyhound guard dogs) greeted me at the front gate. As previously mentioned, I tend to rename people’s dogs – but these guy’s names are spot on – much like the cars that Joe & Jay build. Lots of cool stuff going on at the Kennedys – they were thrashing on a ’36 panel to take their product to the swap meet – very cool – they were also putting the final touches on a ’34 chassis for a phaeton body. These guys know how to build a car – dead nuts correct to the exactly time period you want.

Next stop – Limeworks open house! Steve and company had a great gathering at t

there place Thursday afternoon and into the evening – we rolled out to Whittier at about 1-ish. When we pulled into the parking lot adjacent to their shop, I first noticed a slick ’29 on Deuce rails. This car was spot on – flatmotor, closed drive, early Ford brakes, perfect patina, dropped Ford axle…. All the right stuff. We had visited Steve and company earlier in the week on Tuesday, and not much had changed with regards to the projects at hand – so nothing to really report there – except that the chocolate chip cookies were very soft………….

While at Limeworks, we met a gentlemen, who wished to remain anonymous, who shared with us that he knew of a private collection of cars and related automobilia down in Fullerton. He made us swear to a very high level of secrecy that we would never disclose the exactly location, name or phone number of the collection. That being said, the address is 19931 W. Imperial, Fullerton CA 91583.

This is an incredible collection of cars, vintage tools, gas station signage, old toys, etc, etc. I took several pictures, but they really do not capture the scope of this place. This guy has roadster bodies hanging from the rafters – cherry ’32 firewalls, ’32 front fenders that look as if they were pulled from the assembly line just after passing through the paint shop.

After this long day, I was in rush to get back to the hotel, shower and get off the game. Did I mention that MJ would go off on James Posey for 60+ at age 29? I hate basketball.

So let spare uncle Tim the pain of reliving that agony and move on to Friday. Friday for me began at 3:30 AM. We loaded up and headed out to the swap meet to get in line and wait for the gates to open at 9 AM. That is right…. And 5 and half hour wait to get into the swap meet. Actually more than that, we didn’t roll through the gates until about 10am – so a six+ hour morning of commencing to begin to get ready to start setting up the swap meet space. That is nuts. The fellow vendors are out searching through everyone else’s crap with flashlights Max & Bob sold quite a bit of items before dawn, some of the items being items that you definitely want to have a good look at in the light of day – but I guess these guys were desperate for those parts…. I know I would not pay 4 figures for Deuce fenders with only a AA flashlight’s view of them.

Tons of cool parts in the swap meet – this is the best place to both buy and sell early Ford parts. Period. I don’t think I will ever desire to attend NSRA events on the east cost any longer, unless it is just an excuse to drive the hot rod on a road trip. I watched people get top dollar for hard to find items, and I personally picked up several pieces for cars I’m working on at very cheap prices…. This is the only swap meet I have ever attended where I saw more ’32 axles, wishbones, grille shells, inserts, k-members, and such for sale….it seemed like every 10 spots or so and I was seeing really primo, desirable ’32 parts. I picked a gennie pair of ’32 tail lamp stands, lights, and tag bracket; they look like they were chromed 40 years ago, awesome patina – $50. You can’t find gennie tail lamp stands anywhere any more. Except at the LA roadster show.

We packed away the goodies and headed out to the hotel for a quick shower, then made our way down to SoCal’s open house. I was at the first one of these about 10 years ago, and it was great – about 200 cars, maybe 500 people, only about a 10 minute wait to get a burger…. But this 2008 version – WOW. SoCal has gone mainstream, not sure if it is the TV show, or just word of mouth, but the shop was slammed. The Pomona PD had 4 full blocks of westbound Grand Ave blocked off to park cars – yes, parking not only curbside, but also the two traffic lanes in front of the shop; so we are talking about 4 blocks of cars, 3 wide, plus cars parked in front of the building, the alleyway between the paint/fab shop and the front building, and around the back of the paint/fab shop. It was a nut house. I noticed at about 2pm at the swap meet, just walking around I overheard at least 20 people saying loudly to there friends, “hey, are we going to SoCal?” or “what time are we going to SoCal” – so I should have known that this event would be off the chart in attendance. As we were leaving I did see a fellow HAMB’ers ’29 RPU, sort of a cream/coffee color… I remembered the pics from the board a while back…it was great to see that in person…pretty dialed.

