When is an A-model to nice to hot rod?

Looking for an A.
All I see is boxes of parts or nice original cars.
Should I feel bad about buying an old original, intact, nice looking car but maybe not running and need a little work here and there, and cut it up making a badass trad rod?
Looking for some moral guidelines here, for once.. !

 

If you are looking at an older restoration that has sat and froze it all comes down to the quality of the restoration. As for an intact original alot has to do with the rarity of the body style in my opinion. I sure would not rod a rather complet Town Car, but no problem with a tudor or special coupe. The Delivery I have is rather rare, so it will be mostly original. As for the coupe body I am slowly gathering pieces to put back together there is no reasonable hope of making it original with the amount of it missing and the condition of what is there. The body is going to be a challange to make look decent any way I do it. Rod

 

Fendered highboys with traditional engines make nice hot rods

Sent from my DROID device using the TJJ mobile app

 

Looking for a tudor.

 

Never to nice to turn into a hotrod!

 

"Should I feel bad about buying an old original, intact, nice looking car but maybe not running and need a little work here and there, and cut it up making a badass trad rod?"

NO

 

The nicer the better.

 

When it is the last tudor on earth, don't rod it. Until that time, chop them up.

Henry only made some over 4 1/2 million Model A's.

I took an old restored tudor and stuck a V-8 in it. Kept the interior, fenders, and all that. Have not done any painting either. It made for an easy build.

I question it some if you buy a well restored Model A and just used the body. Seems like not much is saved over buying a project.

Neal

This is what I started with.

 

there is no shortage of restored model A's...

 

When you can show it at a Model A meet and the Model A guys walk over and tell you how nice it is. There is a lot of difference between a car that is nice enough that it would score high in the judging among similar cars and an older "restoration" that is showing it's age. The odd thing is that the asking price of a stone stock older restoration is often lower than that of a shitty rat rod that would probably take more work to make a decent rod out of than the stocker would.

 

How nice is too nice?,,If it's a totally original survivor that looks like it recently rolled of the show room floor IMHO it's too nice to hot rod but a older restoration or complete none running car would be fair game.

Henry cranked out 4,849,340 Model A's so it's not like there is a shortage of them out there. HRP

 

Never!!!

 

I would hope that the person that starts with a really good Model A would build a REALLY GOOD quality Hot Rod. I can think of a '32 Tudor that a HAMB member kept in its original as found condition and just upgraded the drive train, sort of best of both worlds. Bob

 

Check out my build in my signature. I was tired of looking at junk so I decided to buy a nice one. It's your car, who cares what other people think. It makes life much easier to start out with something nice and "improve" on it.

 

Only time I would worry about cutting up a car is if it is a hot rod with history. If it's just a stock car fair game! I met a guy at the Fireparty in 2010 that had a rad sectioned and bagged '54 Chevy. After talking to him he told me the millage (I can't remember but it was REALLY low). He also said it spent the majority of it's life in a museum. Basically it was a fresh of the showroom floor '54 Chevy with MINT original paint. He told me he was also planning on chopping it and I thought that was awesome! NEVER be afraid to cut them up!

 

Amen brother!

 

I omitted one thought with my original reply,,I would just build a traditional hot rod and not a cut up shock rod with a nice original. HRP

 

I am on the fence with this one. I am a hot rodder, but I appreciate a stock A just as much as a restorer. I bought my 29 coupe 5 years ago with the intention of building a rod. I had an early bronco rear, an early 289 and a 4 speed waiting for it. When the car got here from California I was blown away by it's originality. It was a true survivor car. I felt bad with what I was going to do so I sold off the parts I had for it and bought some 16 inch wires, reversed eye springs and firestones big and littles just to make it look better. My plan now is to build up the banger but I am leaving it all A and uncut. I think I made a good choice.

 

Deep down all Model A's want to be hotrods . You owe it to the species to do what's right.

 

define "badass trad rod". there are lots of "bad ass trad rods" out there that shouldn't even have been built out of a junk car.

 

That looks like the perfect example to go with the original question. I just skimed through your build, will it be a full fendered car? Time and money wise, if you sold off the unwanted stock stuff you should be way ahead of the game. Bob

 

This was my first thought. The most important thing is to develop an idea of what is a traditional hod rod and be able to differentiate that from what passes for traditional now days.

 

NO!!!!

NEVER!!!!!!

Now, if it were historically significant in some way (serial no 1, historically tied to some event or person,...) I would hesitate, but that has nothing to do with how "nice" it is.

Find an older restoration that someone is selling (one where they are selling it because they just finished the new restoration on another is best) drive it home and hack away to your heart's content.

Please have a plan, I am not one that is looking to contribute to the growing mass of scrap that are destroyed, half assed, un planned, un prepared people's attempts at a "hot rod." FWIW, the ones I tend to have issue with, are the ones that are trying to make a "rat rod" out of a shiny car, if you want patina and you don't have it, trade it with someone who wants shiny, and has rusty, duhh, legit patina is vastly superior to the store-bought kind (if you're after that).

Just to be clear, I understand it to be that the OP wants to build a "trad rod", not a rat rod, which I have to commend as there is nothing traditional about starting with the rustiest piece of shit you can find.

 

ALL Model A's should be hot rodded. Let's vote this into law!

 

You should feel bad for thinking that might feel bad..

 

My buddy has an original Model A, patina and all. However, he converted to juice brakes, installed a flathead V8 and 5 speed trans. Other then that, it looks original.

 

OK, here's my 2cents worth. Back in the late 70s I was building a 29 tudor. Bouught a really good used hot rod chassis and started looking for a body, Long story short I had may too much invested in buying body parts piece meal and still not getting it done. Looked in the paper and fount a really nice original for $1200. Bought it, took the body and fenders etc. and dropped it on my hot rod chassis. I was ready to go in no time. Sold the original chassis and all the body parts I collected for what I paid for the original. Think I saved some bucks by not having to do body work and paint, even used the original interior.

 

I started with this. The nicer the better.

 

to me, there are only hot rods and future hot rods. they will all have to be "upgraded" in the future to deal with laws, driving conditions, fuel availability/cost and environmental issues.
save the history of the car...or make the history of it. cut it up and don't look back.

 

Yes I plan on going full fendered. Although I really like the way it looks right now. Once I put the fenders back on I will make up my mind which I like better. I Sold my stock drivetrain to a guy and made a lot of the money back and put me in a great position to build the car I want.

On a side note, the gentleman I bought the car from belonged to a Model A club. He went on runs with them every now and then but he told me he only had the car out of the garage twice last year and only a handful of times the year before. The way I look at it is the car was meant to be out on the road. I took a car that only saw the light of day a couple times a year and i'm turning it into something that will be drivin all the time and enjoyed. I think that's a lot more important then saving a car just to keep it under lock and key. I say do what you want man to make yourself happy and not worry about everyone else.