I know his later stuff is considered billet-o-riffic, but wasn't he around in the sixties, or earlier? Any of his earlier work appropriate here? Photos?
Like this one. http://www.wediditforlove.com/Bankamericar.html Spell it ****era and you might get a few more hits.
Lil built some of the best fuelcar frames back in the day.....hell if I remember right some "other" pro builder got his start buildin' a T at lil's shop....
Just a bit of trivia, there were two Lil John cars that were in Pasadena. The silver '29 Roadster he built that had the twin-turbo V-6 Buick, and the '32 3w that was on the cover of Hot Rod (w/ his son Chris' Camaro) that had a Chrysler Weslake engine. Both cars were rebuilt in the early 80's in Pasadena with small-block Chevy power. Also, several Boyd cars were in the area too. The Vern Luce '33 Coupe went to Pearland for awhile, and the Blazer that Boyd built for Jamie Mussleman was in Pasadena. This past Christmas, while we were down in your area, my son rode in the '57 Boyd-Aire and we saw the Eldo-Rod Cadillac. I don't know what happened to those other cars, and there was a few other high-profile cars too ...but for awhile there was a quite a trail going from Houston to Anaheim via S/A. I have photos of alot of those cars since I was hanging in the circles of the owners but they are packed away and have not seen daylight in years. What got you on this Lil John kick anway?
Oops, typo! Great site! Didn't he come up with torsion bars for dragster front axles? i also remember the "Basic Training" series of articles in Hot Rod in the 80s.
Couple of my favorites: This last one is the Covell version of the car. It was originally built by Steve Davis and John ****era.
What got you on this Lil John kick anway? My head is full of old songs, old movie quotes, and old car mag articles. Was the Musselman blazer the one made into a pickup? I remember it, also the Luce coupe. I really liked hi-tech hot rods as a teen, lost interest later(probably when I didn't make it to the Fortune 500). I also swear I saw the Novette (Chevy II with 4th gen Vette suspension) in Pasadena. There was quite a little car scene in Stinkadena in the late 80s. I wish I hadn't been a poor pizza delivery guy back then who could only afford a mini truck.
I'm pretty sure that 3 window is in the New York area now. I think it's got the Westlake in it still. Very cool car! saw it at Your a couple of years ago. Clark
The Brown T Sedan he built was in the Barrett Jackson Auction last year, I was watching the Speed channel and there it was and it seemed to go way cheaper than I thought such a high quality-high profile car would go for. I heard he did all of the billet stuff for Boyd's early cars, IMO he started the whole billet thing then it got carried away.
I agree, his stuff looked like it was made by hand by a talented and innovative machinist/hot rodder (which it was), not something a computer cranked out to make somebody rich. Not that there's anything wrong with being rich! I still love the look of a freshly machined piece fresh off the Bridgeport.
He supposedly was the person who first said, when asked how he had handmade a part...."I just took a piece of aluminum and cut off everything that didn't look like a mirror." The first car I'd ever seen that featured hand-made, machined aluminum pieces, (not body panels...) that were works of art in themselves. So far as I know, others used torsion bars even earlier....I believe Kent Fuller, for one.
We ran that car as the Polson & Cox Dixie Flyer for several years before selling to Ewald. We found it in a dirt floor barn in North Carolina. It was worn out when Ewald got it...looks much better now. He built some ***y looking dragsters.
You're correct Clark! That 3window has been redone and in the hands of a Westchester Street Rods member for many years, gets driven a lot too. Can't remember if the Westlake went back it it, when I saw it it had four Webbers on it. My favorite Buterra built car was the '27 Tudor.
One of his comments from the Basic Training series has alway stuck in my head. In response to "I don't have the skills to do that" he answered something along the lines of "Always try to make the best part you can with the skills you have. If it isn't good enough throw it away and make another. Every time you make a part your skill will increase and you'll make a better part than you were capable of making before." I figure them's words to live by, not only in the garage but in every aspect of life.
I dunno 'bout that. The story on the '32 was that Boyd was brokering it for John when the Pigford Bros. bought it. They were doing donuts with it in the parking lot before loading it and it had an all tin trunk section. The battery turned over and when they opened the trailer door in Phoenix to check the car, it had burned from the windshield posts back. The car came on to Pasadena and was torn apart w/o any spectators getting inside the doors at the shop. The Chrysler had a weird injection system on it where instead of ****erflys, --it had slides, and they never worked real well. The decision was made to trash the engine in favor of an aluminum small-block Chev. A quartet of Ingelese were used for induction, a T350 was used and as I recall they did another set of wheels but everything else pretty much stayed the same ...except the paint was changed from Black with Mustard/Silver stripes to Boyd Red. As you may recall, John used Centerline's lathe to do the centers and a set of BBS wheel halves to make the first set of billet wheels. Those were the wheels that car had on it amd they were anodized a yucky gold. Vic Kitchens (who did lots of high profile cars like ZZ Top's Elim. & etc.) actually flew in for a couple of weeks and did the tan interior in-house while we finished the car. We took the car to several meets & shows but I never really knew what happened to it. I can find out though, --and I guess it is possible that someone bought all of the stuff and changed it back. The thing that always surprised me about John's cars was I never thought he actually "finished" a car. Don't mistake what I am saying because the man is light-years ahead of anywhere most of us will ever be on this planet but I just remember stuff like really 'trick' little brackets to hold vacuum lines and such. John must of spent hours on stuff like that --AND I remember on that silver '29 Rodaster, when we removed the MSD box off of the firewall, he had used a tube of silicone, smeared it onto the back of the MSD box, and then smashed it against the inside of the firewall until it dried. Same thing with no battery hold-down in that '32 Coupe. I don't ever think that Novette ever lived in Pasadena however it may have been at the Pigfords getting some work done. Lil John will always be an icon as will Boyd, ...and some people love those guys and other's hate them but when you really know them --and can overlook what we perceive as their problems, they are really fantastic artists. There are many in this world that will never get the notoriety or fame they deserve (and sometimes that is ahsame), but in Baytown now (and formerly of Pasadena) is my mentor that I would put up against the Boyd's, the Troy's, and the likes. He built last year's Street Machine of the Year, has won the Milwinder award several times, been a runner-up for the Ridler, and produces some of the trickest street machines, drag cars, street rods, and even boats that the south has ever seen driven. I was blessed that I got to work for the Pigford brothers for several years. Everyone here should get a chance to get to work under someone like that --and then be able to influence someone else's craftmanship. Think about it......
