#Miller OHV Conversion

[automotiveamerican]

Miller OHV 4 Banger For Sale

Quite unusual to see one of these for sale here in the UK Text from the listing on the NSRA UK Website “Miller Schofield cast iron ohv head, Model B diamond block rebored and converted to shell bearings, c type balanced crankshaft re ground and drilled for high pressure oil system, Crower rods with shell main bearings, New pistons rings and fudge on pins, New Inlet and exhaust valves and…

[anyskin]

Based on the aerodynamic advances incorporated into airplane design in the 1920s and early-1930s wealthy Chicago resident Lyman Voelpel commissioned the Hill Auto Body Metal Company of Cincinnati to construct his “Arrow Plane” in 1932.

The unique coachwork was built on a 1932 Ford Model “B” chassis with the four-cylinder powerplant turned around and mounted in the rear. The engine was equipped with a Miller ohv conversion head and Winfield carburetors. The Ford transmission, driveshaft and torque tube transferred power to a Ford rear axle mounted in the front that was turned around and converted to steer the machine.

In 1933 Hill Auto Body constructed the first of six McQuay-Norris streamliners loosely based on the “Arrow Plane” design, the auto parts maker used the cars for testing its products. The Voelpel “Arrow Plane” has survived and can be viewed at Hemmings Daily.

[itsworn]

New Speedway 94 Carbs Replacing Old 97s

Let’s jump-start this technical tale with a breezy bit o’ benchracing, shall we? This time our story begins at night, at a stoplight on a lesser-traveled city street as a hopped-up 1929 A-bone roadster comes side-by-side with a stock-appearing 1954 Skyliner. The roadster is a banger-powered, ’40s-style hot rod. The Skyliner is a modernized classic sleeper with a secret weapon: a 525-horse LS3 concealed beneath its hood. The story is true, and it ends as you’d imagine with a driver’s-eye view of 1954 Ford taillamps shrinking in the distance, despite the roadster’s significant holeshot.

Not to be thwarted, roadster owner “Guardrail” Willie Martin would welcome a stoplight rematch, and he just so happens to have race-tuning experience. As third-generation owner/operator of Riverside, California’s Ed Martin Garage, tuning for peak performance is all in a day’s work.

Martin’s little black roadster has appeared in STREET RODDER tech before. Since its 3-D debut at the Grand National Roadster Show, it’s been driven very little, so for this fresh build Martin hasn’t yet felt the need to put his race-tuning skills to work. Now suddenly inspired by the other night’s episode, Martin says it’s time.

Now before we turn a single screw, let’s ponder the potential. Beginning with a B “diamond” block, Martin’s mill features full-pressure mains and rods. Out front and visible, a Chevy harmonic balancer seems to suggest there’s a surprise inside the package. Sure enough, inner workings include a Scat crank, H-beam rods, forged pistons, and a bushed Brierley cam. Topping all that is a Miller high-speed head and a duo of authentic Stromberg 97 carburetors—the temperamental, leaky kind that usually show hammer marks.

Stromberg 97- and 94-model carburetors have been hot commodities amongst hot rodders since the ’40s, and they still have their places. Due to today’s scarcity of decent rebuildable cores, however, the antiquated aspirators can be challenging at tune-up time. If anyone can get ’em right, it’ll be Martin. If by chance the old 97s aren’t in perfect harmony by the end of this evening’s effort, they’ll be replaced.

Lately we’ve heard good things about brand-new 94-style carburetors. Those are made by Edelbrock. Outwardly, they’re dead ringers for Strombergs, so under Martin’s hood they’d look right at home. Just in case they’re needed, we’ve already purchased a pair from J&M Speed Center, right down the street. If it turns out they’re not needed, we’ll return them in good order, no problem. So, what about the rest of us who don’t have a local speed shop? Well, Speedway Motors just so happens to be an authorized Edelbrock dealer, and of course they carry everything we’d need to swap out old 97s with new 94s—should we really need to. On that note, let’s follow Martin through the steps and see how this bit o’ race-tuning goes.

Toward the end of this workday, “Guardrail” Willie Martin rolls in his own little roadster, which is a pretty close clone of the one that his father raced in the early ’40s. With just a few miles logged and a little score to settle, it’s race-tune time.

In addition to the Miller OHV conversion and aforementioned internal modifications, Martin’s B-based banger sports a pair of real-deal Stromberg 97 carburetors. Love ’em or hate ’em, they’re still desirable among roots rodders today.

To begin, Martin checks ignition performance by observing the oscilloscope pattern on his trusty old Sun 1115 performance analyzer. Up high on the other side, this same machine features an accurate tachometer.

Here Martin explains that he’s setting initial timing by “rpm drop.” In a nutshell, he’ll advance timing, increasing room ’til the engine will accept no more lead. Then, watching tachometer readings he’ll back it off 150 rpm from there.

Established in 1934, Ed Martin Garage is well equipped for older cars. As one small example, the T-handled tool seen here makes Stromberg jet changes quick ’n’ easy. Even so, we’re done diddlin’ with old 97s. These are on the bench and out of the game.

At times like these it’s good to have a Plan B, or as in this case, an Edelbrock alternative. Still in their boxes we have a pair of brand-new Edelbrock 94s. These will assume their positions in the morning.

Obviously, our camera crew’s tardy arrival has enabled Martin to skip ahead of us, but the swap to Edelbrock 94s is pretty straightforward. Existing linkage did require modification, but a new cable and some hardware bits from Speedway Motors have eased the nuts ’n’ bolts part of the job.

At this stage the installation is nearly completed as Martin snugs the initial setting for the throttle stop. This works best when there’s someone inside the car to hold the pedal down, so we’ll come back to finalize the setting later.

With the installation completed, it’s time to fire it up. A countdown from 5 or so should allow the roadster’s electric fuel pump time to fill the float bowls. With a push of the button we have instantaneous ignition but the new 94s could harmonize better.

Now let’s follow the bouncing ball as Martin synchronizes the new 94s. This Uni-Syn airflow meter has been in service at Ed Martin Garage since the mid ’50s. For the rest of us, new ones are available through Speedway Motors. Come to think of it, Edelbrock makes those, too.

