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Every once in a while, if we get the chance, we'll try to tell you a bit more about cars, or bikes, in which we're specially interested... Hope you are too...
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“You like it..!?” “Hey!” “You like it.!!?” That's what Jimmy was yelling over the sound of the hopped up, open headered Hemi motor, when we were terrorizing the streets of Orange County , California , on a nice and quiet summer afternoon. “Hell yeah I like it” was of course my reply! Hah, quiet afternoon… Not anymore for fellow road users, when they saw
(and defenitely heard) us, pulling up to the traffic light in the old
A-bone! I can imagine that some people get annoyed by the roar of old
hot rods scattering through the streets… Well… Not me!! |
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It was in June 2003 that I first met Jimmy… Back then I was still a subscriber to Rod 'n Custom magazine and I read Jimmy's article about how to make motormounts…. “Circle City Hot Rods…” “Mmmm..” “Never heard of that shop, must be new..?” So when I flew out to the good ‘ol US of A again, I also planned on visiting this O.C. based shop. I gave ‘em a call when I was in the area and asked ‘em if I could drop by. “No problem, we're here till around six, so…” After driving around for half an hour, (it took me a while to know my way in Orange , it's confusing!) I finally found the small shop… Circle City Hot Rods… It's low key, nothing fancy on the outside… And on the inside… Badass old skool hot rods are being build! I met Jimmy and his companion Grant Peterson. They were working on another, very nice 5 window back then. It was the one that I saw on the picture in Rod 'n Custom magazine… Bitchin' car! I don't know where it went when it was done, but I'll probably spot it somewhere, sometime… When I was talking to the guys Jimmy remembered me from the HAMB and said: “Have you ever seen my Model A?” I didn't really know which car he meant until he said: “It was featured in the 2nd issue of Hot Rod Deluxe, together with my buddy Skinny Jeff's car.” That's when every piece of a small puzzle fell together and I told him that I've got the mag and that I've read the article a couple times. |
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“You wanna go and have a look at the car, it's at my house.” Well, someone doesn't have to ask me twice to go and check out nice cars, so off we went. Old X bandmember Billy Zoom, who has a studio in the same building, went with us in Jimmy's Caddy to come and have a look too. When we arrived at the house there were more people, wrenching on a '57 Chevy in the driveway, Jimmy's car was parked in the garage, surrounded by old carparts, surfboards, beachcruisers and other stuff.. Not really the perfect environment to take pics… Or was it..? It was kinda impossible to roll it out… What a bummer! Jimmy told me that he hadn't used it for about a month but he would try to fire it up. It ran on the first rotation of the starter! Dope! As the guys at Circle City are always busy we didn't stay too long, I took a few pics and we took off again. They told me to drop by again during the week but I didn't really have time because I had to fly out to Florida for work. That's why I went back there again when I was in California for the Hot Rod Reunion anyway and guess what, it wasn't a problem to do a photoshoot and we could go and take the car outta the garage! And, oh yeah… We got some killer video footage too! Jimmy told me that it's about 9 years ago that he built the car. When he found the car at Royal Foust in Riverside , it looked a lot different. It used to be black with red flames and it had wide whites all around. The grey primered Model A body, with gasser style, blue lexan windows, is mounted on a '37 – '41 Ford chassis which is shortened, narrowed, boxed and Z'd in the rear. A straight axle is mounted up front and is from the same era as the chassis. Jimmy replaced the split-wishbone suspension in the back for So-Cal Speedshop hairpins. The Hemi powerplant was already in it, but it had different exhaust manifolds and only two Stromberg 97's. All that has changed, it now has open headers and runs 6 rebuilt Stromberg 97's on top of a Weiand Drag Star intake manifold. The headers that are mounted now are made by Jimmy, about 3 or 4 years ago he told me. The block is an early 331cui that is bored 0.125 inches by Reath Automotive. The heads are 354 industrial pieces. The valves are original ones, which are actuated by an original Sig Erson top fuel solid lifter cam, which is reground by Clay Smith. Further, the motor runs a stock crank on which Jahns pistons with a 10.5:1 compression are mounted. All this is backed by a McLeod clutch and an early cast iron Borg Warner T-10 transmission, a custom Unitrax driveshaft and a tri-year Chevy rearend. 8 Inch Hurst cheaterslicks on '49 Chevy steelies bring the power to the road and up front Good Year Speedgrips can be found on Halibrand spindle-mount wheels. Do you see any front brakes..? Nope….! Whenever you're in Orange County , or whatever L.A. area, beware, when you pull up at the light, you might have to deal with this wicked mad ride! You better hit that goddamn throttle when the light goes green, but you'll probably never see anything else then it's taillights, disappearing in the distance…..
Maurice v.d. Tillaard DeadEndCruisers.com You can visit Jimmy White's website at www.circlecityhotrods.com |
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See a killer video from Jimmy's coupe... | |||
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Rick Bradley (a.k.a.
Ojai Rick) from Ojai California sent us some pics and specs of his Sport
Coupe… We were so stoked that we decided to put it in the feature
cars section, since we think that this is one of the coolest hot rods around
at this moment… Here’s the info that Rick sent us: |
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HELLO, I’ll give ya a little info on my Sport Coupe but for pics, all I have are the ones on my computer… Don’t know if they will be good for you. I started collecting parts about 4 1/2 years ago and it took me, Logan and Andy from Al’s Customs about 4 months to put it all together as you see it today.... Bought the body from a local restorer…
Stock… Traded my buddy Dick Saint to do the 6" chop right after
I got it. The frame & grill are1926 chrysler parts… The frame
is narrowed and shortened with "A" cross members, It has an old Mor Drop axle, '33 wish bones,
'32 spring, '40 spindles modified for In the back there’s a '46 ford truck rear axle with an "A" spring mounted behind the axle, '48 Lincoln brakes, real early ladder bars off an old drag car, home made "k" member… body channeled 6" w/steel removable floor, '41 nash taillights,BLC headlights The trans is a Chrysler 4spd box on a home made
adapter to a Dodge truck |
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NOW…
The motor… It’s an ex-drag car item. Built in 1960 and ran
Freemont drags from ’60 - ‘62 in a Ford roadster! Let me know if I left anything out you need... This is just a portion of the stories behind this car.... Every part of it has a unique story… As I’m a cheap bastard and had to do major wheeling & dealing to get all the stuff together.........................RICK |
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