Thread: What a difference............

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.............a few small changes can make. Not exactly a build log, more of a "fix what ain't right" log.

So I got another bug up my butt recently that is all part of that "Hello, my name is Bob, and I'm a hot rod-a-holic" thing. I came upon a '32 Brookville bodied roadster that had been built by a retired railroad guy for his son. The boy's name was Andy, and dad wanted to give him a nice, well built hot rod to enjoy. Sadly, Andy came down with leukemia and passed away just about the time dad finished the car. The dad, Stan, kept the car for awhile as a remembrance, but, understandably, he eventually came to accept that it was time to let it go. Stan made probably 85% of the choices I would have made if I'd put this kind of car together myself, so my interest level was high. His workmanship, generally, was of a fairly high level. The wiring is very neatly routed and he used the vintage cloth style wire. The system is powered by a generator rather than alternator, and functions well. The rest of the items I'll note almost all fit for the '60s style car I had in mind. While many are still chasing the early nostalgia stuff what with flatheads and skinny bias tires, I've pretty much run that course over the past 20 or so years. I wanted to do a roadster in the style I might have done in 1963 if I'd had the ability/sense to pull it off.

Stan chose to do a fairly traditional chassis with Ford buggy springs, a dropped front axle and a 9" rear out of a '57 wagon. It's got BLC headlights, a stock '32 grille assembly, chopped windshield, roll and pleat interior with banjo wheel and all the bumps and things that a post war traditional car might have. But at that time the car would have shed it's old style flathead V8 in favor of them new fangled overhead valve v8 engines. The most likely, despite all the whiny b.s. we often hear, being a small block Chev. What better than a slightly over bored 283 with a mild cam and tri=power? Back it up with a T10 four speed shifted by a Hurst shifter and tah-dah.......we're right in the early '60s. So far, so good. So what needs improvement to hit my target more in the center? First he didn't quite get the tire sizing right. I'm sure he had a goal in mind, but it doesn't work for me. So one of the first things I did was work up something that would have been done in '63 to "update" the appearance of the car in a similar way to updating the horse power/performance. Nothing says '60s style hot rod wheels better than 5 spoke aluminum rims (well, maybe magnesium, but us po' boys had to settle for aluminum look-a-likes). And of course sizing for a nice rubber rake is essential. Stan's choice had about a 1.5 inch stagger front to back..............ugh! The new skins now have 5 inches, a much better look to my old eyes. I cheated a bit with the choice of radials, but tried to come close on profile as the early '60s didn't offer the jumbo wide tires of the late '60s into '70s. I had to work out some tuning issues, mostly with the tri-power, but since he went all in on the era stuff it still has a points style distributor. They actually work pretty well, but one of the solutions I had to employ was bringing the plug gap down to points spread rather than what electronic ignitions use. It runs better, but still needs a little more tweaking to get where I like it. It had blue dot lenses in the '39 tail lights, and I abhor those so original style lenses have been installed. I may yet change those units out for the '50 Pontiac ones instead, but that can wait. One of the things that helps a '32 hiboy is a hood. Yeah, the hoodless look works, but somehow the addition of a full hood gives the body a visual lengthening that just works..............at least to my eye.

There will be other small changes over time, but for the most part the above list should get the car where I want it thematically. It drives nicely, and doesn't have any hugely bad habits that need repair. Let's hope for a nice summer now......

If these come out the way I put them in the first pic is the way it started followed by the wheel and tire update, along with a dink around shot of test fitting the new hood while playing with the idea of using hubcaps instead of 5 spokes..........those would probably work better with whitewalls, but not for now.