A Week Late From LARS

I’ve been looking for a “shop truck” for a number of months now and a few days before the LA Roadster Show, I just happened to find what I was looking for in Southern California. My initial plan was to fly in, hit the show, and then drive my newly minted ’64 Ford F100 back to Texas. It sounded romantic, if not a bit desperate… and the plan was quickly ditched as soon as I heard of an empty trailer headed home. Here’s how it worked out:

Steve Coonan drove his ’32 roadster out to Texas for the Round Up. However, while in Austin he had some troubles with a head gasket and decided to abandon the car at Dave’s Perfection – a local shop owned by one of my best pals, Steve Wertheimer. Anyway, Wertheimer and the boys at Dave’s Perfection got Coonan’s top end rebuilt just in time to trailer the car to Pomona for the 50th anniversary of the Roadster Show. So it worked out perfect – we trailered Coonan’s roadster out and my truck back. Now that, my friends, is romantic.

In any case, Wertheimer and I arrived in the LA area on Thursday night and hooked up with Coonan at Jimmy White’s shop. After a few beers and a little wrenching it was decided we would all head over to Bob Brook’s shop in the morning to pick up a new clutch that he had made for Wertheimer’s early digger. For the unfamiliar, Bob Brooks is a legendary name in the world of Drag Racing. Among other things, he’s the main man behind the modern centrifugal clutch and his shop, at one time, was the absolute epicenter of top fuel drag racing. His joint shows it too – a sort of hybrid between a traditional machine shop and a support shop for not only top fuel drag racing, but also for Bob’s own Bonneville efforts. Considering the kind of top secret R&D that goes down between those walls, I was shy about taking pictures.

Tour done, Bob handed Wertheimer a pen and notepad and told him to sit down. For the next two hours, Bob gave all three of us a lesson on centrifugal clutches. He started with the manufacturing process, moved on to the installation keys and then the proper procedure to set them up, and finished with the basics of piloting a car equipped with such a brute. By the time we left, Wertheimer had completely filled his legal pad and nearly drained his entire savings account. It might have been the best two hours of the weekend.

And that’s saying something… I hadn’t been to the LA Roadster show in years. To be perfectly honest, the show part of the shin-dig is not much different than any other big Southern California show. You’ll see a lot of the same cars, a lot of the same vendors, and a lot of the same people. Given the quality of the cars in the area, however, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, if you hail from the midwest, can only afford the trip to So-Cal once a year, and have to pick between the GNRS or LARS… Well, flip a coin… You can’t go wrong.

That being said, if you are in this deal to shop for parts I don’t know that there is a better Hot Rod swap meet in the country than the one attached to the LA Roadster Show. Nothing is sacred and nothing is “rare” at this swap meet. Quite literally, everything you can think of is there and for sale. You just gotta be prepared to pay a premium for it. I had spent all of my money on the before mentioned ’64 F100, so I bought nothing… but I spent far more hours browsing the swap than I did the actual show itself.

In fact, I was so engulfed by trade that I failed to see and hang out with a lot of people I would have liked to. I didn’t even realize it until Steve and I were packed up and headed back to Texas, but we were both pretty much social hermits. There were, however, a few social highlights:

1. About twenty years ago, I sat in Skinny Jeff’s garage and watched him and Jimmy White thrash on an ill acting hydraulic clutch. On Friday night last week, I watched Jimmy White work on the same clutch in the same car. Later that weekend, I got to see both Jimmy and Jeff together again… Full circle at Circle City Hot Rods.

2. I spent a lot of time with Steve Coonan over the weekend. Most of it was spent telling dirty jokes and drinking far too many cocktails, but some good did come of it all. More on that later this week…

3. I hung out with Andy Brizio. Seriously – I really hung out with him for close to half an hour. When I was a kid, I had posters of his cars on my walls. Completely and totally star struck.

4. The Steve’s introduced me to Alan Johnson of Johnson’s Hot Rod Shop. He didn’t know me from anybody, but still kept me nourished in beer and good conversation. I came away with three things from that: One, I love southerners. Always will. Two, Alan is way younger than I thought. Two, he is also really damned smart.

5. While being introduced to Jim Jacobs, I accidentally referred to him as “Pete.” Damnit.

……………….

I’m back home now… and, of course, I’m really late on this post. I did some pictures (they are attached), but for really good coverage of this event check out Tom Davison’s post. You’ll be glad ya did.