Every hot rodder dreams of someday finding a ‘barn car’ that has been gathering dust or decades, long forgotten by previous owners. The car of course would be in great shape, ready for updates and a little ender loving care to make it street worthy once again. Those kind of stories are indeed true at our house. I have found just such a car. The story is a very long one, stretching back almost forty years.
This car began as a model ‘T’ Ford. I acquired a Model ‘T’ frame complete with a four-bar suspension system from Pete Reimer in the Fraser Valley. Although I don’t remember how much I paid, but I know it wasn’t much for this hot rod was to be financed, literally, with pocket change. We had little money to spare in those days but with Janis’ blessing I tossed my change into a jar on the dresser each evening. That change was saved up to buy bits and pieces for my dream car.
About this time I remember attending a hot rod show and looking at a number of hot rod ‘T’s on display. Except for colour they were much the same. I didn’t want that and decided then and there I would build something truly different. I was inspired by a tiny photograph from a book that had been presented to me on my graduation from high school. The picture I found was of a 1904 car. The lines of the car body were simple enough that I reasoned I could build the car myself. And so the gathering of parts continued in earnest. I scrounged a V6 Buick engine and transmission from an auto wrecker. A dropped tube axle, spindles, a rear end and countless other bits started collecting in our garage. My good friend Norm Bumstead, from Chemainus, offered to help me with the fabricating and welding. My first attempt at the body was of plywood and fibreglass but this was quickly abandoned in favour of aluminum. Norm and I cut the pieces with a jigsaw and hand formed them over whatever worked. Over some months we built the body. The most expensive part in the whole car was the diamond tufted seat and it cost a whopping nine hundred dollars as I recall. Just about everything on the car was hand built with basic hand tools.
This was all done during a very busy time in our lives. Sometimes the car sat for weeks or months before I was able to work on it which was a good thing for it was still being financed with pocket change. I was delighted when two dollar coins were issued as it made the change add up much faster! In the late 90’s we temporarily relocated to Edmonton to work on a large project there. The little hot rod project began to gather dust as it was left home in the garage. I got it running when we returned in 1999. Then we moved back to the Fraser Valley in 2000 and the street rod was again put into storage. In 2003 we built our new shop, complete with a dedicated hot rod room but we were so busy I never found any time to work on my project car. We were busy with the business. We had years of work to complete the yard and eventually a new house. I was also busy building the grand scale railway around the yard to share with my new grand daughter Phoebe. Sometime in 2007 I decided I had to make a choice. I decided to give the hotrod to our neighbour’s boy who was fifteen at the time. He worked on it for a time but eventually it got tapped and tucked into a corner of their shop. Over a period of twelve years it had started to gather quite a layer of dust.
This past year I started to get the itch once more. I needed a hotrod project and I knew just where to find one. Out in an old storage container, in my neighbour’s yard, buried under a host of other treasures, was that illusive ‘barn car’ just waiting to be found. My neighbor generously donated it back to me and it is now in a storage container in our yard. We’ll soon begin disassembling it and then rebuilding it to go for that long awaited fun cruise. I of course have some different ideas for the final look as my tastes have changed over forty years. That old picture that inspired the car is long gone but some internet research quickly sourced some better photographic inspiration. This new material was combined with a healthy dose of imagination and it wasn’t long before I had created the first concept drawing. The car will soon re-emerge as a 1904 Pope-Tribune Model II with a little steampunk influence thrown in for good measure. My goal is to have it running in time for the Yarrow Days Parade in June. Stay tuned…