After a quick lap around the parking lot, our air/fuel mixture is decidedly lean, so Martin decides to step up the jets. This is where we discover the quick ’n’ easy Stromberg jet tool doesn’t work so well on our new Edelbrock 94s. Martin is rarely caught without the proper tool.

In this rare instance, Martin will need to access the jets with the carburetor tops removed. Here he seems unconcerned about voiding his warranty.

As they arrived, our new 94s had Holley-type 122-53 main jets installed. Quite conveniently, Holley jets are kept in stock at Ed Martin Garage. Guided by instinct, Martin chooses to install 122-60 jets this time around.

Together again, the new 94s seem like a well-behaved team as the “rumpty-rump” banger is idling sort of smoothly. With a whack of the throttle, Martin cracks a smile. A little more throttle, held longer, and returned without a backfire is encouraging, indeed.

From here it’s time for a testdrive. If all goes swell, Martin may be ready for his stoplight rematch. Will his race-tuning efforts enable him to walk a 525-horse, LS3-equipped 1954 Skyliner sleeper like it’s standin’ still? We’re doubtful, but he’ll likely improve his holeshot.

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[automotiveamerican]

1930 FORD MODEL A HOT ROD (Miller OHV) @Bonhams

1930 FORD MODEL A HOT ROD Hot rod fans of all ages, but particularly those who grew up in the 1940s and 50s will relish this authentic Ford highboy rumble seat roadster, stripped of its fenders and carrying a rare Miller-design cylinder head. It is unrestored, but complete with such delicious period extras as Guide headlights, 1935 Ford 6.00:16″ wheels and special aftermarket three-door hood…

[automotiveamerican]

This Miller Hi-Speed Head inspires a complete 1929 Ford Model A roadster gow job. Here’s how I’d build it. - David Conwill @Hemmings

Harry Miller was an artist. His preferred medium was race cars—complete race cars built from the wheels up. They cost upwards of $15,000 (almost a quarter-million dollars, adjusted for inflation) and spent most of the 1920s dominating America’s tracks. Unlike such contemporaries as the Chevrolet Brothers, Miller largely kept out of the speed-parts business. He briefly produced a cylinder head for…

[itsworn]

The Amazing Engine Collection of the Museum of American Speed

We’re living in the Golden Age of Horsepower. No other time in history has witnessed how horsepower from an internal combustion engine has been so easy to achieve. This didn’t happen overnight, however, and to really appreciate the evolution of horsepower, do yourself a favor and spend a day at Bill Smith’s exceptional Museum of American Speed any time you’re near Lincoln, Nebraske. A wise man once said that in order to know where you are going, you really need to know where you’ve been. The late Bill Smith has done that with an emphasis on early American circle track racing history and an astonishing collection of high performance engines.

After spending the better part of a day investigating engines with the museum’s John Mackichan we assembled a challenging list of a dozen engines that impressed us the most. What we have left out would easily fill volumes, including an entire room devoted to Harry Miller, the man behind the engine eventually known as simply the Offy. Fred Offenhauser worked for Miller and eventually bought the tooling Miller used for his early Indy 500 race engines. Offenhauser, with immense help from Leo Goossen, designed and built the legendary Offy that was the engine of choice at Indy for entire decades from the 1930’s up through a turbocharged Offy winning Indy in 1976.

One of these engines dates back almost an entire century, while others are so unique you may wonder why you’ve never heard of them. If this ignites an interest to know more, then we’ve accomplished our task. The hard part was limiting our story to a mere dozen engines. Most importantly, take a moment to appreciate the enormous effort required to build such an impressive museum so that future generations of car crafters can marvel at the accomplishments of the men who came before us. Bill Smith has passed away but his legacy continues with his phenomenal museum. It was truly an awesome automotive experience.

Mickey Thompson Hemi 427 Ford The more you learn about Mickey Thompson’s automotive accomplishments, the more you have to be impressed. In the early ‘60s, he created a hemi head conversion for Pontiacs. After switching to Ford backing in 1963, he quickly altered his original deisgn to adapt a hemi head to the 427 FE Ford. The conversion demanded what was called an articulated pushrod design. This is engineer-speak for a three-piece pushrod configuration! The center rod is captured in the head with separate extensions from the lifter to the middle and from there to the rocker arm. According to Ford collector and ex-Thompson employee, Scott DaPron, Thompson only cast four pairs of these heads, making them ridiculously rare and collectible. Testing proved the pushrod solution was problematic, ending the development effort.

Plymouth-Weslake DOHC In 1969, Richard Petty decided to drive a Ford in NASCAR, so Plymouth used that budget to fund the development of an Indy V8 engine. They partnered with Harry Weslake’s British engineering firm to develop a DOHC cylinder head and induction system for the small-block Mopar. This was intended for Andy Granatelli’s STP team. At both 318 and 327 cubic inches, it’s claimed 600 peak horsepower was down compared to contemporary race engines, so it wasn’t competitive at big speedways like Indianapolis. However, the engine did make excellent torque and driver Art Pollard used that to help win at Dover Downs International Speedway in Delaware 200 in August, 1969 before the engine was retired. Oddly, a drag race version appeared for a short time in a D/Altered Colt station wagon campaigned by the Rod Shop that same year, appearing in a July, 1971 Car Craft story.

First Chevrolet V8 If you think the first overhead-valve Chevy V8 debuted in 1955, you’ve missed the mark by nearly 40 years. Chevrolet produced this amazing 55 HP, 286ci production engine in 1918. As you can see, it sports an exposed valvetrain using shafts to support the rockers. Before every trip, maintenance demanded oil be squirted manually onto the valves and rockers to lube the valvetrain. The induction is a single updraft carburetor with spark from a Remy (the forerunner to Delco-Remy) points distributor and a Bosch coil. The engine sports three main bearings and the connecting rod bearings were splash-lubed by scoops located in the rod caps that picked up oil from troughs in the oil pan while the mains and the cam were lubed by a small oil pump. Nearly 100 years later, Chevrolet offered a similar displacement 293ci (4.8L) L20 production V8 that makes 285 hp- five times as much power with far more reliability.

