COAL: Hobby Car Of A Lifetime # 5 — 1922 Dodge Hot Rod – When Hot Turns Tepid

I recently bought a copy of this book, it only took over fifty years…

 

I’d always assumed that someday, I would build a hot rod.

I’d been reading Hot Rod magazine since I was in high school. Not to mention Street Rodder, Rod Action, and Rod and Custom. During freshman year I found an auto-related book entitled, How to Fix Up Old Cars, written by Leroi “Tex” Smith. I knew who Smith was because he was a contributor to Hot Rod magazine. This book had a lot of good advice and lots of tech info presented in a basic and easy-to-understand manner.

I also checked out lots of “how to” repair manuals. These explained how engines, transmissions, and other mechanical systems worked.

Speed, Danger, Death… the first two sound pretty good to a fourth-grader!

 

Henry Gregor Felsen wrote a series of young people’s novels that concerned the hot rod experience. I first read the novel “Hot Rod” when I was in the fourth grade. Of course, I identified with the book protagonist Bud Crayne!

My life as a young gearhead spanned ten years from the mid-60s through high school and a bit beyond. It lasted until I bought my first car in 1974. So, did I grow up during that era surrounded by cut-down coupes, and roadsters powered by rasty flathead V8s, or ground-scraping Mercs?

No. I never saw an actual hot rod being driven on the street until the late 1980s! I have been interested in cars since I was a little kid. New cars, old cars, stock cars, custom cars, and …hot rods. Yet, the only place that I’d ever seen them was in magazines. I had primarily been interested in learning about the new models as they debuted each year. My interest in motorcycles eventually overtook and supplanted my interest in cars, but it was always there in the back of my mind.

This box still occupies a special spot in my den.

 

By then, I had owned a lot of old cars over the years, but never made the move to hot rods. Truthfully, I always found old Cadillacs and motorcycles more attractive and interesting. But just like the idea of owning a Big Twin Harley, over time interest in a hot rod waned, and the prices for projects went way, way up. Yet the idea remained dormant until the spark was fanned into a flame.

When I was in my late 40’s I was given a Rhino CD anthology of early Rock and Roll and Rockabilly music as a Father’s Day present. It was housed in a box that resembled an old plastic model kit. Four CDs plus a small paper-bound book. The book had a lot of pictures of early hot rods. Those cars were really basic and pretty rough. Back in the day, most car guys didn’t have the knowledge, experience, and most importantly money, to build a well-finished car. They did have the ingenuity to mix and match used car parts, and they certainly knew how to weld!

That little CD booklet reignited the idea that I could build my own hot rod, and my interest in customs had increased during my ownership of my ’66 Riviera.

So in the mid-90s I found myself listening to Rockabilly music, reading Rockabilly hot rod magazines, and going to vintage Rod shows like Billetproof and the West Coast Kustoms Nationals in Paso Robles. Many of the cars that I would see were customized ’50s models. But there were also Old Skool primitive hot rods. They were derisively labeled as “rat rods.”

By then, there was a growing backlash against the sanitized street rods being built by older and more experienced enthusiasts. These were highly detailed, well-crafted, somewhat homogenized vehicles. The young guys couldn’t afford them, but they could cobble together a bunch of cast-off parts into an old-timey rod. In fact, many of these cars were built from vintage parts that had been discarded by the guys building modern “trick” machines.

Of course, I also wanted to make one of my famous “end runs,”Β  to avoid having to pay the current high prices.

While at a local vintage car swap meet, I found a copy of a classified, penny-saver-type newsletter. The logo was intriguing, a crudely drawn sketch of two guys carrying a stretcher with a tired engine on it. The paper was called “The Scrounger!” That sounded promising.

What did I find? There was a hot rod project listed for sale in Madera and the verbal description sounded promising.

Take an old project, season with lots of hope and optimism, and squint hard, you might see a hot rod. I did.

 

A hand-built rectangular steel tube frame with many early Ford components came attached. A Model A beam front axle was mounted “suicide style.” That meant that the axle was located ahead of the front frame crossmember. The rear axle was a banjo differential suspended by a transverse Model A spring held by a kicked-up crossmember. The transmission was an early Ford V8 unit (just an empty case), connected to the rear end by a torque tube, and carried an adaptor plate to bolt up to a small block Chevy engine. Which was also just a core. A radiator sat over the front of the frame. The front brakes were empty, missing the internal components. Likewise the rear axle. The suspension was secured by the necessary radius rods. A steering box with a drag link was connected to the spindles, but there was no steering column.

