The Roadster allanz.com

Here's my 1932 Ford Roadster...

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My Roadster is a 1932 Ford done in the 50's style. Everything is done with the best workmanship with reliability in mind and originally built by Mike Dowell of Grants Pass, Oregon. Mike is pictured above sitting in the roadster at the 2005 Orange County Labor Day Cruise. He has built numerous cars and is currently featured in Rod & Custom Magazine as the builder of the 7-11 race car. The blower motor in the race car was originally in my roadster when Mike was building it.

The Roadster is made for DRIVING so I will not be spending a big load of cash on a custom paint job. Here are some of the facts:

Frame - Cornhusker Frames in Nebraska fully boxed the American Stamping rails. The fully boxed frame is a work of art with all of the welds ground flat and is fully powder coated black, all suspension parts powder coated gray.

Body - Fiberglas appears to be a Gibbons or Wescott, but not sure. Paint is DP-90 epoxy, satin gloss.

Rootlieb steel hood & radiator shell, louvered sides. Walker radiator with a thermostatically controlled 16" electric fan from Mattson's Radiator in Stanton, Ca. Manual override added. No overheating problems.

Engine - 383 Stroker with double roller rockers, steel crank, "lumpy" cam, (noisy gear drive now removed and for sale, cheap!) engine built by D&B Machine, Whittier using a 1969 block with later cast iron heads with bigger valves. (The fully balanced long block with these options is affordable at around $2,300.00) Edelbrock Permastar coated RPM Air Gap intake manifold with a Holley 750cfm reworked to flow 800cfm by C&J Engineering, Whittier. Note how the S&S long tube headers easily fit beside the Hi-Torque mini starter and provide a lot of steering shaft room. Finned aluminum oil pan (which uses the THIN, not thick blue one-piece silicone Fel-Pro pan gasket - no leaks. This torquey engine incinerates both rear tires...

Ignition - MSD hidden unit under the dash inside the car, MSD Blaster coil enclosed in a finned cast aluminum holder made by Maunde Engineering, pro-billet curved distributor, 8.5mm MSD wires which are carefully hidden under the headers, Ford style MSD cap painted to match the engine.

Fan - Spal 16" thermostatically controlled with a relay system, manually switchable override too.

Steering wheel - 60's style chromed steel from Speedway Motors on an Ididit tilt column. I tapped & drilled column dice.

Trans- Turbo 350 with shift kit and finned aluminum pan from Speedway Motors.

Differential - Ford 9 inch by Currie, powder coated primer gray, now with a limited slip, 3:25 gearing. (62mph @ 2,000 rpm). Constant slow leak from passenger side axle bearing although "fixed" 5 times now. I'm not sure that I would recommend Currie differentials.

Brakes - 11 inch Chevy front disks, 11" Ford drum rears, manual master cylinder with 2 residual valves & an adjustable proportioning valve reachable by the driver.

Front suspension - Posies Super-Slider transverse leafs, dropped tube axle, Pete & Jakes shocks, Cornhusker 4 bar setup, So-Cal Speedshop steering dampener, panhard rod. (The $35 damper is a must!)

Steering - New Flaming River Vega box. (I removed the "new" Maval rack when it reduced the turning radius.)

Rear suspension - 4 bar by Cornhusker, 7 way adjustable Aldan coil-overs, no sway bar needed.

Air conditioning - "On" all the time. (So is the heater!)

Top - Tan colored top fits the chopped windshield but has a bigger back window than used in '32 for visibility. Solid oak bows and chromed steel parts.

Upholstery - Authentic Mexican Serape blanket for now, tan/red tuck & roll in future. Sheet aluminum interior for now.

Seatbelts - Two RJS Racing 4 point harnesses.

Shifter & E-brake - Lokar gennie-style, Lokar skull shifter, owner-supplied 79 cent jiggling eyeballs.

Instrumentation - 6 gauge Stewart-Warner cluster, engine turned detailing by Haneline.

Wiring - EZ Wire system with Ron Francis HR-56 headlight relief relay. (Not using a relay with halogen headlights will cause the headlight switch to go "up in smoke" due to excessive switch amperage.

Pinstriping - Bodywork striping by Tippit in "the Greek" style, red and tan. Wheels triple-striped by Dennis Jones in Whittier.

Wheels & Tires - Smoothie steel 15"x5" front wheels, 16" x 9" rears with zero offset made by Wheelsmith Wheels in Santa Ana. Fully powdercoated Bengal Red. Sold the bias-plys with rims, now running radials for drivablility and ride. Front tire size: P185/65R15, Rear: P285/60R16 (SUV tires on the rear). Rears are 27" tall, 5" difference in overall height front to back. Vintique beauty rings and hubcaps.

Exhaust - Custom tig welded from 2 1/2 inch mild steel mandrel-bent segments, Jet-Hot coated Sterling silver S&S long tube headers, new Flowmaster Hushpower mufflers. The tone is very low with a kind of glasspack "bark" when you're on the gas. I highly recommend the mufflers for hot rod use. The mufflers have a built-in layer of ceramic material for heat retention. No crossover H-pipe is used on purpose to keep the sound "old school". People comment on how good it sounds when cruising by.

Weight: 2320 pounds with a full tank of gas, less driver.