Features Ayala-Barris Jack Stewart 1941 Ford RESTORATION has started.

No doubt this will be top notch. Go Palle GO!

 

Great thread.Thanks Rik.

 

thanks Rik!
i am so excited that i finally had the nerve to start on the car..like Rik said, it took me long time to decide its was time for it! cant realy explain why, but it just wasnt easy.
but now its all fun, and we cant wait to go deaper into the history.
the left door looks okay, i was expecting more signs from the train chrash, but i think i remember Bob told me, it was more the front fender, that was hit!
look at the bottom of the door here, and we can see that some repair has been done!


but when the body is all stripped, i am sure damages will show up!
the body will be taken of the frame, allthough alot of guys tells us not to! but Bob did lift of the body, and he had the frame restored back then..so i am not afraid of doing that.
but i understand the concerns, with a body that has been channeled like that, in the driveway, with the tolls they had back then.
about the interior..my plans are to save the original. it need alot of work, but it would be cool to use the original one!

one of the things we are trying to find, is a piece of the old Barris color. but when Bob got the car, it was all stripped to bare metal he told me..and he painted the car in his shop!
as you can see i have got help from the best sniffer in the nabourhood, and she always finds something usefull!!

thanks for all the kind words..we will do all we can to do it right...
and please check out the missing partslist.
stay tuned
palle

 

thanks Rik, I'll be watching the progress on this one ! killer !

 

Palle,
Good luck with the resto, in your hands this will be a killer deal! Was this car originally a flatty powered CAD or and OHV, one of those articles confused me.
I guess it now has a flatty merc in it??? Enlighten me .

 

Thanks for posting your resto. Jack Stewart was a personal friend of mine decades ago and I remember him being surprised when he heard his old car had been resurrected.

 

Thanks again, Rik ! This will be a "killer" all over again when it's finished !

Jonnie

 

Hi guys!
just got of the phone with Bob Drake..very nice guy. and he loves to talk about the car, just like Jack.
one funny thing, that i never knew. when Bob heard about the car, he heard it was a 50 mercury that was chrashed, and they took of and looked at it! but he knew it was the Stewart car, the minute he saw it! Bob had seen the car in 51, at the exhibition!
actuelly Bob has a picture of the car from that day..and i think we might see it soon.
And Kevin my friend...i will make you proud! it had a cadillac flathead, and it will again...including CYCLONE heads!

and the burrell! i think it will fit right in!!

-palle

 

great thread, and beautiful pics!

 

I love this car and spent a lot of time looking at it at the Peterson auction, if I'd have known it (and the La Jolla) were within financial reach, I would have gotten the $ together somehow!

Any idea when the sculpting on the dash was done? That looked kind of modern to me. Also I'm curious to see what is excavated to reveal the extent of the '70s wreck repair.

 

This will be interesting.....looking foward to it....

 

I have been looking forward to the start of this thread since you first announced that you had purchased it Palle , I think that its fantastic that you are trying to get it to as it was 1st built condition ...looking forward to your progress!!

 

Thanks for the updates Rik and Palle!! Great to see another historic custom being brought back to it original glory.

 

I have been friends with Bob Drake for nearly 40 years. I saw the pictures of the car after the train wreck. It was pretty bad. Given the time period and the car, we are lucky it didn't go straight to the crusher. Don't be surprised as to what you might find during your "excavation" of this old car. Hell, I guess even the Hirahota Merc was cobbled up pretty bad.

It has already been proven time again on this board many of the old customizers we hold in high regard here have been guilty of a hack job or two.

I applaude you for redoing this old car.

 

Bob Drake is responsible for the sculpting on the dash. According to Bob he got bored one night and asked himself what he could do on the car. So he started sculpting these flames. Don't know if it is filler or lead... but time will tell.

 

We hope to see those photos soon as well. Bob had told Palle that he will be finding some glass fiber repairs on the front fender. So all that will need to be replaced with sheet metal and fine tuned in lead.

 

I think the "insulation" under the upholstery is old horse hair rug pad material. We had some left over when my parents put new carpet in our house in 1947, and the partial roll sat in the basement for many years after that. Smelled BAD when damp!