Next stop of the night – Walden’s Speed Shop. Now this is my kind of place. About 50 or so cars at any given time – 200 people max. First things first, I found out that Budweiser is available in a 30 pack in Cali….wow. Nice. Next, as much as I enjoy old cars, I think the real underlying fetish I have is tools. I love tools. My dad always said I was a tool freak – I don’t borrow tools, if I need something, I go buy it. Bobby has every conceivable tool you could ever want. From machine tools, metalshaping tools, jigs, surface tables, etc. etc. His shop has two huge hangar-style tilt out doors that open to the East, exposing the entire shop to the outdoor light. This may be the new blueprint for my new upcoming shop. When we hopped out of the roadster, first thing I noticed was the 3w coupe sitting in the center of the shop. This thing was so nice – Walden is assembling the Brookville coupe bodies in house, on an incredible jig, but they are not just building it stock like B-ville. They are chopping the top 3 ½” and filling the roof with one of their signature Yoder shaped roof inserts. I actually stopped taking pictures of the car, and sat down on the edge of the assembly jig about 20 feet away and stared at the car for 10 minutes while sipping a cold beverage. That body, or that particular car possibly could not be any better. Chop, rake, stance, hood line, proportions. I want one.

Ok – that is about 20 minutes worth of typing for you all, yes I type fast, i’m sure there is some poor grammar and typos….sorry….. I’ve been up since 3-something AM, I’m going to post this, post the pics and hit the sack – more details tomorrow.

TD

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]]> http://clarkehotrods.com/2008/163/feed 0 http://clarkehotrods.com/2008/115 http://clarkehotrods.com/2008/115#comments Fri, 13 Jun 2008 04:04:03 +0000 Clarke http://clarkehotrods.com/?p=115 I think I may have worn out my digital camera taking pictures of the McGee Roadster. But more on that later. After my normal morning routine, and a quick breakfast it was back in the road and into the cool crisp SoCal morning. The weather at 8am here is about 70 degrees with a light breeze – ever breezier in an open car. First stop of the day – The Nethercutt Collection. This is in an incredible museum, located in Sylmar California just North of downtown LA, featuring the collection of Mr. Nethercutt – founder of Merle Norman cosmetics. Every aspect of this facility is top notch – the buildings are incredible, and the cars are even better.

As we topped the stairs and Max swung open the regal front doors of the building, the first words out of his mouth were, “this is a good sign” – what was staring at us from the main reception area and lobby? None other than the Pierson Brothers Coupe and the Doyle Gammell coupe. The Pierson car needs no introduction, but the Gammell coupe is not quite as famous; but was on Ford Motor Company’s list of the “75 Most Influential 1932 Fords” for the 75th birthday of the Deuce. Also in the building – the McGee roadster. This could be by favorite car of all time – period – but is easily my favorite ‘32 Ford by far. I took about 100 pictures of every detail on this car. It was so awesome to be able to get that close to this car, with no one around and literally document every inch of it with photos. At one point, I was laying on the floor taking pictures of the K-member, and one of the collection’s curators stopped by to inquire as to exactly what I was doing. After about a ten minute conversation, he realized I knew way more about that car than he did, and left me to my photo documentary work with a smile on his face. Awesome guy.

After we pulled out of the Nethercutt, Max wanted to backtrack up a side street we took on the way to the museum, as we had spotted a house with some wild looking cactus in the front yard. When we pulled up to the house to take a picture, I noticed that there was a block wall in front of the house, but behind it there looked to be hundreds more HUGE cacti! We jumped out and walked up the driveway, to find one of the most incredible, undiscovered sights in SoCal – a 50 year old cactus farm, that has been surrounded by developement and housing. The gentlemen on the property was leasing some space from the owner, and gave us the grand tour of the facility. Aside from growing various types of cacti, the recently passed owner was also an artist, sculptor, and collector of everyting from vintage padlocks to toy airplanes. We spent only 30 minutes or so there, but it was very interesting – one of those things you just accidentally stumble across, and then proceeds to absolutely blow your mind. They sell cacti, ranging in price from $300 to $15,000. I need to looking into farming………..

