Ray Basso 32 roadster Riley V8 Overhead build

Gorgeous car! Not a single thing I'd change on it. Perfection.

 

Wow!! beyond words. I love everything about it, especially the colors. a shame to have to cover the inside with upholstery. Hope you all do well. Tim

 

A really nice car. Thanks for sharing.

 

We are doing a little tune up work on the Basso car and plan on taking it out to the GNRS again this year.

 

It's a beauty!

 

Man, what a car -- sure turned out nice. Great work to all involved!

 

A little tune up work and detail work. We will load up on Monday and head out to the GNRS

 

The Ed Pink is awesome! I've wanted to see a '36 like this for a long time and the fact that it was Ed Pink's makes it all the greater. Thanks for bringing this car back. Wish I was going to be at the GNRS.

 

I wish I was going out the gnrs this year as well but somebody has to stay here and work. The guys are loading up the cars and heading out this morning.
The owner of the Basso roadster has decided to sell the car, so hopefully we can find a new owner for the car while we are out there.

 

The guys have the Basso roadster in the shops booth out at the gnrs. They told me that it runs pretty good at sea level.

 

Oh man. That sounds and looks GREAT.

 

Well done. That's a fantastic achievement.

Mart.

 

I know this is a rather old thread. About 3-1/2 years since the last post. But I don't get on here very often. I'm more often involved with offroad racing than hot rods or dry lakes (even though I can see El Mirage from my house. Ray Basso and his son John are very dear old friends to me. But Ray passed away in 1998 and for John and me lives have gotten in the way, so we haven't even spoken for years. Last night I did something about that sad state, and John and I talked on the phone for about 6 hours. During that conversation, he told me about this thread, although John doesn't get on here. Having ridden in this car years ago and having helped build it to it's state as shown here, I had to look it up.

Some years ago, I told on here about how the car in my avatar, the belly tank of Tom Beatty, was the 1st race car I ever sat in, at about 2 years old. Back in those days, my dad and Tom were old pals who worked for Barney Navarro together and my dad drove Barney's track roadster under an assumed name so his mom wouldn't know he was racing. Tom and Barney built the belly tank while my dad was in the Air Force, including fighting in the Korean War. So when I was little, dad was working at Lockheed Aircraft in Burbank, CA and Tom had his shop a few miles away in Sun Valley. He got off at 2:00 and would ride with a co-worker who dropped him off at Tom's. Then a couple hours later, mom got off work at the aerospace firm where she worked, would pick up us kids from the sitter and go to Tom's shop to pick up dad. We NEVER left right away. In that other thread about Tom's belly tank, I shared some pics of Tom and Fat Eddy with the belly tank that my dad took at El Mirage in 1958 or 59.

Trust me...This WILL tie in to Ray's Roadster.

So a few years later, Dad was working as an Inspector for NASA and Tom moved his shop a couple of blocks up the road. The new shop was right next door and in the same building as Ray's Liquor store. Ray's In-Laws owned the property. They owned the whole block, in fact, which earlier was their vineyard and winery. The family still owns much of the land and buildings there and John runs it all, leasing out parts to various firms for industrial and commercial.

In the mid-70s, I was living in San Fernando. I had a new dirt bike and was looking for someone to ride with (it can be pretty un-wise to venture off into the Mojave Desert alone). So my next door neighbor introduced me to Ray and his son John who lived around the corner. We quickly became best friends and rode a lot and played with dune buggies. Tom was into buggies with Corvair engines, but had done much to build a VW powered buggy for Ray and John. I could fill this up with lots of pics and stories of us doing such, but it's not relevant to hot rods.

So, over the years I spent a fair amount of time tinkering on hot rods with Ray. His '37 Coupe, his '29 Coupe, his '29 roadster on deuce rails, never worked on his pair of XK120 Jags though, and this '32 Roadster. The last time I rode in the Deuce, we had put in a flat head with aluminum heads (I don't remember now which) heads and dual 97s. The "seat" (not much of one then) was a Mexican blanket folded for bottom cushion and another opened out for upper and lower cover. The rear axle was a banjo, though we toyed with a couple of other quick changes that Ray had. One of those was an off-brand un-machined, and the other was a housing fabricated out of aluminum plate and tube. The 8.00-16s Ray had on it were quite old, so he didn't get too playful with it then.

