Nick Palumbo’s 1963 Chevrolet C10
Nick Palumbo is the founder and owner of Palumbo Family Vineyards & Winery in Temecula, California (www.palumbofamilyvineyards.com). In 1996 he took purchased a very nice, original 1963 Chevrolet C10 pickup truck and drove it daily for the next couple of years. In 1998 or so the truck was parked on the farm and soon the mice got into the wiring rendering the truck un-driveable. Over a few drinks a short time later we hatched a plan to swap in a 509 inch Cadillac and Turbo 400 transmission. The original 6 cylinder was promptly yanked out and then the truck sat for 9 years while the daily toll of business and family took priority for both Nick and I.
In late October of 2007 Nick phoned me up and we decided it was finally time to finish the project. Since the truck had sat outside these years it aged quite nicely and we decided to leave the patina untouched. But we did decide to touch just about everything else!
The truck was torn down and quickly got new front disc brakes, all rebuilt front suspension and steering, a 9” Ford rear axle out of a 1959 Ford F150, dropped front spindles and dropped rear springs. Of course, extensive modifications were required to fit the 509 Cadillac and Turbo 400 transmission, along with the modifications to mount a custom radiator. We were able to use a Sanderson header on the drivers side but a custom header needed to be made from scratch for the passenger side. We also completely rewired the truck front to back using an EZ wiring harness. Inside the cab we left everything alone except for adding a trio of Stewart Warner gauges mounted in chrome cups on the steering column. Finally, we repainted the front bumper and grill in factory Oxford White to show off Mother Nature’s handiwork on the rest of the body.
With perfect stance and perfect patina the truck came out exactly like Nick wanted. It’s one heck of a sleeper to boot!
Bob's 55 Sedan Delivery
This 1955 Chevrolet Sedan Delivery spent it’s entire life as a gardener’s vehicle in Pasadena, California. In 2002 it was purchased by a prominent collector from Pasadena and shortly thereafter it came to us for a complete makeover.
It was originally a 235 six cylinder three speed car, we converted it to a V8 and automatic using a new GM 330 horsepower 350 and a 700R4 automatic overdrive. The whole car received a complete nut and bolt restoration with some tasteful mods done along the way, all of which keep the original flavor of this gardener’s truck. We installed dropped spindles, dropped spring, lowered the rear, disc brakes and modified the original ram assist power steering to work with the new style Saginaw power steering pump. Inside, the car was completely rewired using an Autowire kit and a Classic instruments analog gauge panel.
Overall the level of fit and finish on this car are remarkable and it’s as nice underneath as it is on top. It’s much nicer than Chevrolet could ever have hoped to make it in 1955.
1930 Ford Phantom Roadster
This car started life as a 1930 Ford Sport coupe body found in the rafters of a barn near Temecula, California. We had Kiwi Konnection build a custom frame using fully boxed ASC rails, a Model A front cross member moved ahead one inch and a tubular cross member moved back one inch. Kiwi pinched the rails to suit this particular body and it fit perfect when we got it back. The suspension is all off the shelf Pete & Jakes except the 9” rear which came from a real ’57 Ranchero.
The motor is a 10.5:1 509 inch Cadillac with an Edelbrock intake, Sanderson headers, RAS shaft rockers, a monster .540/306 camshaft on 108 lobe centers and all the rest is our normal 509 Crate Motor combination. We mated this motor to a T56 6 speed manual transmission from a 1996 Z28 Camaro. There was a ton of one off fabrication required to make this work but it turned out to be an awesome combination, especially in such a light car.
The body was made into a phantom roadster with a smoothed cowl and the doors were modified to work like 1932 roadster doors with no flap over the door gap. This required that the whole middle of the door skin be cut out and a new one fabricated and welded in place. It also featured a Duvall style windshield and a removable soft top custom made in house and upholstered locally in canvas. Another major styling cue was the Schroeder sprint car steering box hung under the dash, reminiscent of the Doane Spencer ’32. We made the pitman arm for that here in house and the cool fairing over it was made from a Volkswagen tail light bucket. Can you see it?