The body was the front half of a ’22 Dodge touring car, which is similar to a roadster. It was slightly channeled as mounted to the frame. It wasn’t very rusty, but there wasn’t that much body included to be rusty.

Sitting in the driveway on the first day.

 

Could this mess be assembled into an actual running car?

A car of this type was a very basic, inexpensive build in its time. It was called a Lakes Roadster, the forerunner of the ubiquitous T Bucket, which became popular in the 1960s.

I needed a lot of parts to complete the project, a steering column, a complete brake/ clutch pedal setup, along a master cylinder and brake system. A running engine, a usable transmission, clutch set up, lighting, some floorboards, and an electrical system. Not to mention the interior.

I started seriously going to vintage swap meets to try and source the needed parts. I should mention that many, if not all of these parts were available new from restoration sources, as early Fords are favorites for restoration. Being a cheapskate, I balked at some of the prices being asked by vendors. My first inkling that it wasn’t going to be a bargain project was that the engine/trans adaptor required a specific, one year only Mercury clutch assembly, and it wasn’t cheap.

It also turned out that a welding rig would come in handy. There were lots of mounting brackets and tabs that were needed to locate and secure the various components. I learned how to weld at a night course after high school and I even bought a cheap wire welder at Harbor Freight Tools. (I was always worried about starting a fire in my garage trying to use the welder and that’s why the welder is still sitting in its box).

I went to a few more swap meets at Early Ford Parts in Campbell. That’s where I found a good transmission, some King Bee headlamps, a vintage heater and a Model A grille shell.

I got to spend some quality time with my son.

 

Keeping an eye on Craig’s List, I found a running 327 Chevy engine at a good price. Lacking a truck of my own. I used my minivan to haul my engine hoist to pick up the engine and loaded it through the side door. I was careful to lay down protective materials;Β that van was my family car!

I found a steering column from a Datsun truck at a wrecking yard, but I was stumped on how to set up the brake and clutch pedals. This is when knowing how to weld comes in handy. I also realized that the number one tool for a rod builder is a pickup truck! It would be needed to haul the frame to a shop that could fabricate the mounting parts.

So why did I lose interest in the project?

Well, it was more work and expense than I had anticipated. Practical considerations also started to intrude on my vision.Β  For one, “How would I lock this thing up, if I ever drove it to work, or to the store, or even in my driveway?” There were no door locks, side windows, or even a top.

Eventually, I decided that the project just wasn’t worth finishing and I put it up for sale. This was one of the rare instances where I actually walked away.

This was obviously something that would require “the right buyer.” My task was to locate this elusive creature.

I advertised in CL for a while with no takers. Then I took it to a Good Guys event in Pleasanton, and that adventure required renting a truck and trailer. That alone resulted in a Boondoggle that my son will never forget, but is too long to include in this account! I spoke with a lot of people, but there wasn’t anyone seriously interested in buying it. I started dropping my asking price lower and lower, with no takers and towed the car home in disappointment. I have tried to sell several cars at Good Guys with equally bad results.

I gave CL another try, and this time found an interested buyer. He was serious. He came with a truck towing an empty trailer. We quickly came to an agreement on price. He was a younger guy who bought it as a Father and Son project, and he was the son! After the sale, I forgot all about it.

A couple of years later I got a phone call from the buyer, who told me that he had completed the car and sent some pictures. It was nice to see it completed, though it still needed a lot of finishing. The car sat very high, which looked very old-fashioned compared to current Rat Rod thinking.

If this was a black and white photo, you might think that it was the 1960’s.

 

The buyer installed a Jaguar rear end. A one time hot rod staple.

 

A lot of car projects move along from one owner to the next, each one adding a little bit of value towards the completion. It takes a lot of determination to see a project like this through to completion.

Boy Howdy! That is a hot rod!

 

It looks a lot like the cars that were pictured in that little book.

 

So I never did build a hot rod, and this experience cured me of the notion. However, I remained unfazed and already had another potential hobby car in mind.