Projects The 48 hour coupe

I've wanted a proper Hotrod forever. It always seemed that I'd buy stuff I wasn't totally into to try and work my way into so etching I actually wanted. I've had a metropolitan, 4 door falcon, fat fender ford, 50s cars etc. But never the hot rod I really wanted. Well that changed this weekend.

I sold my '55 Ford last week and before the proceeds became braces or a new patio or something I knew I needed to replace it and I knew this time I was finally getting a Hot Rod.

I was planning to go grab a pretty clean 29 roadster pickup a couple hours from me. It was very nice good paint complete car, it even had a flathead in it already. But other than the engine it was a basically stock model a and was going to need a bit of work to make it what I wanted. (Some might say that would have still been a better car but here we are)

The day I sold the '55 I was texting some Hamb buddies and found this coupe.











It seemed like a decent amount of car for the money. but it was in eastern PA though which was just about 23 hours from my place in Ft Worth, TX.
After chatting with some buddies we all collectively told me what I already knew, that the coupe would be cooler in the end. now that it was settled. I Messaged the guy made a deal. Now how to get it.

Convo went a little like this
"Hey @Tim you wanna go to PA with me?"
"Man I can't but @BigJoeArt might."

"Hey Joey, want to go to PA with me to get a car?"
"Sure when"
"Um... tomorrow lol"
"**** yeah let's go"

Then Tim text back saying @Austin kays was interested in going too. Sweet 3 guys could easily split driving duties and make a banazi run of it.

So that became the plan. This was Thursday mid day. By the time I went to bed that night Austin had to bow out due to being called into work. But Joey and I pushed on.

The plan was for me to drive to St Louis and pick up Joey who would drive over from NW Missouri (Only added about an hour to the the total trip to go that way). And then bomb from St Louis to Allentown, PA . Turn around and head back in reverse order. We'd take turns sleeping and driving and be back by Sunday morning.







Road trip in the next post

 

Thursday night:
I loaded up my neighbors truck since I don't have one and he was nice enough to let me borrow it. Took everything I could think of that we might need. Except the roadtrip 101 staple tub of zip ties. (Bet you can't guess what the one thing we ended up needing was)

Friday:
I was up by 4:30am showered, out the door, and pulling out of the drive by 5:01 quick stop for McDonalds breakfast and then I was on the road.



Now since it was a longer drive for me once on the road and I knew my eta I text Joey to let him know to meet me at 2:30.

Side bar if you don't know him Joey is a bit of an odd duck and the people he conned into borrowing their driveway and garage for a meetup spot in STL was the family of an ex girlfriend.
I don't know I didn't really pry but pretty sure I wouldn't be able to park my hot rod in the garage of any of my ex girlfriends parents and expect it to be there unharmed when I got back lol.

Oh did I mention Joey was driving his *****in little Turtle Deck T he just built this past winter From His place to StLouis.



https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/just-a-big-model-t.1276032/page-17#post-14893102 check that out if you haven't already it's a fantastic build and I think he's up over 3000 road miles in it since he got it on the road in MARCH!!! lol.

OK back to the trip. Being a nerd I zeroed the trip and recorded the milage at every gas stop and kept all gas receipts.

Well my neighbors truck happens to be a pretty gutless 01 F150 more on that later. Not trying to be disrespectful but the truth is the truth lol. Hey it was free and availiable I'll make do.

The 1st leg was pretty uneventful. 300miles stop for gas. 300 miles stop for gas etc. Averaged a little over 15mpg with no trailer lol.








Get to the meet up to find a cross between Forest Gump and the My Cl***ic Car guy sitting in a lawn chair in the front yard of a fancy house Beverly Hillbilly style. He gets in we get back on the road 300 miles stop for gas etc...

Right after I got my copilot he let me know we'd be making a stop in Indy at the Custom Car Revival. Because we were going to literally be driving right past the hotel and frankly who doesn't love old customs.

270 miles down we were in Indy and got to stretch our legs checking out some incredible cars. New builds, old builds, @Cody Walls E-Job and a ton of others. You've all seen pics by now I take photos with a potato.



















the time was now about 9pm and we still had a 10 hr drive to get to @myjalopy house the next morning. So we got back to driving east. Again the drive was pretty uneventful. Laughing, talking, people watching, bench building, stop for gas, repeat.

By now I'd been on the road about 16 hours and Joey was at about around. so we started switching off driving and trying to catch up on some sleep so we could keep going through the night.

We arrived around 7:30. Thats 24 hours driving plus fuel stops and an hkur and a half at CCR. That ain't half bad.

next post will be picking up the car and heading back but it'll have to wait a bit while I get the kids from dance.

