Hot Rods The HAM!

[shmoozo]

Love the dog. (How can anybody not love that dog?)

The car is mostly great, though that grille shell has me scratching my head in puzzlement. Am I the only one who finds the fat-bottomed grille shell a bit ... well ...distracting?

Help a guy to learn something here. A channeled deuce roadster with fenders ... is that a bit of what I have heard called "East Coast" vibe going on there? Or am I misunderstanding the term?

[Bruce Lancaster]

Pomona?? How far east IS that?? Fenders were certainly required in California, the infamous fender law, and this is long before the police started assuming that anyone in a rod or on a Harley was a retired accountant. Might also have been required by the racing body for sports class...this is a race car in some kind of street formula class, and I think some of the other famous racers in the magazines from that period also carried cycle fenders.

[shmoozo]

Originally Posted by Bruce Lancaster

Pomona?? How far east IS that??

Maybe 42 miles from the Pacific by my reckoning, so not very far, but that isn't what I was asking.

Originally Posted by Bruce Lancaster

Fenders were certainly required in California, the infamous fender law, and this is long before the police started assuming that anyone in a rod or on a Harley was a retired accountant. Might also have been required by the racing body for sports class...this is a race car in some kind of street formula class, and I think some of the other famous racers in the magazines from that period also carried cycle fenders.

Um, yeah, but what I am asking about is a thing called "east coast style" rods (I think that's the term) that as I understand it were defined by things like channeling and fenders. What I understand was "west coast style" was the ubiquitous fenderless high-boy. There's nothing that would prevent an east coast style roadster from being built on the west coast, however. I just gather that the east coast style was more common on the east coast, hence the term.

Or so I understand it. I'm just asking if I understand that correctly. Maybe I didn't make that clear enough in my previous message. If so, I apologize for the misunderstanding.

[Bruce Lancaster]

I think the point was getting it low. Roadracer thing. Some westerners also channeled them for assumed aerodynamic benefits at lkes or Bonneville, but I believe that became a class dividing point, with only unchanneled cars in roadster, channeled ones bumped to modified roadster and so irrelevant as an advantage.
On the street, I think the unchanneled and frequently full fendered roadsters were kept thus for both styling and functional reasons. If you look at eastern hotrods, I think the aesthetic impulse was largely to make the car look modified and to hell with functional considerations! They wanted to look radical, and I think were unfettered by an notion of what was visually attractive in many cases. There were good looking eastern channeled cars, but a great many were built with terrible proportions and interiors that were actually painful. There were also a lot of channeled western cars in the early mags, but usually built with an eye to maintaining proportion and function. Note that in the very functional Balchowski racer, he got a lot of his space back by losing the dashboard!

[stude_trucks]

Not big on the grill, but love the rest of it, especially the no dash idea. Never even thought about that. The dog is cool too of course.

[BLAKE]

My thoughts exactly... "dashless for knee comfort"... I like it!

[rustydeuce]

Those old mag covers were great huh? None of that trying to dazzle you with 'offers of discounts' crap or colors that almost blind you in the process.

[Bad Bob]

Originally Posted by 49ratfink

if people were more like dogs the world would be a better place.

You mean,dragging their butts on the carpet? hahaha!
I agree 100%. Gotta find me that issue of HONK also...

[Von Rigg Fink]

I bet they went thu a ton of pictures before they nailed that one..

hahahah Bad Bob

[junquewerkz]

Originally Posted by Bruce Lancaster

That is one of my favorite individual magazines of all time, and not just because of the cover shot! Check out the article on building a full-synchro in all 3 speeds early Ford/LZ transmission article, the related article on the road racing rod (Manning, I think?) and just the sheer coolness of tone in the whole magazine! Honk was a helluva neat magazine in its few issues.

Bruce or Ryan, can you please post a scan of the full-synchro trans article? Sounds very interesting.

[alchemy]

I think I've seen that magazine before.

[sololobo]

I love that picture, the dog is exceptional and I understand was a real ham. You can tell he is having a great time and loving being the center of attention. Thanx for dredging up that hip memory. I have that mag---someplace! ~Sololobo~

[Bruce Lancaster]

Dog was not exceptional at all; he never placed higher than 9th in that car, and Balchowsky did MUCH better himself after firing the dog.

[Bruce Lancaster]

The trans article isn't full fledged tech, just part of the story on the racer, which I think was manning's roadster.
The article DOES give enough description of the conversion process, along with several pictures, for a real machinest/welder to duplicate.
Basically they replaced rear fork with another front one, put syncro hub over cut-down slider, added a hub from a cut down synchronized gear to a hollowed first...
From memory, I'm at work and this stupid library doesn't own Honk for some reason!

[jchav62]

What an awesome story! Cool dog...cooler car...

[autobilly]

Originally Posted by Mazooma1

Outstanding cover, cool car and what a great dog!

[dutch deuce]

My last name is Van Der HAM !
Translated in English it means : from the HAM

[SAVAGE]

I love That it has a Flathead Cadillac engine with Cyclone heads.. Sweet machine.
I bet it hauled

[Junkyard Dog 32]

Dogs dig deuces...







JOE

[Jimmy B]

Great article that dog is awesome.

I noticed no one has talked about who originally built the '32 it was Jimmy Summers. Jimmy built it around '46 and sold it to the Fred Vogel. notice the V in the front Nerf bar in the article?

Thefingerisout Huge Stash of Early Doane Spencer Pics