ARDUN Flathead Conversion Zora Arkus-Duntov is best known for his performance contributions to the Corvette. But before he went to work for GM, he and his brother Yura created the Ardun overhead valve, hemispherical combustion chamber cylinder head conversion in 1947 for the flathead V8 Ford. The venture was less than successful until C-T Automotive modified the cam and induction and greatly improved the conversion’s durability and power. Today, the Ardun conversion is viewed as a link connecting pre-war flatheads to ‘50s OHV production engines. There was even an Ardun of Europe conversion. A typical flathead Ford V8 (1932-’37) was 221ci and made 85 hp. The Ardun conversion made 160 hp during Duntov’s initial dyno testing.

Early Prototype Ford V8 Engines The engine in the foreground is nothing less than the prototype to the flathead V8 engine that would eventually appear in 1932. There are numerous differences between this engine and the production version, with the most obvious being the 25 cylinder head studs that would eventually be pared down to 21 for the production engine. The famous bank robber Clyde Barrow of Bonnie & Clyde fame sent a personal letter to Henry Ford thanking him for the flathead V8’s excellent horsepower. While some might think that Ford engines became stagnant after the introduction of the flathead V8, the engineering back room reality is far more interesting. The engine on the right is nothing less than an all-aluminum single overhead cam (SOHC) V8 experimental engine developed by Ford engineers in 1938. Just let that soak in. Today, of course, you can find aluminum SOHC Ford V8s in the junkyard, but this engine made power nearly 80 years ago.

Little Hemi Chevy Duntov may have been the progenitor for flathead hemi head conversions but he was not alone. History is liberally sprinkled with hemi conversion artists. Leo Lyons, an engine crafter from Riverside, California decided the world would be a better place if those small-block Chevy wedge heads were replaced with hemispherical combustion chambers. The Smith collection offers this effort as proof of the concept, a 302ci shortblock with a front-mounted magneto lighting the fire underneath a pair of Lyons hemi heads. Petersen’s Rod & Custom magazine ran a story in 1966 on an enterprising adaptation of these heads assisted by a 6-71 supercharger that reportedly made more than 600 horsepower.

Ford SOHC 289 By 1964, it could be said that Ford had the domestic overhead-cam market covered. Most know about the original Cammer SOHC 427 engine that still has a following with blue oval nostalgia fans to this day. The concept was that if the cams were positioned above the valves, the heads could have larger intake ports and the engine could potentially make much more horsepower, especially at higher engine speeds. Just as importantly, those bothersome pushrods could be eliminated. By 1968, Ford produced three SOHC prototype small-blocks. With a 4.00-inch bore and 2.87-inch stroke, this short-stroke 289 was designed to make power at engine speeds of 6,500 rpm and higher. A shaft in the original cam position is used to drive each of the overhead cams using Gilmer belts (instead of chains used in the 427). The dummy central shaft also turned the oil pump. Of the three prototypes built, the Smith Collection reports this is the sole survivor.

Chevrolet V-16 It’s hard to call this behemoth a small-block. Al Mathon Sr. and Jr. of Long Island, NY took on the challenge of welding two small-block Chevy 350 blocks together to create this 700ci torque monster. This is a fully functional engine that made over 500 horsepower on Bill Mitchell’s engine dyno several years ago. The separate cams and cranks are timed 45 degrees apart to create this firing order: 1-9-8-16-4-12-3-11-6-14-5-13-7-15-2-10 The wildest component might be the giant 16-position distributor cap. As strange as it sounds, Cadillac put a V-16 into production between 1930 and 1940 displacing 431 and 452 cubic inches. The concept was to produce an incredibly powerful and smooth running engine.

Olds 215ci Midget Engine With the introduction of the midsize Buick Special, Pontiac Tempest, and Olds F-85 in 1961, each model had its own unique engine and powertrain, including the Oldsmobile all-aluminum 215ci V8. The engine featured a 3.50-inch bore coupled with a very short 2.80-inch stroke that eventually made 200 hp in its 11.0:1 compression version. Midget racers looking for a less expensive alternative to the Offy tried running these engines with mechanical fuel injection on methanol. Despite the fact that the engine weighs less than 330 pounds, it was still too much for those little cars. GM eventually sold the aluminum V8 tooling to Rover in 1967 and late model iterations of this original all-alloy V8 can still be found in Land Rovers in the junkyard and in the British TVR the engine grew to 304ci (5.0L) with race versions as big as 317ci.

Latham Supercharged Small-Block Chevy Norman Latham developed his supercharger in 1956 with a plan to improve upon the rather inefficient 19th century Roots style blower. Latham’s supercharger employed compressor stages similar to those used in jet engines. The cylindrical Latham supercharger uses multiple stages of fixed outer blades combined with rotating internal blades that individually compress the air from the previous stage. Boost is created by adding compressor stages akin to increasing the number of slices of bread in a single loaf. The blower worked well but was difficult to manufacture and required significant compressor speed to produce boost. Latham sold the business to Richard Paul in 1982 who continues to make these little beauties out of his Simi Valley, California Axialflow company (axialflow.com).

Mickey Thompson’s Supercharged Bent Four There’s easily a full-length story in this engine. The museum has created a special place for several notable engine builders, including Mickey Thompson and the engines he created. This unique Tempest four cylinder began life in 1961 as half of a Pontiac 389ci V8. That’s interesting in itself, but even wilder is the cylinder head. Thompson built several sets of aluminum hemi heads for the 389 Pontiac. Thompson actually won Top Eliminator title at the 1962 U.S. Nationals beating Don Garlits in the final with a blown, hemi-headed Pontiac built by his long-time engine builder Fritz Voight. This bent four was a spin-off of the supercharged four bangers for Thompson’s standing mile record attempts using a full-bodied dragster powered by a 180ci, destroked four. This engine uses a 4-71 GMC blower topped with a two-port Hilborn mechanical fuel injector.

SOHC Small-Block Chevy Ford was not the only OE manufacturer to experiment with a single overhead cam small-block. Chevrolet also tested the concept of moving the cams to the top of the rocker arms. This unique small-block offers casting dates of 1967 right on front of the valve covers. Dual belts drive the cams from a crank-driven gear. The induction is also Detroit esoteric with four pairs of 2-inch Webers feeding the engine. Among others, in 1971 Richard Moser produced a DOHC conversion for the small-block that was relatively successful. Speedway actually raced one of these engines for a time.