 

It’s been such a fun trip to watch from the sidelines. Not jealous of the ridiculous sleep deprivation and exhaustion but the rest of the adventure for sure looking forward to this thread.

 

OK, finally the car.. truthfully it was a little more rough than I was thinking but I'm pretty sure that was just me being excited about it and looking past the bad stuff. Regardless I'm still happy with it. It's a Hot Rod after all. It's been on the road for years and was driven hard and put away wet. It happens.

It's a 29 coupe
8ba flathead
Z'd A frame
Wide 5 brakes
'39 rear
'39 trans
'39 front suspension (though the axle looks like a 47/48 with the hole for a lower shock bolt same as my 47 had. I remember that because that was why it couldn't be dropped and I had to buy one without the hold for it to be dropped or so I was told)

The roof is chopped and filled
32 grill.











He had this rad roadster in the garage too.







I'll talk about plans in a later post. But basically I need to make some mechanical repairs and then I want to focus on some of the body work. As I mentioned it's been driven hard.

It's been to numerous vintage racing events. And has been on the road for 15-16 years. So he has acquired it's share off dents and bumps. There's some rust repair and the biggest project would be that I want to redo the roof a bit. It's was filled and you can see the entire panel. There is a hole in the drivers side. And all around I'd just like to clean it up some. Who knows though by the time I get to it maybe it won't bother me anymore lol.

Spoiler this is back in St Louis where Joey met back up with his ride.



and these are at my place so you now know we made it.











Alright let's get back out to PA for the roadtrip back home.

 

First order of business after driving 25 hours with minimal stopping. Skip sleeping and go check out some more hot rods.

Since we were going to be so close I reached out to Matt from Iron Trap and he was gracious enough to let us stop and check out the shop and cars. Super cool dude. Thanks again.

























His shop is such an incredible place there is cool **** stuffed in every corner.

 

Sounds like quite the trip! I’m jealous! Cool little hot rod too! Congrats! I’ll be anxious to see what all you do with it.

 

Like any good roadtrip there are things you see and share with your friends in the car that just make you laugh.

Like Abe-Bear-Ham Lincoln which was right around the corner from Iron Trap


Or my stupid face lmao



Or childish things like tunnels through mountains that are just cool to us flatlanders from the Midwest



Or things that are just cool like this random dirty gas station rest stop oasis that opened up into a mini museum/elks lodge looking space full of old pictures of the turnpike being built












Or this boat which we p***ed at least 4 times between Illinois and Pennsylvenia. We saw it vith before and after our stop in Indy at the Custom Car Revival. Many hours and hundreds of miles apart.




There's just a lot of stuff that's hard to explain that happens hours into a roadtrip you just never know what will happen next.

 

Glad you got to stop at @IronTrap i bet you could spend hours there and still not spot half of the cool stuff

 

Cool story so far! I just read the whole thing and realized.... I know this dude!
You’re crazier than I thought after all this. Hope you enjoy the “new” hot rod!

 

And now the rough patch. 25 hours driving non stop is not ideal. Wouldn't be legal if we were professional truck drivers. (Probably isn't really legal as civilians) and there is a reason for that. Driving exhausted doesn't get the same rap as impared but it's basically the same thing. You can't stay awake. Your eyes roll everytime you blink which makes it hard to focus on the driving part. It's rough.

We tried taking turns to sleep but it's hard in broad daylight to sleep in a truck with the sun shining in. We tried but really only managed small stints. 20 min here 30 there while the other guy drove as long as they could.

We started out switching every couple hours and during the day it isn't so bad. But as the sun goes down the switches keep happening after shorter and shorter stints and eventually we managed to turn the last 200 miles back to StLouis into about 3 extra hours because we were getting so exhausted that we'd each do 30 minutes or so and then we'd pull off and take a 20 minute nap. Then do it over. Per GPS we were supposed to get to the meet up spot at 2:00am. We ended up getting there at 5:00am. And it was very sketchy at that.

Don't recommend it we shouldn't have done it like that. We should have just pulled off and had a proper sleep and lived to fight another day. We didn't do that and we survived but im not proud of it, it was scary.

So since we were basically dead from exhaustion and it was 5 am in a fancier neighborhood. There is no way we could have kept going meaning. Starting an open header hot rod and p***ing off everyone within 10 blocks. We parked the truck Joey layed the seat back and I climbed in the back seat and we each took a long overdue coma. Which for me lasted exactly 2 hours and then I was wide awake with no chance of changing that.

So Joey and I said our good byes and I pointed south and Joey I think went inside to sleep some more and take a shower.

Back on the solo tour I was surprisingly rejuvenated and didn't really have any issues the rest of the way home.

