Ryan submitted a new blog post: The First***** Courtney '29 Roadster Continue reading the Original Blog Post
I think the hood is a little weird with those extended sides... And I'm not sure the grille shell height is bang on, but that's all beside the point - this car was really the first to pull off that '29 on deuce rails with hillock windshield look...
I moved to LA in 1984 and I first saw this car at the Early Times Pancake Breakfast at Mattel Toy Company. I fell in love with it and later learned of*****'s passion for the 29 with a Hallock windshield. I became friends with Doug Lindow who also built several 29's. He told me the story of the car and how it inspired him to build his clone making his own windshield. Doug was an accomplished aerospace engineer and could duplicate anything. I have seen several clones of the car over the years but I have not seen*****'s 3rd car in many years. I presume it is still around. Thanks for the photo. Here are a couple of similar looking 29's on Deuce rails.
here's Jack Tobin's car that started it all, originally John Bean's of the Knight Riders & here is a photo of the***** Courtney car in the early 50s i've been doing alot of research after picking up 2 hallock style screens and both being different castings so have been trying to work out which is which if at all original designs & i'm running one on my 27T build Harley
I've wondered about the first Courtney car as well. No shots of his car, but I've often wondered what became of the mystery car shown here in 1942; deuce rails & grille, hot flatty, and Hallock style windshield (removed in this shot, but you can see the marks from it); I also have this shot, said to be the Barber Bros in 1947; similar styling...possibly a connection?
Agreed --- still a great car! @Pewsplace I love the second car - aka the Nimrod Roadster. I wonder whatever happened to him... don't think he's posted on here in a few years. @Vonmerkin I can't get those links to work - are the photos in your albums on here?
it was used in a early 90s article on V screen's by Pane Weber in R&C that i was shown yesterday but i have had this photo saved for a while, not sure where it originates.
Looks strikingly similar to the Jack Davis car (Jack owned it before Calori), but I'm not 100% sure it's one and the same...The Davis/Calori car didn't have the hole in the pillar for the early Hallock as this one does and the snaps for the upholstery are different. The wishbone mounts are similar, but a little different too. Wish I knew!
i think the Junior Tucker Roadster is a good contender for being the Barber bro's looking at the smooth hood, wishbone mounts and dropped axle.
28/29s, deuce rails/shell have become my favorite hot rod...the combo is simply beautiful. Hallock or not...they just look great!
Not liking the tail pipes coming through the rear panel and the taillights that close to the license plate. Other than that this is a timeless hot rod for sure. Sits just right!
Wow, never seen those...'banger powered goodness!! Main differences I see between this and the Barber car are door handles & headlight placement. BTW: when you gonna come to Texas so we can compare notes
Back in the 80s,a friend of mine was attempting to graft an old Duesenberg(I think) windshield to a '31.I'll see if I can dig up some pics.
How did they make a mold off the original, as the story goes, given the fact that a mold has to be made slightly oversize to allow for shrinkage when poring a new casting?
Okay, I can't get to Vonmerkins picture to load, and I'm getting an error read when I try, but I know what picture it is. It's a left front three quarters of the car showing it's awesome stance, that goofy hood and beautiful windshield with a smiling youngish***** at the wheel. Street Rodder did an article '87-'89 about***** Courtney's then current car, but also back tracked on the other two. The picture I am refering to was printed in that article, and possibly Chris Shelton's on Hallock windshield in Rod and Customs little pages from a few years back. (Pardon me while I whip this out...) Nope, not the shot I thought it was which means that I have to dig a bit deeper to find it. Now I can't remember if this shot is one of the ones from above either. The shot I am talking about was used in the Street Rodder article at that time, I seem to remember a similar article in Hot Rod under Pat Ganahl's watch, and possibly in American Rodder in the late nineties when the current car was featured under the subsequent owner. I'll take some time in the next few days when I can and dig it up, 'cause this thing had "stance"!!!
Well hell, that didn't take long! There it is in the October '90 Rod & Custom in the Flying Vs part II article, second one down. This is the view of the original Courtney car I'm used to seeing, even though it's a right front three quarters view and not left. Also, since I'm too damned dumb to edit scans it's sort of a two for one deal cause below it is the '60/'70s version he built before the one featured here today...
Hey G White, I would have to go back through my Don*****omery books to pull a positive I.D. on that one, but I'm 75% sure that was in a nighttime shot at a hamburger stand in one of those books, and it belonged to maybe a Kenny Hrones from the Hornets club. Not 100% sure mind you, but pretty close. This is another one I've liked for long time...
I am certainly no metallurgist or foundry man, but it is my understanding that most non-ferrous metals shrink at about 3% over their pattern size. Over a smaller item like a windshield frame, that really wouldn't account for too much that could be made up for by mounting the side at a slightly greater angle. I have also seen a buddy that does castings add a bit here and there with bondo and other putties to create enough to compensate.
The shrinkage across the cross-section of the frame wouldn't matter much, the shrinkage of the width of the whole body would. You would need to add a bit of stock to your pattern on the ends of the legs. I'm guessing they were welded together somewhere near the center post, so adding a half inch to each horizontal leg could be easy to do there. Or, if the windshield bolted/welded together right up the middle of the V, you could add some width to the pattern on the two mating surfaces and nobody would notice it there.
The Hallock frames I have handled didn't get welded together as far as I know, but were bolted through the top of the cowl and arranged so the peak in the center of the windshield met in a, well, peak. As I said, they could have easily added a bit of material to the original they copied back then, but that would have predated bondo and such, so it may be was lead or something of that sort. The other way it could have been handled was to cast it directly off of the original not accounting for shrink, and arrange the bolt holes to form a just slightly shallower "V", then go back over and true the mating surfaces and mounting plug that fit the door posts. I have seen what looks to be many variations of the basic Hallock frame, and there is another thread here on the H.A.M.B. that addresses 4 or 5 companies that made versions of it. Outside of this, my ideas on mounting and finish machining g in my mind have always accounted for some of these variations.... Maybe.
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