By Bruce Curley – SVMARC Editor/Webmaster
So I bought this ’29 Roadster on eBay. You heard right, eBay. One night, I was surfing the web and eBay, not looking for anything in particular and I started looking at cars for sale. I found this beautiful Standard Roadster and decided that I had to have her. A few glasses of Chardonnay later and little help from AuctionSnipe (that’s another story), and she was mine. I picked her up in San Bernardino on my new flatbed trailer (also purchased on eBay) and she was home.
I knew nothing about Model A’s, so the fact that she ran poorly, drove like a slug, smoked a lot and was very noisy didn’t bother me too much at first. What did I know? I thought this was normal. After a while though, after most every trip ended in stalling and having to trailer her home, I began to suspect that something major was wrong. I knew enough to check the compression and there was very little left to check. Because the leaky exhaust was so loud, I couldn’t hear the rod knocking. I began to seek advice online and that’s where I encountered Pat Lovejoy on Ahooga.com. Pat invited me to join SVMARC, which I did, and also built the engine which I bought from Aries Restoration, where Pat works. He also “helped” me install the new engine in my Model A which now runs like a dream.
Now the work began. There was quite a bit of restoration that needed to be done. I replaced almost all of the chrome parts with reproduction ones, had the radiator checked and cleaned out, repainted most of the undercarriage, replaced all of the wiring, the generator (with a 6 volt alternator) and the exhaust system (Aries stainless steel).
For me, the most difficult part of the project was the firewall. Here I had this beautiful brand new engine and the firewall looked like crap. It was all cracked and crazed and definitely looked bad! I tried sanding it down, but it didn’t do much. I tried filling in the cracks with primer, but that didn’t work. I finally ended up stripping the primer and the original paint with Jasco paint stripper and then scraping and sanding until I was down to bare metal. Then, I sprayed with acrylic enamel which I had matched to the body color (Andalusite Blue) by Peninsula Color in Santa Cruz. Then I wet sanded with 1000 grit sand paper and buffed it out with an electric drill and decreasingly finer grades of buffing compound. The results amazed me. The firewall was now as shiny as the body work which already looked pretty darn good.
My goal was to complete the car and trailer it to the first annual Hot August Nights at South Lake Tahoe which I had signed up for. As the time got nearer, I wondered if I would make it or not, but I did.
My wife and I trailed the car to Tahoe on Friday, found a parking spot in the Show and Shine lot at the Montbleu Resort and spent most of our time there or cruising Highway 50 or at our hotel (Harvey’s). The experience was fantastic. Most of the cars there were classic muscle cars or hot rods. Most were very nice. There were lots of rodded Model A’s, but I only saw one other “original” at the show. We were visited constantly by people who either owned Model A’s or were extremely interested in what an unmodified A looks like.
While there, I learned that a Model A runs differently at 6,000 feet than it does at sea level, but that there’s an under dash adjustment for that.
Overall, it was a great first-time experience. We had a ball. I also bought some new trailer tie downs at the show which work really well.
Bruce
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