Want a quick lesson on how...
Want a quick lesson on how to chop a pickup top? Look carefully. That’s how!
The Army guy right next to the Navy guy said, the Army will take you.’ The Army guy gave me a dirty look and stamped a paper and told me to take it downstairs. I took it downstairs and asked, what do I do now? Go home, you’re 4-F (not suitable for the military).’ I went to a doctor and he told me there was no cure for asthma so he said I should move to some place where it didn’t bother me.
Tim escaped the damp climate of Portland, Oregon (average rainfall 42.3 inches per year), heading south: I always wanted to come to California and as soon as I got here in 1944, the asthma went away. I moved to Highland Park and later to Pasadena.
Upholstery by Tom Medley....
Upholstery by Tom Medley. Yep, Medley was as much a righteous stitcher as a celebrated cartoonist. Wouldn’t you love to find Tim’s truck with those hides still inside?
Tim’s first job when he got to California was working at a Burbank aircraft plant in the modification shop. But I wanted to start my own business down the road, so I started planning for it. A friend of mine traded me his stock engine for my race Flathead V-8 engine and $200. I went down and put that down on a Kwik Way Boring Bar. At that time I was boring engines nights and weekends for various shops and making payments on the machine.
I first met Don Blair at the dry lakes. He was working down in L.A., at the time, for a machine shop that did engine work and sold parts. Blair worked on the counter and said to me, come down and see if they’ll hire you.’ They did.
Blair and I used to drive to work together. He had the lousiest car radio I ever heard. I asked him, where did you get that thing? Blair said, What difference does it make? I got a good buy on it!’ (Blair was/is thrifty.)
Tim’s show-quality ’34 was...
Tim’s show-quality ’34 was on display at the first Motorama held at the Shrine Convention Hall in 1950. But wide-eyed spectators passing by his chopped pickup couldn’t put their finger on it. Was the windshield chopped or not? Tim explains: “The windshield came down to the cowling that stuck up about 2 inches. My friend Sam Gates cut that out, so when he lowered the roof, Sam was able to use the stock windshield.”
I found out I was just a flunky tearing down engines and hot-tanking heads and blocks; I realized nothing was going on there. I told the owner I’d come in on weekends and work for nothing if he’d teach me to run the crank grinder. He wasn’t receptive to it so I got hot and told Blair I was going to look for another job. Blair said he knew somebody who might hire me.
It was Jack McGrath. He called his shop Quality Motor Rebuilders. Jack built half the engines used by the Gophers, Sidewinders, and the Outriders. He really taught me how to run the equipment, stroke cranks, cylinder block machining, and assembling engines.
When I was working for McGrath, I built my ’32 from scratch. I got a frame, frontend, and I found a straight roadster body at different wrecking yards. When I got that thing running with a bored and stroked engine, I don’t think I had over $500 in it.
Jack and I really hit it off. He taught me how to do machine work. After I built my ’32 Ford roadster, we’d go out street racing around 10 o’clock when most people were home from work and off the streets. We’d always go to a place where there was no intersection. You couldn’t do that stuff today too much traffic. Of course we also went together to El Mirage and ran.
“My first shop I started in...
“My first shop I started in 1953 was a rented building just down from Blair’s Speed Shop. I really enjoyed my business of building engines, especially for hot rodders. They were a class of their own. You could talk to them and they’d understand. The only people I had trouble with were the ones with a lot of money who knew nothing about cars. They thought when you did a job it was forever.”
People don’t realize it today, but McGrath and most of the guys started out racing regular roadsters and a lot got totaled. McGrath ran his ’32 roadster and I ran mine, but after three races at Carrell Speedway I realized I couldn’t race and work at the same time. If I crashed the roadster I’d have no way to get to work. As the competition got stiffer, McGrath and everyone else switched to the lighter T roadsters. McGrath was racing at Gilmore and Carrell Speedway, but there were tracks all over the place. That’s when he closed his shop.
I went over to Blair and asked if he needed anybody. He said, You!’ I went to work for Blair on Arroyo Parkway. I did all of his engines. There was only one other guy who worked there; he called himself Remarkable Art Herd. He worked on chassis and on Blair’s race car.
Tim surveys the carnage on...
Tim surveys the carnage on his ’35 Ford convertible when it was sideswiped by a hit-and-run trucker. Tim was passing through Red Bluff, CA, in 1943 when it happened.
“Boy I wish I had that car...
“Boy I wish I had that car today,” Tim says. “I got that before the war; it had an automatic transmission in it from the factory. It didn’t accelerate so we put a three-speed trans in it.” Tim, if you owned that car today you would be a hit at Barrett-Jackson because that semi-automatic trans made your ragtop a rare bird. Ford wouldn’t offer an automatic again until 1951.
“That ’36 was stripped overnight...
“That ’36 was stripped overnight after it crashed at El Mirage in 1946,” Tim states. “People stole everything off of it.”
“My hill-climbing Harley was...
“My hill-climbing Harley was built at the factory specifically for hill climbing. It was called an FH for ‘factory hillclimbing.’ It was especially popular in Oregon because we had a lot of hills. The engine is further forward in the frame so when you’re going uphill it put the weight on the front end. I usually got three-quarters up the hill, but I never went over,” Tim laughs. “We had a sheriff who was a hill climber. He caught a guy speeding who had a tractor. The motorcycle cop said he’d forget the ticket if the speeder would cut a path up through the hill that we could race up on.”
Tim’s employer and friend...
Tim’s employer and friend Jack McGrath was known by the press as “King of the Hot Rods”. McGrath was a member of the SCTA Gophers and owned one of the fastest track roadsters in the California Roadster Association, winning its championship in 1946. But when McGrath and Manuel Ayulo graduated to the Champ Cars, Tim lost both friends tragically within months of one another. Ayulo died in practice for the ’55 Indianapolis 500. McGrath died in the final race at Phoenix the following November.
Where have all the roadsters...
Where have all the roadsters gone, long time passing? Let’s see, no telling how many were scrapped during the war effort. But the simple fact was, hot rodders were racers and hot rods were race cars that were burned, T-boned, nerfed, rolled, flipped, or worse on dirt tracks, the lakes, or on the street. According to Tim, McGrath’s Deuce escaped being hit head-on in that race and that ’34 survived unscathed to be ready for the next race.