This car also featured a ton on one off fabrication from the headlight bar to the tail light stands to pretty much everything in between. There are very few blister packed parts on this car.
I drove this car pretty much daily for two years and it worked great. The top was super tight, the car ran straight as an arrow and it was monster fast. This thing would hang with sport bikes on the freeway, you couldn’t even use sixth gear until well over 100 miles an hour. In the eighth mile in ran consistent high 8’s and 90-91 miles an hour, which was second gear at 4000 rpm with one tire lit through the traps. Good thing it didn’t have a positraction rear, the momentum of the one tire spinning at that speed helped keep the thing straight!
It was sold in 2004 to provide funds to build the ’36 coupe. It changed hands a few times and is now owned by a true hot rodder in Virginia. He reports the thing is still massively strong and he’s done some more improvements as he’s owned it.
1936 Ford Three Window Coupe
By the time this car came into the picture the shop was very busy with customer work so it was hard to find the time to devote to a personal build. As a result the bulk of this car was built in a three week marathon session. And this ain’t no 350/350 car, as you’ll see.
We started with a rolling shell bought only looking at photos over the internet. When it showed up on the trailer a few weeks later, I swallowed real hard and decided right there this car was not going to get the full treatment. Instead, we built a mild Crate 509 motor, dug up another T56 six speed manual transmission (this one out of a Dodge Viper) and collected a bunch of other parts. We had Currie build a 9”, got a dropped front axle and disc brakes from Pete & Jakes, some headers from Sanderson, a Vega steering box and got to work. Pretty much everything else was built by us, by hand, in house. As you can imagine nobody makes anything to accommodate this combination so there was a lot of fabrication work done just to get the thing running. I couldn’t have done it by myself and there was a lot of help, but I did drive it on its maiden voyage to the LA Roadster Show in June 2004.
I also drove this car daily for the next 2 years, logging over 10,000 miles a year. I made two trips to the Bonneville Salt Flats in this car, from Los Angeles and back with no problems. The car was not as fast as the roadster but still with the double overdrive 6 speed it would run 85 miles an hour all day long at 1800 rpm and the big Cadillac didn’t care if you were running across the desert to El Mirage or pulling up the Grapevine out of Los Angeles, it just banged a little harder pulling up the hill!
Over the two years it was on the road we made a few cosmetic improvements including painting the dash, sticking in a reproduction top insert and making a few patch panels for the body. The car got an absolute ton of press with coverage in Rod & Custom and in several hot rod little books worldwide. At Bonneville I’d literally get stopped every 10 minutes for a photo, it was shot twice by Peter Vincent for features, by Zap Teshima, and even for a pinup calendar!
I got a lot of offers for the car over the years but it eventually was sold to a bodyman and painter in the Bay Area. He does very high end work and counts Roy Brizio as one of his clients. He actually did a lot of work on restoring the Calori coupe so I can’t imagine the car could be in better hands.Click here to see some shots of our 1936 Ford Three Window Coupe.
1926 Ford Roadster Lakes Modified
This car started as a concept probably 10 years ago when I was in a junkyard in San Diego scouting for Cadillac 500 engine cores. There was a 1951 Buick Roadsmaster with the straight eight in it and I thought what a great motor for a lakes car! The idea was to build a period correct lakes modified street/race car that would have been competitive before World War 2.
I collected parts for this project here and there for four years. In 2004 (the same year the ’36 Coupe body showed up) I found a ’26 Ford Roadster Pickup body for sale cheap. That really got things moving, so to speak. Truthfully the volume of customer work at the shop is so much that it takes forever to get our own stuff done!