Back at our first gas stop after getting the car I took pictures of the trailer it came on so I could list it on Facebook since I didn't have the space to keep it, my ****ty HOA would have a conniption if I had it parked on the street for long. Well turns out I had it listed tooo low because I got blown up non stop basically the whole way home. And about 15 minutes after I pulled into my driveway I had a buyer at my house who helped me roll the coupe off the trailer and into the garage (I flooded it immediately after he walked up like a total gomer) and then drove away with it.

Now that I was home the "just make it home" drive wore off and I went full zombie. Ate dinner, took a shower, and went to bed.

So what did I do today after that whirlwind weekend? I got up and went to work lol.



Left my driveway at 5am Friday and pulled back in at 6pm Sunday. Yeah it was more than 48 hours like I had planned sue me lol.

Nerd stuff
61 hours travel time
2942.5 miles
Averaged 15.19 mpg with no trailer
Averaged 9.36 mpg with car and trailer in tow

$862 in gas (made more than that selling the trailer)
15 gas stops
252 gallons of gas

Call me crazy but I'm certain I wouldn't have been able to ship it for that price. Plus the journey is just as important that destination right.

Like most of the stuff I do I plan to build this little by little a few things at a time and drive and enjoy it in the at the same time.

 

Almost called this the Bugeater coupe. Pretty close to your s/n tho lolol

 

Days would be more accurate lol

 

Your trip remind me of many of the same no sleep trips that I made in my younger days. I remember driving from Connecticut to Hershey Pennsylvania after working all day. We were driving down route 22 in New Jersey, when I was sleeping at the wheel. Bob Swanson, The 37 Kid, here on the HAMB, Drove up next to us with his father driving their car. Bob leaned out to my car, pounded on the door and yelled "Nick, wake up" We were glad that he saved us that night.

 

Road trips for hot rods are some of the best!

Thanks for taking us on an adventure.

 

I love a good road trip. I had a shipper ruin a transmission loading a car I bought so if I can’t go get a car I’m looking at I probably won’t buy it. I usually rent a uhaul trailer but you did good buying a trailer then selling it!

I don’t do energy drinks but one time I drove from Des Moines to Fort Worth through the night so the kids could sleep and not fuss the whole trip. Drank one of those 5 hour energy thingys around midnight and could’ve driven onto San Antonio! That stuff had me wired.

 

I think this is such a great fit for you. It’s been on the road a long time so you don’t have to figure anything g out to get it on the road just fix what needs fixin. Then you can do what you do and make it your own. You’ve got the right course of action in mind I think. Can’t wait to see you cruisin!

 

Sounds like it was a great trip for a cool car. Just needs a couple of these. IMO but as the saying goes. "it's your car, do what you want and drive the wheels off it".

 

Great story, "new" ride and pics - Thanks

 

That's funny I know that drive well and also know the kids fussing the whole time and wanting to avoid that.

But those 5 hr energy shots don't do **** for me. I could take one and I'd still fall asleep 20 min later lol.

 

It will get something for sure. The screen door mesh and duct tape will be coming off. Don't know yet if I'll do the std frog scoops or an actual cleaner like the pics. If scoops then I'll have to get out my rusty bucket "hood" nd strap I kept in the trunk of my old '47 just incase it ever rained

 

Great story & a rad car, thanks for bringing us along ! A cross between Forest Gump & the My Cl***ic Car guy had me rolling.. Wait til you see what 29 Texas plates cost !

 

If you just run scoops have @BigJoeArt buddy pop you out a few of the plugs he made for joey.
Though I’m curious if a trip to Lowe’s plumbing department wouldn’t yield a rubber cap that would snug right over the mouth.

we should paint the dash black and then with some white one shot paint an old school alarm clock clanging away on the p***enger side

 

I’m trying to think of a similar type of solution as I’ll run 6 scoops with mesh screens on the coupe project. I remember some of the Hilton hotrods at the round up sporting vinyl boxes to cover the carbs at night. Bet that wouldn’t be to hard to make water tight. I’ll see if I have any photos of that saved

 

That coupe is righteously ragged, I dig it!! I really like the wide fives.
I've bought stuff on the Internet and then take off to get it. Lol. When I tell my non-car friends about these trips they just give me these blank looks and it's obvious they don't get it.

 

Haha that sums it up exactly. Blank looks amd are you serious? I could hear my dad rolling his eyes through the phone when I called and talked to him about it.

But the Hot Rodders all understand... they just grab the keys and say what time do we leave.

 

Great story. Congrats.

 

Saw that car advertised, looked like a great deal and well worth the effort!

 

What an Epic road trip story! Lots of fun, great memories & friendship!

 

Wow, what a story- enjoyed the verbage as much as the pictures, waiting for more …