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[itsworn]

This Tub, a 1923 Ford Model T Touring, Has Been in the Hynes Family Since Tom Hynes Built it After WWII

Brother.

When Tom “Red” Hynes went into the Navy in 1943, he was tooling around Los Angeles in what his son Rod calls a “bitchin’” ’29 Model A roadster. He served his country as a machinist’s mate on a destroyer escort; and when he mustered out, “the hot rod thing was hitting big-time,” Rod recounts. In that postwar hop-up frenzy, someone offered Tom $40 for his Ford’s body alone. “In those days, $50 could get you a complete, running A-bone out of a junkyard,” Rod says. Of course, Tom took the money, but then he found himself in need of new wheels—or, more specifically, a new body for the wheels he was left with.

Rather than build another roadster, though, Tom went in a very different direction, spending $15 on a ’23 Model T Touring body he found at a junkyard.

The first definition for the word value in our Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary refers to “a fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged.” The fact that Rod Hynes is still bombing around in that same Tub—a term Rod spells in all uppercase letters as if shouting its name with pride—70-some years later tells us Tom got a helluva lot of value for his 15 bucks.

Especially since he was able to use much of his Model A in the T’s build. Tom narrowed the A framerails to accommodate the T body, and the Tub has “always had” the ’29’s rearend and a ’38 Ford industrial three-speed Top Loader transmission, says Rod. Up front Tom hung a filled and dropped axle in the stock location; it would later move out, suicide-style, after Tom started running the Tub at the lakes.

Tom’s initial plan was to build the car to compete with the “Roaring Roadsters” in the dirt bullrings of the California Roadster Association. He welded the Tub’s doors shut and stripped it for competition but soon realized the Tub would need to serve as daily transportation, “and he couldn’t have it both ways,” Rod says. So he put his CRA plans on the back burner and instead got his speed fix at the dry lakes on weekends, running with the Mojave Timing Association, SCTA, and Russetta as a member of the Road Dusters club.

Single-Stick Miller

The Tub has had a number of four- and eight-cylinder engines under its yellow hood. (And, yes, it’s always been yellow, or some shade of yellow, through three repaints over the years, Rod says.) Tom’s first engine was a Model B block stroked with a Model C crank and fitted with a single-cam Miller overhead conversion and two Winfield side-draft carburetors. It was with this motor that Tom hit 101 mph, his fastest speed on the lakes.

This is also the engine that was in the car when Tom Medley photographed the Tub for its July 1950 HOT ROD feature story, despite the March 1950 cover blurb calling out its “V-8 power plant.” Yes, you read that right. “Wally goofed,” Rod says. HRM Editor Parks meant to run the cover and feature story together, even commissioning a Rex Burnett cutaway illustration of the T, but they wound up separated with an issue in between.

And while the Tub was banger powered in Medley’s film, by the time the magazines came out, the blurb was true. In late 1949, the Tub received its first flathead, a V8/60 “that was one of Louie Senter’s Midget engines,” Rod says. At the time, Louie, co-founder of Ansen Automotive, was switching his Midgets to Offenhauser engines. His shop foreman, Bob Morton, tipped off Tom as to the engine’s availability. (In the small world of post-war hot rodding, Bob was a partner with George Rubio, whose ’29 roadster was the first highboy to break the 150-mph mark at the lakes. George, it turns out, was a cousin of Tom’s.)

The V8/60 was followed by a 296-inch Merc flathead that met its demise at the hands of one of Tom’s neighbors. “Dad didn’t mind letting people borrow it to have an evening of fun,” Rod remembers. “The neighbor brought it back with the rods hanging out of the motor. I guess he just decided it was ‘race time.’”

Tom’s reaction? “My dad was one of the coolest people I’ve ever known,” Rod says. “He had no enemies. Never heard anybody talk bad about him. Just too nice a guy, for the most part. So he didn’t react, didn’t come unhinged. He just got it home, started pulling it apart, and then figured out what motor’s going in it next. He was a racer. Shit happens. You do what you gotta do.”

Tom had a bone-stock, 265-inch Chevy small-block in the garage, though Rod doesn’t know why. “My dad was a four-banger and flathead man.” The SBC was just a short-timer, quickly replaced by a Pontiac Tempest four-cylinder.

The ex-Senter V8/60 has been in the Tub three times, Rod says, and that’s what’s in the car now. Rod’s younger brother Martin restored the Tub 25 years ago and rebuilt the 60 at that time. Rod figures the motor is due for another rebuild, having seen some 60,000 miles since the resto. “I need to put a new rope main seal in it. At 3,000 rpm on the freeway, I can’t keep oil in it. It goes through a quart every 300 miles.”

Passing of the Tub

An electrician by trade, Tom Hynes used the Tub as his daily transportation—unless it was garaged for an engine swap—between 1947 and 1965. “We lived in San Fernando, and he drove it to work every day to the Boylston Street Water and Power plant,” Rod says. “The only reason my brother and I wound up with it is because Dad couldn’t drive it anymore.” The cancer that would eventually claim Tom in 1987 made it increasingly difficult for him to drive the Tub, so he passed it to his sons in 1970, the year Rod graduated from high school.

As you would imagine, Rod’s memories of the Tub go back as far as he can recall. It was such an important part of his life, in fact, that he considers the Tub his “older brother.” He remembers bundling up for freezing-cold drives over The Grapevine on the way to the March Meet and dusty trips to El Mirage. For a time when he was getting his own Fuel Altered drag racing career off the ground (Rod’s well-known rides included the Coors Light Altered and its Quadzilla incarnation), he lived in a shop—with the Tub. “I had pulled it down to rebuild the Tempest engine, and not much happened with it for about three and a half years. I got the Tempest going, and then it became a thing for me to find dirt tracks to fool around in.”

Like his dad before him, Rod has long wanted to race a Sprint Car. And now, at 65, he’s hoping to put together a car to race in the dirt. “It’s an addiction/affliction, the racing, the four-wheeled monsters out there,” he admits. “Some people can just walk away, but I can’t do that. Been at it since I was born.”