If I'm not mistaken, he cut the first set of billet wheels I ever read about for a 33 Willys he built.
I think you are speaking of the Joe Hrudka white Willys --and if so, this car was WAY before that. Matter of fact, that Willys was the one that had the Corvette trans-axle in the rear, and the Pigfords actually did some work on that car (re-resto??). My mind is cloudy on that one but I am thinking that it went to a shop after Joe H. got into financial trouble and then the car may have been bought by Ron Kraft (???). Maybe someone else knows the details. Just so you also know the "wheel connection", Lil John actually went Indy car racing with Centerline, Ruggles Performance (Buick turbo guru), and others as a dream team, Maybe it was Dennis Firestone that was driving for them and it was (as I understand it) kinda a backyard effort with top-notch talent doing the engineering & building. They just were never as successful due to light funding, and if I recall, they did not have long to put this whole package together. Maybe they crashed or had a malfunction I don't recall but it was truly a fairytale ride when they were doing it. Imagine the little kids on the block showing up and having the huge teams with mega-engineers all worried about them! John also built one of the first "Trick My Truck" deals when he took a Kenworth (or maybe a Pete) and built a trick hauler for Goodyear Tire. I saw the truck at the street rod nats in OK City in the early 80's. The 5th wheel was set up to slide so the truck cab was right up next to the front of the trailer. It was lowered and had the Eagle graphic on the door than went down the side of the truck onto the trailer. He took all of the rivets out of the truck cab and smooth finished the truck. Polished everything that would polish and even bodyworked the axles to be as slick as the dark blue exterior of the truck. He even made billet mirrors, --and I think he was the one that invented the elevator rear door for that rig that is now seen on almost all of the race car carriers of today that is used to load cars into the trailer. He is one I would like to see a "roast" done for. To hear all of the tales I have heard told on him. If Gray Baskerville were still alive would be an excellent M.C. for that event!! Oh the talent and the brains that man has!!!! Long live the Lil' Legend.
Saw that White Willys in the flea market at Hershey years ago, the wheels were outstanding! Stepped cut and the spokes has a swirl to them.
The Vern luce coupe is in Australia. Has been for 6 or more years and gets driven. When you look at the work, it's not blister pack billet. That's a given because it was built way back pre blister "billet." To see that car today it isn't hard to understand the impact it had over 25 years ago.
Lil' John's latest,...milled everything,front and rear axles,engine block(one of his old Indy car motors), frame rails are the gas tank, Moal built body, drove it from L.A. to GG Indy last year, said "trailers are for boats!" and lots of other funny ****,....real nice guy!
Sorry the new car does nothing for me....and I'm a big fan of ****era's. The biggest thing is the wheel tire combo and the widshield needs laid back a little more. Brent...last time I saw the 3 window it was back to red. Maybe I was wrong about the motor. Clark
Granted, the wheels and tires look like something that should be on a Honda tuner car, but the workmanship is unreal!
L'il John was from Kenosha , WS where he worked for AMC and Snap on Tools...he built a lot of race cars, and owned the first Heli-arc machine in Kenosha....everything that he did was low teck, he had a lathe and a Bridgeport and was pretty innovative. I wasn't into race cars, but I did read the series that was written about him in Hot Rod magazine...I got that for a year as a Christmas present from my mother-in-law. (I would have rather had a sub to R & C) I learned something from him about making your won brackets. he'd start out with an idea and then make a part in cardboard, then adjust that and turn it into steel. What got me was that if you had to, you could use that first idea to come up with the right part you needed, keep trying until you got it right. I taught my sons this same technique when they were little, easier to make a drawing and make it out of cardboard and some tape. One guy I met took that furthur, he was a carpenter, he made his frame for his car out of 2 x 6's, got it where he wanted it, gussetted with plywood, then threw it in the back of his truck and dropped it off at a fabrication shop. He got exactly what he wanted and everything bolted up perfect. After he went out to California, he built a lot of good racecar ch***is. If I can remember how many he built, I'm thinking it was 20 something in one year. And one racer crashed his car, and L'il John said that it was his ch***is that saved the guy's ***. He met up with Boyd Coddington because Boyd didn't have a lathe big enough to do wheels on..he was a machinist at Disneyland. This was in the Hot Rods by Pete and Jake book, I believe they were at Pete "Choppouris" garage... Last I heard of L'il John, he was building Harley-based choppers....
Just go to the Westchester Street Rod website and scroll around and the coupe will show up. It was built in 1976, I think Jim has owned it for 15+ years.
The Jalopy Journal
