‘Grandpa’ is a street rod’s family connection

A great street rod, if it’s designed and built right, and properly cared for by the right people, can take on a life of its own.

That’s how it is with the 1927 Model T sedan nicknamed “Grandpa” that’s now in its third owner’s hands. Each of those three owners have contributed to the evolution of the car, one building on another’s achievement, but never abandoning its basic character.

“I now own my dream car,” says Ron Black, who bought the car from Gene Hughes, who runs Hall’s Speed Shop.

Hughes had bought the car from its original builder, Gene Weaver. So the car has lived its street rod incarnation in the Wichita area, with plenty of road trips to major car shows to its credit.

“He’s got a few wrinkles in his paint, so that car is ‘Grandpa,’ and I am so lucky to own it,” said Black.

The three men got together for a photo shoot of the car recently, sort of a family reunion, to swap tales and details of how a nearly 90-year-old family sedan came to be a street rod they’re all proud of.

“That car has had more cosmetic surgery than any Hollywood celebrity,” joked Weaver.

His prime objective was to bring the old tall T down out of the clouds with a more assertive stance. Sticking one foot under the lowest point of the running board, he said that was how he calculated the ground clearance he wanted.

“I’ve raised it an inch and quarter. I decided I didn’t want to have to fix the underside of the car,” Black noted.

With the help of Charlie Davidson, a certified welder, Weaver built the entire chassis of the car out of rectangular tubing. He set it up so he could channel the body a full 4 inches over the frame rails, while leaving the top its original factory height. In fact, he trimmed three inches off the metal panel above the windshield, installing taller glass to improve forward vision out of the car.

He designed his own dropped front axle, equipped with Volvo disc brakes and wheel hubs.

“That was back before you could buy everything out of a catalog,” Weaver explained.

A four-link rear suspension setup was used to secure a Chevy Nova rear end camouflaged to look like a quick change racing unit.

Weaver reshaped the fiberglass running boards and fenders, moving the rear fenders two inches higher on the body to achieve the right look. He also modified the apron between the running boards and the body and built a new hood to fit the new contours of the car, painstakingly rolling metal over a welding gas cylinder on his living room floor.

Under that new hood went a 350 Chevy V-8 engine, mated to a Turbo Hydramatic transmission. A Monte Carlo tilt steering column and shifter were installed, along with an aftermarket steering wheel and the last generic air conditioning unit sold by Fishers Transmission shop. Weaver built a rear seat frame to clear the widened wheel tubs and installed power windows in the factory Ford door frames.

Tom Richardson handled the upholstery, done in a cream color; Toyota Cressida bucket seats provide room for two up front.

When it finally came time for paint, Weaver wanted something a bit out of the ordinary.

“Everybody was painting everything Porsche Guards Red back then,” he said. “I decided if I wanted it to stand out, I needed something different. So I told the paint mixer to take a certain amount of purple out of it and put yellow in instead.”

That created the reddish orange hue that Weaver sprayed himself, and which the car wears to this day, lacquer cracks and all.

When Gene Hughes took over the car in the early 1990s, he said it ran fine, but didn’t track well on the road. He figured the front axle had been bent going over a rough set of railroad tracks. He was afraid having it straightened would crack the beautiful chrome finish, but it didn’t, and it corrected the car’s wandering ways.

Hughes installed a new Quadrajet carburetor on the engine, along with a Pertronix electronic ignition system and a set of Corvette ribbed valve covers. An overhead console was built to accommodate a sound system. But his most notable contribution to “Grandpa” was the set of one-off Halibrand wheels he had made for it. He had a friend who worked for the company after it had moved to Kansas from California.

“I just called her and told her what I wanted … the insides of the wheels polished … and they machined the offsets and bolt patterns I needed,” Hughes said.

The black vinyl roof covering was also replaced with black Mercedes Benz-style Haartz canvass, installed by Rick Fisher.

Ron Black had been aware of the Model T for some time.

“I was living in California at the time. I was back in 1989 at the All Wheels Show (at Lake Afton) and sitting out in the middle of it, I saw this red, black-topped sedan. Gene had just finished it.

“I was smitten. It was my idea of what a street rod was supposed to be, but I didn’t have any money, so ….”

Black retired in 2010 and moved back to the Wichita area.

“I went to see my friend, Rex Raines and asked him if he remembered that car. He said, ‘Yeah, Gene Hughes owns that.’ So I went to see him and I was taking pictures of it so I would know how to build it, and Gene said, `Why don’t you just buy it?’ ”

So he did.

He reworked the rear suspension, installing up-to-date bushings and Heim rod ends, along with new adjustable coil-over-spring shocks. In a tip of the hat to Henry Ford himself, Black built a bracket that allows the entire passenger seat to tilt forward to load back seat passengers.

“When I was taking it to my first NSRA show in Springfield, Mo., I was being very careful, when this lady in a Buick kicked up a rock that put a chip in the windshield,” Black said. Fittingly, the chip is in the shape of an angel, he said.

“So now Grandpa has his own little angel looking down over him.”

This story was originally published September 28, 2016 at 8:53 AM with the headline "‘Grandpa’ is a street rod’s family connection."