He talks about his latest project, a ’27 roadster body he wants to put on a four-bar Sprint Car chassis and power with two Tempest bangers mounted in line. “It’ll be a 389, but as a straight-eight. I have three Tempest motors, the one from the Tub and two more. I just wanted to do something different.”

But the Tub will always be there, too. Its roots are deep. Rod clearly remembers a night back in 1960 when he realized even at a very young age how close the bonds were between him and this T: “My dad used to take the Tub over to Don Brown’s to let him make some laps in the dirt field near his house in Chatsworth. Don was a Sprint Car racer, an Indy racer, was an incredible sheetmetal man. He worked for A.J. Watson building Indy roadsters. I guess taking laps in the dirt in the Tub was a way he relieved stress.

“Anyway, in 1960 the Tub still had the big Merc in it. I was riding with Dad to Don’s house and we got pulled over by a cop at Laurel Canyon and San Fernando Mission Road. Dad was thinking he was going to get a ticket, but the cop said, ‘No, no, don’t worry about it. I just want to check out your car.’

“Dad opened the hood and the cop asked, ‘How much do you want for it?’ And my dad points to me and says, ‘It’s not mine, it’s his.’ It was at that moment that I realized this car would be mine someday.

“So the cop says to me, ‘How much?’ And I said, ‘$10,000.’ Well, the cop laughed and said, ‘That’s almost as much as we paid for our house. That’s obviously out of the question.’ And that’s when I knew how much the car meant to me.”

This ’23 T Tub has been in the Hynes family since Tom Hynes built it in 1946-1947. It’s still on the road and still being driven, now by Tom’s son, Rod.

Shortly after Tom Hynes came home from the Navy, he was offered $40 for the body on his hot rod Model A roadster—a lot of money for Henry’s tin in those days. In this photo from late 1946, he’s taking apart the car prior to delivering the body.

Tom built the first motor for the Tub using a Model B block that was bored, stroked, and fitted with a single-cam Miller OHV conversion and Winfield carbs.

In this 1947 photo, the chassis for the Tub is almost finished. Tom narrowed his Model A’s frame to fit the Model T body. The ’38 Ford Top Loader transmission and ’29 Model A rearend “have always been there,” Rod says.

Tom runs through the lights at El Mirage during a Mojave Timing Association meet on September 19, 1948. His best speed that day was 98 mph.

Here’s “Tommy” tuning the Miller banger at El Mirage, April 30, 1950. The car was good for 95 mph that day. His best speed with the Miller was 101.

George Essig’s photo of Tom (in the hat) and the Tub made the March 1950 HOT ROD cover, though the Tom-Medley-photographed feature wouldn’t run until the July 1950 issue. “Wally goofed,” Rod says. Whoever wrote the cover blurb also goofed, as the car was still banger powered when the picture was taken.

When the story “T Touring Transformed” finally ran, Medley’s photos were accompanied by this Rex Burnett cutaway illustration. It was reproduced again with “Heir-Vroom,” Gray Baskerville’s story on the Tub in the March 2000 HRM.

Gray also ran this photo of the finished Miller overhead in his March 2000 story. The “single-stick Miller” utilized an “SOHC/F-head conversion…a 4-inch bore, Robbins pistons, stroked Model C (4-5/8-inch) crank and two Winfield Model S sidedraft carbs,” he wrote.

In 1951, Tom and his wife, Margaret Louise (“Terry”), posed in the Tub on Bellevue Street in Los Angeles, near the family’s first home.

The first flathead to go into the Tub was the V8/60 Tom got from Louie Senter. It was replaced by this one, a 296-inch Merc that a neighbor blew up a couple years later.

There are no photos of the small-block Chevy that replaced the blown-up Merc, says Rod, partly because it wasn’t in the Tub for very long, and partly because his dad was a “four-banger and flathead man.” The SBC was soon swapped for this four-cylinder Tempest motor. (Photo: Steve Straw)

At the HRM 65th Anniversary show in Pomona, Tom Medley bumped into Rod and his brother Martin and told them this story about the Tub: “Tom, Wally [Parks], and my dad were all friends. Dad was good about ‘sharing’ the Tub with his friends, and on one particular evening he let Tom drive the Tub to an SCTA club meeting. One of the passengers was Wally, who was seated in the back passenger area. It was not really a soft ride back there, as there has always been only a piece of plywood over the rear spring perch. Tom was driving down one of the streets in the Silver Lake/Glendale/Los Angeles area and they hit a bump in the road. Said ‘bump’ was big enough that Wally was pitched out of the car onto the street, suffering a little road rash. This photo from Bonneville in 1955, with Wally leaning on the car talking with my dad, and whoever else is in the car with him, made me think of this story. Wally was probably reminiscing about the road rash incident he suffered while a passenger with Tom Medley.”

Tom shot this photo of Rod driving the Tub in 1981 on a 3/8-mile dirt oval at a Western Racing Association event at Indian Dunes. “I ran with vintage Sprint Cars and Midgets,” Rod says. “Dad kept waiting for me to tip it over as he thought the wire wheels would give up as hard as I was pitching it into a corner.”

Rod still likes sliding the Tub through the dirt, more than 35 years later. “I was in the dirt with it every chance I got,” he says. “That’s the most fun I can have.”

The Tub still wears the yellow Imron paint sprayed by Martin when he and Rod restored the hot rod 25 years ago. “It was the closest we could come to the shade Dad painted it,” Rod says.

It’s been rebuilt and massaged over the years, but this is the same ex-Louie Senter V8/60 Tom Hynes put in the Tub decades ago. It now wears Edmunds racing heads and a three-pot Electric & Carburetor Engineering intake mounting Stromberg 81s.

Tom originally mounted the dropped and filled front axle in the standard location but moved it out in front of the crossmember, suicide style, after running the Tub at the lakes.

Juice brakes have always been on the Tub. Tom installed hydraulic binders from a Studebaker; Rod swapped them “quite a long time ago” for ’40 Ford components, he says. “They’re easier to get.”

While the shift lever and handbrake are leftover items from Tom’s Model A, he replaced the Ford steering with an assembly from a ’40 Willys.

The dash is home to a motley assortment of meters, including a Kong gas pressure gauge and a Ford amp gauge.