Ray's vision for this car included red paint on engine and wheels. The red on the Riley, shown in this thread was in fact was applied by Ray. Further, his vision involved swapping engines fairly often in the car. Ray had a bunch of engines with potential to use in this car and others. He, Wes Cooper and Kong Jackson were thick as thieves and were planning to build and use these engines together. Ray had a bunch of really cool and oddball and rare stuff. He had a pair of Arduns and an extra pair of incomplete heads. He had one flathead V8 with a flat plane crank in it. He had some sort of DOHC heads that I can't remember what brand. Some other OHV conversion heads I don't remember what they were. Riley and Cragar heads for 4 bangers. An Offy he was building a manifold for a blower for. And all the way up to and including an ex-Parnelli Jones Indy Ford DOHC that he had plans to supercharge like the Offy (he was well on the way to building it). Ray was a partner in the Basso, Klos And Kong streamliner with a mid-engined chassis and body by Jocko that they planned to do engine swapping in with some of Ray's engines also. Ray would own the engines, Kong and Cooper would build them, and the car was Frank Klos'.

In reading through this thread, I see the owner at the time had a little different vision than Ray had. Green instead of red, pin striping where Ray didn't want any, a 2-piece hood where Ray was working on a 1-piece aluminum one.

I was disappointed that while Pete Eastwood offered info about the car, it doesn't appear any was obtained from him or credit given to the large amount of work he put into the car. One time, I took Ray in my '61 F100 with 428 Cobra Jet and my trailer for my off road race buggy to pick up Ray's 32 from Pete's shop. While there, Pete jokingly referred to the car as "The National Debt". Look close at the top of the grille shell it isn't stock shape. But who would notice it? Pete did lots of other work on the car other than that.

 

Oh my gawd' .. what a beautiful post. Holy sh*t !!! Amazing. History in spades !!

 

Thanks for the long read, Dusty.

 

Good Day,

Just got back from GNRS 2023 what an amazing experience.
The car has been there a couple of times before more to promote business(s) related to Rods and Customs. We had a Great Location Building 7 space 1 wish I would have thought of time lapse camera. Most of the 3 days standing room only around the car alot of people kind of knew what it was, some for sure and others guessed and just curious.

We got 2nd in Class can't really say which class it was crazy at the awards show.
As always Big Money Wins!

I have to apologize Richard (above) and Jalopy Journal for not getting them space on the history board. Both deserve to be there Richard a true friend to my Dad and Family and JJ for the amazing article on the completion of this car. I'm sure there are others I didn't even know of that had something to do with the cars history.

Different note on behalf of my sister and me I would like to thank Ed and Christine Blasis for giving us the opportunity to bring this car back in our family.
Almost a year to the day we had picked the car up from them!

Not sure which show is next we will try and get it out there as much as possible.

Some people have expressed dislike for the GNRS I can say it was a pleasant experience from drop off to pick up with the exception of the dumb a** drunk amateurs Saturday Afternoon and Evening. Done plenty of events were Saturday seems to bring out the wanna be's and to get drunk and stupid. Suggestion for future limit beer sales earlier and or end the day at 6p. Not many people after 6p other than the inebriated ones I like beer as much as the next guy but there is no excuse to get belligerent.

As I was leaving Saturday Night around 9:30 pm walking in the tunnel there was this family of 4-5, mom, dad little kids around 8-10 completely out of control.
As they were walking thru the tunnel I guess it was "cute" for them to knock over all the cones down the middle. Older, I gotta say well seasoned biker guy said "please don't do that" they kept on and the mom and dad was F bombing this guy doing his job all the way thru the tunnel. The Older gentleman talked very calm and tried to de escalate hopefully security was at the end of tunnel to escort them off the property and or turn them over to Pomona's finest law enforcement. Mom and Dad both drunk who was going to drive?

We thank everybody for all the Positive feed back for the Haters, no comment.