 

When I read your reply Terry, I thought, "that stuff smells so bad"... and then read your last sentence. Pretty funny..
this is a great car and a wonderful story. Cant wait to see more.

 

Palle (emiliedk) & Rik (Rikster) -

Thanks for sharing the restoration with us here on the H.A.M.B. ... much appreciated.

Glad to see that you're taking so many detailed pics during the disassembly process ... even the most trivial of photos will prove to be a great asset when you start to put things back together (don't ask me how I know ).

It's really great that you were able to contact Jack Stewart, Jim Street & Bob Drake ... and I'm patiently waiting to see those "train wreck" pics (I swear I've seen them before ... just don't remember where).

 

Oh boy... this will be a good one. Thanks Rik and Palle for the thread. I will be subscribing to this, for sure!

 

Rik and Palle- this is an awesome kustom to restore, and thank you for sharing the process with us and documenting it nicely!

I will keep an eye out for those spare parts for you guys!

 

Killer photos Palle!!!!

 

Here are a few more photos of the first steps.

The rear axle and frame. If you look close you can see the body sides and how they where dropped over the frame.



A better view of the molded on "flames" on the dash. As you can see the gauge pods where smoothed and painted, and the center grille of the dash is completely missing. The chromed windshield garnish is still in place in this photo.




Here is a photo of the dash at the time Jim Street owned the car.
The chrome gauge pods, the center grille and the Mercury script and ribbed panel is what we are still missing.




The chrome plated window garnish removed. The outside is nicely smoothed, but its nice to see the work and welds on the inside.




And here you can see how the garnish looks when viewed from behind the wheel.

 

Damn Rick....

Of all the people in the world who coulda got their hands on this ride, Im gald it went to you guys

Keep the progress pix coming please.

Rat

 

My site has been down almost 20 hours yesterday and just got back online a few minutes ago. So the new photos I added yesterday right before the fiber channel broke at the provider (at least thats what they say happened) where not visible for all this time... As a matter of fact none of my posted photos showed anywhere.

Yesterday I received an email from Craig Wise - who is a close friend of Jack Stewart - with some new old photos that have never been published. Due to some magazine articles that I'm working on I cannot show them all at this point. But I promise all the photos we do find will eventually be shared here, in some magazine articles and on my site. But from time to time I will share a few that for some reason cannot be used in the articles I have planned.

One of those is the one below. The photo is taken in late 1950, or early 1951. The car - in white primer - has yellow 1950 plates. Although it is difficult to see in the photo below I have other angles at this location that clearly show yellow plates.

​

And here is a great photo of Jack looking at the Hamb thread in which I announced the car was bought by Palle and had arrived in Denmark.
We know that Jack is really happy that the car will be fully restored back to how it looked when it was finished at the Barris Shop in 1951. This photo tells is all.

 

Awesome!!!

 

Thanks Craig!..fantastic photos! this is getting better and better!
my problem is that i start liking the car in white more everytime i see it!
expect more progress this weekend! if your bored Rik! just jump into your car, and show up..Dan and i are in the shop for sure!
-palle

 

I am really glad this car is going to finally find a caring home and be restored to its orginal Jack Stewart condition.

I met Jack in the early '70s when I relocated from Maine to SoCal and found a job as a low-level assistant for a recently-established street rod organizaton. He and Neal East were teamed up at the time in a journalistic endeavor. I was in awe.

Jack took me under his wing and helped me deal with what at the time was a tremendous culture shock far more gracefully than I could have done it myself. He took me to events in his roadster and introduced me to many of the luminaries of the time. He seemed to know everybody, and yet was very quiet about himself.

I asked him about this car once, whether or not he was the same Jack Stewart who had owned it back in the day. I still remember him saying, "Must have been some other Jack Stewart." The subject never came up again.

I will always be greatful to Jack for his kindness to and acceptance of a complete stranger. I was in completely over my head, and Jack extended his hand in friendship. Nobody can resist his infectious smile...or his line of malarky.

Jack is a one-of-a-kind hot rodder and a very special human being. It is so very fitting that his old ride be restored to its former glory.

 

This is such a cool thread! Thanks, guys, for restoring this car.

And those black-and-white photos of postwar L.A. are amazing. Please, keep them coming!

Keep up the great work.