Rod ran into Gray Baskerville at the Goodguys drag race in Pomona in 1999, and the two got to talking about the Tub and how it had been in the Hynes family since 1947. That was the impetus for Gray’s March 2000 piece about the car, 50 years after it appeared on HRM’s cover. Fathers figure so prominently in this story that the button on Rod’s hat, a tribute to our ol’ dad, is truly fitting.

The post This Tub, a 1923 Ford Model T Touring, Has Been in the Hynes Family Since Tom Hynes Built it After WWII appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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[itsworn]

Ultra-Traditional 1928 Ford Model A Roadster with a Cragar OHV Makes a Statement at the Grand National Roadster Show

Statement.

Bill Grant graduated from Pomona High School in 1952, so he experienced the postwar hot rodding boom firsthand. He had his first car, a Model T, when he was 12 and a ’36 three-window coupe when he was 14. He remembers, “My mom kept hiding the keys because I was sneaking around, driving her crazy.” In high school, he had a ’40 coupe “that was pretty quick. Chick Wilson built the engine. It was all glitzed up.”

He’d go up to the dry lakes with his buddy Tom Morris. Tom’s V8-powered ’29 roadster is still around, its timing tags testament to 110 mph or better on the lakes and at Bonneville. Bill also remembers going out to the drags on Rivergrade Road, which is now the 605 Freeway, and cruising the Townhouse Drive-In and Stan’s Drive-In in nearby El Monte.

“We didn’t just talk about it, we did it,” he says proudly.

About five years ago, before Tom passed away, the two friends had a conversation about hot rods while they thumbed through a book about Harry Miller’s race cars. “Tom virtually built a car from memory,” Bill says. “‘I’d do this with the body, that with the frame.’ Tom and I went through a whole litany of things.”

That conversation, a collection of parts, and the desire to keep alive the memory of early hot rodding resulted in this ’28 Model A, which Bill dubbed the Muroc Roadster.

The roadster looks a little nicer, a little bit better turned out, than your typical prewar hot rod build. That’s because during the translation from idea to reality, Bill and the father-and-son team of Terry and David Stoker at Stoker’s Hot Rod Factory decided to enter it in the Grand National Roadster Show and compete for the show’s top honor, the 9-foot-tall America’s Most Beautiful Roadster trophy.

“I knew we wouldn’t win,” Bill says. “But that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t about spending money. It was about making a statement and reaching people. We figured people would either get it, or not. And you can’t believe the number of conversations I had at the show and since. People got it, and they’re passing it on. Passing the torch. That’s what hot rods used to look like. If you went to the lakes in 1936, you would have seen this car. Maybe it wouldn’t have been this nice—it might have been in primer and not had painted rails—but it would have been this kind of car.

“We did make a statement, for what it’s worth. We made a dent.” And while he may not have his name engraved on the big AMBR trophy, he and the Stokers did bring home a trophy for the Best Detail among the AMBR contenders.

The starting point for the build was a low-mileage Model A phaeton that Bill bought some 30 years ago. Back then, Terry Stoker took the body off and used the shell to build a hot rod on a TCI frame. “Terry built that bathtub with an Iron Duke engine. God, it was fun,” Bill says.

The gennie Model A frame, transmission, and running gear went into a Fontana barn. “It’s just one of those things,” Bill admits. “I don’t get rid of much.”

One exception was a ’29 pickup powered by a banger with a Cragar OHV conversion that he sold about five years ago, a decision he’s been “agonizing about” ever since. So when he heard from a friend that the friend’s uncle “had a Cragar or a Miller or something in his garage in Redding, California, and it was for sale, I told him, ‘Go up there and buy it.’”

Good move on Bill’s part. The engine turned out to be a Model B four-cylinder that had been hopped up in 1954—Cragar OHV, insert bearings, C crank—but never fired. Soon after getting the engine, Bill and the Stokers realized that putting it in the long-dormant Model A chassis would be the perfect foundation for a very traditional prewar hot rod. Then came the conversation about entering the GNRS, something Bill and the Stokers did in 2014 with a gorgeous, pale blue, full-fendered Deuce roadster. When Bill had his epiphany about making a statement at this year’s Roadster Show to keep the flame of ultra-traditional rodding alive, the Stokers got their marching orders.

“We did it because nobody else does,” is how David Stoker explains why he, his father Terry Stoker, and car owner Bill Grant decided to turn this prewar banger roadster project into an AMBR contender. “Usually this kind of car is like one you’d see at TROG, or it’s beater-ish. We love those cars, too, but we wanted to do this because nobody does it to this extreme.”

Though there are reproduction parts on the car, “we made a point to use as much original stuff as possible, cool mechanical stuff that just doesn’t exist anymore,” David says. Their goal was to build a prewar lakes car, using only the kinds of parts that could be found in 1937 or earlier.

The level of finish on the frame, axle, and suspension components speaks to the quality required for AMBR contention. That frame is stock, but it was ground smooth and then painted by Albert De Alba, who also painted the other chassis components and the Brookville body in single-stage Centari. Plating, done by AB Polishing, is nickel, not chrome, in keeping with the period.

“We kept the mechanical brakes, since that’s what you had back in 1936,” Bill says. When you had to stop the car, you planned ahead and prayed a lot.” David says the brake rods baffled many GNRS attendees who had never seen them before, a testament to just how many hot rods are upfitted with juice brakes. “One guy asked if the brake fluid ran through them.”

The engine is a Model B four-cylinder that had been hot rodded in the 1950s but never fired. It has insert bearings, a Model C crankshaft, and an original Cragar OHV cylinder head topped by a finned aluminum Miller cover.

The intake is an original Zephyr manifold topped by two new Stromberg 97s that were nickel plated at the carb factory. Ignition is routed via an early Mallory distributor.

Terry fashioned the headers. The choice to wrap them was partially aesthetic. “The color looked good with the engine block,” David says—but also functional. It keeps exhaust heat away from the carbs and protects the header’s finish. “No one ceramic coated headers back then. We didn’t want the paint to pop and peel when we fired the motor.”