Back on the road – headed to Hollywood. There is a new generation of hot rod builder on the rise – we visited with Jimmy White of Circle City yesterday, and today, we called on Hollywood Hot Rods and the Old Crow Speed Shop. Troy Ladd is the driving force behind HHR, and is one of the top young builders in the country. His own personal roadster, the bright orange ‘32(which many people believe should be wearing the ‘07 AMBR crown) was pulled up in the front door of the shop. It is so awesome to see cars with this level of craftsmanship being driven. In the year or more since this car has been complete, you can see some wear on the driver’s seat, and couple repaired paint chips in the usual highboy places. As I leaned over the passenger side of the car to snap a couple of pictures, I reached down and felt the outside header – slightly warm – I like where Troy’s head is at – a beautiful SoCal day – driving a beautiful roadster. Lots of cool projects at HHR – the one that caught most of my attention was a little Model A, with a flathead, running a pair of the new reproduction Ardun heads, and a full torsion bar suspension engineered and built by Steve Moal. This car is being built for an upcoming Mexican Road Race – Doane Spencer would be so into this rig….right up his alley.

Right next door – literally – is the Old Crow Speed Shop. We walked around the corner and met up with Lucky. The owner Bobby Green was out today, but we chilled with Lucky and looked over some shop projects, belly tankers and swapped some interesting Bonneville stories. Amidst our conversation, I realized that the Old Crow Bellytanker featured recently in The Rodder’s Journal was no there, after asking Lucky, he told us that the tanker was on board a ship, making its way home from Amsterdam. The Netherlands?  Well, more backstory developed, and after all this is Los Angeles guys – , Tommy Hilfiger used all three Old Crow tankers in a recent advertising campaign for the summer of ‘08. They took the tanker back to Amsterdam to the Hilfiger headquarters for the summer fashion season runway event. He showed us some of the still shots of the cars at Bonneville with the fashion models draped over the cars and posing with the tankers in the background….I guess this makes it official, Dry lakes racing has gone Hollywood.

You can watch a quick trailer of the Hilfiger footage here

As you can image, a very busy day burning up the LA freeways – one last stop for the day in Duarte, at the world famous Justice Brothers Museum. When I cracked the front door open, I was welcomed by that sweet, sweet smell of nitromethane. It is like it reached out and grabbed my nose to say, “WELCOME!” This eclectic collection, housed at the headquarters of the JB Automotive group, features a stout collection of early midget, sprint cars and drag cars. I spotted more Offy powered cars in that place than I could keep track of. We looked over all the race cars, then made our way across the street to phase 2 of the museum – what did I first notice? I stocker Deuce roadster looking like the day it rolled off the assemlby line. And right next door? a ‘33 Phaeton with less than 900 miles on the clock. Original and unrestored. I just could not get enough of these two cars. I could no resist opening the driver’s door on the roadster. The door jambs were spotless, and the doors clicked closed better than a new Toyota Camry.

A long day on the road – but arriving back at the hotel, finally some hot rods in the parking lot! A trio of ‘30-31 roadster pickups and a ‘32 roadster pulled in from Nevada today – Tommorrow it is going to start getting hectic – and I’ll keep you all up to date on the happenings…..

Well,

My second day in SoCal started off with us setting out on the 57 freeway today heading to Boyd’s in La Habra. As some of you may or may not know, Boyd Coddington passed away recently, and has left is shop in the hands of his wife Jo, and the competent staff that has turned out some great cars over the years. When we walked in the door, it just felt odd. Generally there are cars jammed in the show room area, present projects, past projects and cool cars for sale. Today, only a ‘29 roadster pickup, the pink ‘55 Cadillac built for Reese’s candy company, and the Whatthehey. That car is an incredible example of workmanship. We spend a little amount of time at Boyd’s, just taking it in, and observing the memorabilia on the walls…it just felt like we should be there, like we were paying our respects to him; or maybe just the idea of him that was no longer there. It is one thing I cannot describe.

Just around the corner from Boyd’s was Kugel Komponents. Jerry Kugel has been an innovator in the world of independent front and rear suspensions for decades. We pulled up at the shop the roadster and staring back as us just inside the door was an awesome restored Fordor; and its neighbor in the shop, was a stripped bare Tudor…not so much as a pinhole in the sheetmetal. Also of interest, as I mentioned yesterday at Scandinavian, apparently every hot rod shop in SoCal has a gennie ‘32 chassis sitting up on a shelf in the shop!

The next stop was LimeWorks in Whittier. On the way, we began discussing possible names for Max’s green roadster – he had suggested Vamos Verde – “go green”. I stewed on that for two days, and out of the blue riding up the 5, I blurted out Chile Verde. I think it has stuck. If any you have heard my propensity to rename people’s dogs at will, you know that my naming of things is pretty spot on. Chile Verde will stick.