Another example of AMBR-level finish work: Most prewar rod builders wouldn’t go to the trouble of grinding the engine block and head smooth and painting them, but Jay Ligtenberg, who works with David and Terry at Stoker’s Hot Rod Factory, did just that, to dramatic effect. Color is Antique Bronze from Hot Rod Flatz.

Terry Stoker wired the roadster, making these plug wires himself from rolls of cloth wire. At this point, the Model A still uses a six-volt electrical system, but once it transitions from show car to driver, a 12-volt upgrade will be made.

There are all kinds of brass and copper details on the engine, which are not only incredibly well made and very cool, but combine with the nickel plate and engine paint to bring a warm tone to the roadster’s front end.

Axles front and rear are stock Model A with unsplit wishbones. David took leaves out of the packs to lower the car a bit. The headlight buckets and rings are original, and those lenses are ’28 model year only. David fashioned the light mounts by cutting up a Model A lightbar.

The roadster’s cockpit is a fascinating mix of old and new components. The Brookville windshield stanchions were chopped 3 inches and laid back; and though it’s hard to see from this angle, the windshield top is curved, not straight across, a nice detail touch.

The dashboard and gauges are stock Model A, while the steering wheel is out of a Deuce. The Stokers mounted it to a handmade column that’s shortened 2 to 3 inches.

We never would have guessed the origin of the upholstery inserts: ’15 Ford Focus. Elegance Auto Interior gets credit for making the contemporary seat covers look great mated with brown leather on the seats and door panels.

The trunk area is upholstered to match the cockpit. Behind the panel with the brass cabinet pull is the battery. The Stokers added quite a few brass touches to the roadster’s interior to tie in with all the brass work in and around the engine.

Unlike many AMBR contenders, the Muroc Roadster is a driver. Or will be soon, once it’s off the show circuit. “I drive everything,” Bill says. “In fact, we joked about going to The Race of Gentlemen in Pismo next year, and it’s not completely out of the question.” Of course, there needs to be another West Coast TROG to do that, but you get the idea.

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[itsworn]

This Nasty Classy 1931 Ford Model A Roadster is as at Home at a Show as it is Dragging on the Beach

Full-tilt.

Our story’s title may sound like a contradiction in terms, but Cedric Meeks coined the phrase himself to describe his Model A roadster’s mix of badass and beautiful.

Cedric has actually owned this gennie ’31 Ford twice. He first spotted it about three years ago in the yard of Stan Ochs, another hot rodder in the Portland, Oregon, area where Cedric lives with his wife, Kim.

At the time it was a bone-stock A. “Stan told me it was the body that Dee Wescott took molds off of to make his fiberglass roadster bodies,” Cedric recalls. “My dad worked for Dee in the 1960s before he worked for Gene Winfield. We’ve known him forever. When Stan told me that, I really wanted the car bad.

“Then Stan goes into his shop and comes out with these chopped windshield stanchions,” Cedric continues. “He told me, ‘These were the stanchions off your dad’s car.’” Cedric’s dad is Russ Meeks, a longtime hot rod builder who, among other cars, built the rear-engine Model A for John Corno that won the America’s Most Beautiful Roadster award in 1972.

“Well, I couldn’t say no,” Cedric admits.

“I bought the car at about 2 in the afternoon, had it home by 4, and then I called my dad and some buddies, and they came over at about 6 and stripped the car down,” Cedric says. They took off the hood, fenders, and running boards, and about a week later Cedric put a set of bent-spoke Kelsey-Hayes wheels on it and a straight pipe. “It looked just like an early gow job. I drove it as a prewar hop-up for six months.”

But then another car “popped up,” he says, a sectioned ’56 Nomad that Russ had built when he worked for Winfield. “Mom and Dad brought me home from [the] hospital when I was born in that car. In 1969, he tore it apart, never finished it, and it went into storage. I used to play in that car when it was just a mothballed show car full of rat turds.” And here it was, back. He sold the roadster and “every piece of speed equipment I could part with” to buy the Nomad, he says. The roadster went to a guy who worked with Russ.

But about a year later, that guy wanted to buy a house and offered Cedric first right of refusal to buy back the roadster. Cedric and Kim had just built a shop, so it wasn’t a great time to buy another car. “But I didn’t know if I would ever get a car this nice again,” he says.

So in November 2015, the roadster returned. And in January 2016, Cedric heard that the Race of Gentlemen was headed west. He had been working on a Model A coupe for Kim, but the coupe went on the back burner to get the roadster ready for TROG at Pismo Beach in October.

“In the meantime, my wife says to me, ‘What are we going to take to Santa Maria [the Cruisin’ Nationals by West Coast Kustoms]? I said, ‘The roadster. I’ll have it ready to go.’ So it was full-tilt, to see how fast I could do it.”

It helped that during the year it had been out of Cedric’s hands, the previous owner installed a dropped front axle, and Russ had built a custom steering arm for it. “So it was already dumped in the front.” The rear was left at the stock height, though Cedric swapped the original rearend for a Halibrand quick-change. He had a stock ’39 transmission to mate to the motor.

The Model B four-banger, which has a Miller-Schofield overhead-valve conversion, came from a fellow Estranged car club member, Mike Thompson. “It was in a roadster that had come out of Idaho,” Cedric explains. “He raced it at the Billetproof drags in Washington a couple years before. I raced him in my wife’s sedan, and this thing was fast. Even with a single 97, it ran hard.” Portland’s Model A Works freshened the motor, Cedric added some speed equipment—Thomas intake, dual Stromberg 81s, and a Charlie Yapp exhaust—and “it’s been running like crazy ever since.”

After stripping the roadster’s body, Cedric painted it in a custom-mixed green hue that’s “based off Kevin Sledge’s ’40 Merc,” he says. “I took a copy of The Rodder’s Journal with that car on the cover to a buddy at a paint shop, and he mixed a base/clear that was pretty close without being candy. I didn’t want to spray candy for my first car.”

Two days before Santa Maria, Cedric had the roadster running, and he and Kim made the trip. It turned out to be the beginning of a very busy year for them. “After Santa Maria, we went to Billetproof Chehalis [in Washington state], got Best of Show from the Slowpokes, from there to Deuce Days in July in Canada, came home, took it to the Billetproof Hot Rod Eruption drags in Toutle [Washington], broke the rear axle racing it there, fixed it, and then went to TROG.” The weekend after TROG, they went to the California Hot Rod Reunion and that same weekend drove up to El Mirage, where the roadster served as a push car for Russ’ XO modified roadster.

Once they got home, Cedric could assess the damage from TROG. “There were 2 inches of sand on the framerails,” he says. “I forgot to put nylons on the intakes, and the rear carb just sucked sand into the engine. It still runs fine; I’ve changed the oil quite a few times, but I’m guessing the cylinders got a fresh hone, just not with the right crosshatch pattern.” He also had to work on the car’s paint, as “every panel was scratched” by the slinging sand.

It was while cleaning TROG off the car that Cedric decided he wanted to take it to the Grand National Roadster Show, “and I wanted it 100 percent finished for GNRS.” That meant fabbing a hood, building top bows for a new top from Guy’s Interior Restorations, swapping out the tires and wheels for the whitewalls and Olds caps seen here, and then having Mitch Kim pinstripe the car, inside and out.

“In just a few months, this car has had three totally different looks,” Cedric points out. “When I raced at Billetproof, I took off the blackwalls on green wheels and made a new set of reversed rims to run really narrow 5-inch slicks. Then for GNRS, I put on the new top, hood, and different tires and wheels. It totally changed the look from a down-and-dirty early ’50s hot rod to a mid- to late ’50s custom show rod. It has just the right attitude. It’s nasty looking, but nasty classy.”

There are more shows in the car’s near future, and then Cedric plans to “do nothing but drive the paint off the thing. Or my wife will until the Model A coupe is ready. I have to get it ready for GNRS, so it’s nose to the grindstone again.”

Compare Cedric Meeks’ Model A in its “100 percent finished” state to how he ran the roadster at The Race of Gentlemen West. It’s amazing what a hood, top, and new tires and wheels will do to the look of a car.

More TROG action, here on the soft, downhill chute to the beach. Note the black smoke coming from the engine, the result of the banger ingesting sand. The scrunched look on fellow Estranged club member (and HRD contributor) Kleet Norris’ face is from all the sand the right front tire is throwing at him.

The Model B four-cylinder is pressurized, fitted with insert bearings, and topped with a Miller-Schofield overhead valve conversion. Cedric bought it as a running motor but added the Thomas intake, twin Stromberg 81s, Winfield cam, and Charlie Yapp exhaust manifolds, which are hooked to an exhaust system Cedric fabricated.

Engine is fired by a 12-volt Mallory dual-point ignition. “It’s an honest 100hp motor, maybe 110,” Cedric says. “Reliable as all get-out.”

Mitch Kim pinstriped the firewall, as well as the dashboard inside.

The Vintage Moon fuel pressure gauge is cool, as is a small example of Cedric’s handiwork with copper tubing. Cedric and Kim operate Schmeer Sheet Metal, an architectural sheetmetal shop.

Front suspension consists of a dropped axle hung by a reverse-eye recurved spring. “It’s my dad’s design that we put on everything,” Cedric says of the spring. Boling Brothers early iron brakes stop the roadster. Note that the tires have whitewalls on both sides. “There’s so much black up front [so] I wanted something to contrast with the backing plates,” Cedric says. He sent his Coker wide whites to Diamond Back Classic Tires for the inner whitewalls.

Rearend contains a magnesium Halibrand 101 quick-change. “It’s an in-and-out box,” Cedric says of the q-c. “You can see the shifter hanging down.”

Guy’s Interior Restorations handled the upholstery and also made the roadster’s new top. Pinstriping on the dash is by Mitch Kim, and Cedric fabricated the brass engine-turned panels inset in the beautifully stained floor.

The Ford Crestline wheel was originally intended for Kim’s coupe but wound up in the roadster. “I bought an original Bell wheel for her car, but she doesn’t like it,” Cedric says. “Not enough bling.”

Stock Model A gauges in the dashboard are complemented by a 1950s-era aftermarket Stewart-Warner gauge cluster underneath.

A stock 1939 shift lever is capped by a knob with an inset brass coin, commemorating Ford’s “40 Years of Progress” from 1932-1972. “I bought the knob from Lucky Burton,” Cedric says. “He makes them. I liked the color combination, the Ford script; it just worked.”

Roadster’s nice rake is achieved by dumping the front end and leaving the rear at its stock ride height.

“We have had so much fun in the car,” Cedric says. “The engine is really torque. It goes down the freeway at 65 to 70 with no problem and leaves the line hard. It’s not quite as snappy as something with more cubic inches, but it sings down the road. It just flies.”

The Miller-Schofield/Cragar OHV Conversion

Harry Miller, most famous for his Indy racing machines in the 1920s and 1930s, formed the Miller-Schofield company in 1928 with several other investors, including financier George Schofield. Among the company’s products was an overhead valve cylinder head that was designed by Leo Goossen, one of Miller’s chief engineers. Moving the valves out of the block and into the head improved the engine’s breathing to such a degree that a stock, 40hp Model A motor could make nearly 70 hp with the addition of the head alone.

According to automotive historian Art Bagnall, Miller-Schofield was making up to 50 of these heads a day at its peak. That peak was short-lived, though; Miller-Schofield was bankrupt by 1930, one of the many victims of the 1929 stock market crash and ensuing Depression.

Not long after, Harlan Fengler, a former board-track racing driver, teamed with a young plumbing heir named Crane Gartz and bought the remains of the Miller-Schofield cylinder head business. They formed a company and named it Cragar by contracting Gartz’s first and last names. For a couple of years, they manufactured the OHV head as a Cragar component, but they, too, couldn’t escape the crush of the Depression and went bankrupt in 1932. The Cragar name was saved, though, by George Wight, founder of Bell Auto Parts, who bought Cragar’s leftover parts from Gartz.

The cutaway illustration of a Cragar head you see here was drawn by Rex Burnett for an article by Don Francisco called “Ford 4-Barrel Speed Secrets” in the Nov. 1950 issue of HOT ROD. The 4-barrel term referred to the number of cylinders in the block and had nothing to do with carburetion. This was one of a series of tech articles Francisco did in 1950-1951 that examined ways to hop up banger motors for the street and track.

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