When we arrived at Limeworks, we turned of off Greenleaf and slid around the back and pulled in the back door via the alley. We were immediately greeted by Limey Steve and the crew. Funny, a green car was a hit with a shop that has the word “lime” in the name – who would have thought. After spending some time going over our ride with them, we went inside to check out what they were working on. An awesome deep maroom roadster was hanging out the back door, unsplit bone, dropped ‘32 axle, flathead with early speed equipment, closed drive – nice car. Also, was a new ‘32 pickup that the guys told us they litterally through together with some parts around the shop – and get this, a $425 Earl Scheib paint job.

After leaving Limeworks, we spun around the block and hit up Moon Speed Equipment. Max wanted to pick up a new air cleaner cover for Chile Verde(see how I cleverly work that into the text so smoothly? it’s sticking). Max had purchased one at this exactly location about 18 years ago, and it had begun to rust. If you are an auto enthusiast of any type, you need to stop in at Moon. Carroll Shelby built the very first AC Cobra in one of the bays of that building. Just an incredible landmark in the car culture.

Now onto Circle City Hot Rods in Orange California. The city of Orange is such a quaint city – buried in the east side of Orange County, it is almost like somehow the effects of urban sprawl simply jumped over this municipality. The architecture, design and feel of Orange is amazing. Nicknamed the “Circle City” for its roundabouts and traffic circles – it seems far away from downtown LA, but is really just right around the corner. We rolled up to meet Jimmy White at the front door of the shop. Jimmy immediately recognized Chile Verde from the Antique Nationals the last Sunday at Fontana. We got the quick and dirty tour – some dialed coupe projects, a ‘31 Victoria – going mid-60’s gasser style with a punched out 348 and a 4 speed, nose bleed stance….crazy…I’d gladly signup for that test drive. Also at Circle City was an awesome ‘36 3-window; a true survivor late 50’s hot rod – in the shop getting some sheetmetal repair and a drivertrain refresh. An original California car, that was sold back East in the late 60’s, has bow been brought back home to California. Jimmy and crew are going to swap out the early Ford box for a late 4 speed, and open drive, but leaving as much of the car as it was and has been since the late 50’s. Jimmy runs a top notch shop and is truly one of the awesome young talents in the business – www.circlecityhotrods.com

Totally off topic, but the morning began with me hitting the hotel gym at 6am for a little workout, while watching some Sportscenter. Apparently Ken Griffey Jr has now hit 600 HR’s – and they talked about this nearly the entire 30 or 40 mintues I was in there. Words like incredible, outstanding, and even “legendary” were routinely used to describe Mr. Griffeys career – but honestly, has he ever won a World Series? Been a factor on a really great winning team? Isn’t the point of participating in any league or sport to win the championship of your fellow competitors? If a race car driver had a 20 year career, and ended up leading the most laps of any driver ever, but only won a handful of races, and no championships, is that really legendary?

A long day and about 200 miles on the roadster left me with a burnt nose and an empty stomach. After a quick bite to eat – it was all about the Lakers for me. I’ve been an LA fan for a long time, before Kobe, before Shaq – back to a starting five of Nick Van Exel, Eddie Jones, Cedric Ceballos, Elden Campbell, and Vlade Divac anchoring the middle( who can recall that team taking the Spurs to six games in ‘95?). But I don’t want to tempt fate so I’m not going into the details of the game. But it was AWESOME. I’ve been to my share of sporting events and partied in many sports towns, but LA fans are nuts! I can’t wait for games 4 & 5 – Its now nearly 11pm pacific here, I am jamming out my blog entry for today – and it is zero hour…..

Well, today was the first day in SoCal for the LA Roadster Show – I flew in Friday night, but as mentioned attended the ROAR 1/8 scale Buggy Nationals in Beumont CA over the weekend – it was great to see everyone out at the race, including Gil Losi, longtime member of the Over the Hill Gang, and owner of the steel yellow Boydster II, among other notable cars. The “St. Louis crew” had an interesting night out in Banning CA on Friday, with the night wrapping up with me spraining my left ankle leaving a local watering hole. It was a great time. Along with the race, Beumont was celebrating their annual Cherry Festival. I was unable to attend personally, but I met a nice girl, Vanessa, and she was so kind to pick me a small bag of cherries from her own backyard crop and bring them to me the next day. I would not say I am a big cherry fan, but these were really sweet – home grown, hand picked with no pesticides…. you can’t buy them like this folks…

I hitched a ride back to the Ontario airport with the JConcepts R/C race team, where Max Brodgon and Bob VanHorn awaited to pick me up. I piled all my gear into the truck and away we went. First thing on the agenda – Bob wanted to go surfing at the legendary San Onofre St. Park, so off we went to jump in the Pacific and kick the week off on a board. San Onofre – located just south of San Clemente & San Juan Capistrano, about 40 miles north of San Diego – the beach is famous for being one of the first surfing spots in SoCal with photographic evidence of surfing activity as early as 1930’s. Practically all surf culture that we know today was born on that stretch of sand. The surf today at 10am was 6 to 7′ and overhead. No surf like that in Florida. The most amazing feature of this beach is that the entire shore of this beach is covered with rock, even down into the water – as you wade out, you are walking on the rocks until you can paddle out on your board or swim off – very unusual. The rocks are the most beautiful assortment of colored stones I have ever seen. For some strange reason I have collected rocks and stones from significant events in my life since I was about 12. I figured this was a big deal, so I broke California State law, and swiped a bright purple near perfectly round stone for my collection.

From there, we rode up Pacific Coast Highway to Huntington Beach and had some lunch at the world famous Mama Avila’s El Ranchito. Opening in 1966 this is a great little Mexican restaurant, and a true American Dream story. With three of the signature “Cadillac Margaritas” down and a chicken chimmy later – it was time to hit up the Main St. surf shops in Huntington. Huntington Surf and Sport is one of the favorites of the strip along with Jack’s directly across the street – I did pick up a pair of Scott flops at Jack’s – you just can’t buy these flops in Florida…. Cali has the market covered a cute girls, hot rods and dialed flops.(I’m sure there are more things, but these just come to mind first; and in that order)

We made a few hot rod related stops while in Huntington Beach, first being Scandinavian Street Rods – Erik Hannson runs an incredible shop there, with 19 ‘32 Fords under construction in the shop today. So much to mention – they had the 100th ‘32 roadster they have assembled in house using Brookville components, as well as a fleet of new Brookville 3 windows under construction. Cool little Ardun powered Deuce chassis “on the shelf” also.

Second stop was a Chuck Lombardo’s California Street Rods. Chuck was not at the shop – he is currently out on Hot Rod magazine’s Power Tour. We spent a little time there, and checked out some cool things in the shop – the neatest of which was a little ‘33 roadster, with a full British flair – all Jaguar power & drive train, narrow wires with big Excelsior tires, awesome stance, and and incredible hand-formed brass side trim that looked as if Henry should have put side trim on the Model 40.

We wrapped up the evening by taking Max’s little green roadster out to Pomona to Bravo Burger for a quick dinner. This place is incredible. I ordered a grilled chicken sandwich, and the menu stated “comes with French Fries Onion Rings, Zucchini” I said, “I’ll take the Zucchini”, and the girl responded with a wry smile, “you get it all.” She was pretty cute, so as you can imagine I inserted a clever joke at that juncture, the exact nature of that comment will be left up to you all, but she has texted me twice since I started typing this at 11pm Pacific. At any rate – this place puts enough food out in front of you to feed 4 people and a 2 year old thoroughbred. Twice.

More details to follow-

So next week I’ll be flying out to LA – attending the famous LA Roadster show. This is a Father’s Day tradition that every hot rodder should attend at least once. The first time I attended was in 1999, I took my father with me, as a gift. I was 21, he was 59 and had never been to California. He was a car enthusiast his whole life and that trip was really special for both of us.

I was planning to fly out on Wednesday the 11th, but I am currently trying to move my flight up to Friday or Saturday so I can attend a Radio Control car National Championship in Beaumont CA.

I’ll be there with the rest of the FL boys – riding around with Max Brogdon in that little green ‘31 on ‘32 rails we turned out of the shop last fall -

I be updating the blog daily  – we should have an interesting time – both during the day at the shops and show – and you can all count on some great play by play of the night life from the sports bar next to the Shiloh Inn in Diamond Bar…….haha. Also, the Lakers will be playing 2 NBA Finals games while we are there, so I definately plan to take in at least one of those games from the Staples Center…….