This car was built entirely in house. With the exception of the obvious early Ford parts or Buick motor this whole car was custom built. The frame is made from .188 wall 2 x 4 that’s been tapered 3/8 of an inch over the whole length of the frame. The front suspension is quarter elliptic and the rear is stock 1948 Ford, with the exception of the lever shocks that came from an early British sports car. The body is unchanelled and the floors were made such that you sit in the car, not on it which is very unusual for a Model T. We made our own open driveline conversion to hook the 1937 Pontiac transmission to the 1948 Ford rear end. The pedals were made from a 1936 Ford pedal assembly, heavily massaged to work with the 1960 GMC master cylinder. The intake was custom made in house and features three Holley 94’s, and the exhaust was also custom made in house. The steering box is under the cowl and comes from a VW bus. The gas tank is from a brass era Buick roadster, the headlights a ’36 Ford on custom made stands/headlight bar. And on and on. The only catalog parts on the car are the steering wheel and the gas pedal. This one has been a real labor of love with a ton of attention to detail.
After almost 2 years of part time work we got the car running and driving and drove it to the 2007 LA Roadster show as it appears here. It also received coverage in Rod & Custom magazine during the build process. Our plan is to finish up the little bit of fabrication left to do then blow the car apart for paint, nickel plating and upholstery. We hope to show the car at the Grand National Roadster Show in Pomona in January, 2008.
1967½ Datsun Fairlady Roadster/KA24DET
This car was built for Jonathon Bines who is a senior writer on the Jimmy Kimmel show. He wanted the look of a bone stock 1967.5 Datsun Roadster but with the reliability and performance of a modern driveline. To this end we decided to install a Nissan KA24DE motor and transmission from a 1996 Nissan 240SX. Using the 1996 or later driveline ensures we get the OBD II on board diagnostics and tune ability. To this stock motor we added a custom T3/T4 turbocharger setup. After some road testing the car was stripped for paint then reassembled with a stock reproduction interior. Even the dash was left stock except for the boost gauge to replace the clock.
The car is one heck of a sleeper with very little weight and only 5 pounds of boost it’ll go sideways in third gear under boost. It’s very fun to drive, very nimble and great looking. Jon enjoyed driving this car daily to work at the ABC studios with just over 12,000 miles on the clock.
The combination worked so well that we ended up building two more of these little cars, one with an S13 SR20DET and another with an S14 SR20DE.
We tackled this project from inception, which included locating the project car, determining the drive train, fabricating all the custom brackets, motor mounts, turbo plumbing and custom wiring to make this combination work. We also managed all the outside vendors which in this case were bodywork, paint and interior.
1956 Cadillac Coupe DeVille
This car is in the beginning stages of a ground up build. So far it features one of our 509 Cadillac Crate engines with custom built headers, full Shockwave air bag setup by Air Ride Technologies and custom installed by Schraders, a smooth firewall and custom 2.5” mandrel bent exhaust with tips out the bumper in the stock location. We also built custom floors based on panels for a similar year Buick.
There’s still many, many hours of custom fabrication and metal repair work left on this car before it gets blown apart for paint and body. Stay tuned for updates.
1969 Camaro
This 1969 Camaro was purchased new as a left over in 1970 by the current owner's father. It's lived it's entire life in Southern California. The current owner started to do some work on the car a few years back but got sidelined by the rigors of work and home life. He brought it to us for a complete makeover, and it will be the absolute cutting edge of restomod technology when it's done.
We started by completely disassembling the entire car and sending the body out to be dipped. When it came back it was surprisingly solid everywhere with only minor rust repair required in the windshield and rear window areas. Once that was done we installed the complete TCI front and rear suspension packages. This car also features the full show package upgrades with polished everything and 12" Wilwood disc brakes front and rear. The rear axle assembly is a Currie with 31 spline axles and limited slip 3.70 center section. Rolling stock consists of OEM Corvette Z06 wheels (18" front/17" rear) that have been fully polished and plated. The drivetrain is an LS2/4L60E combination from a 2005 GTO that boasts 400 horsepower from the factory. To this we will be adding long tube headers, a custom cold air intake and a Diablosport tune which should easily take us to 450 crank horsepower.
Follow along as we build the entire car, then blow it apart for paint, plating and powdercoating. The end result will be a new Corvette killer wrapped in 1969 Camaro clothes, the best of both worlds!
Tsukagawa Deuce
I met Mr. Tsukagawa through my neighbor and friend Shinya Kimura. Shinya is a world famous artist and builder of beautiful custom motorcycles (http://www.chabottengineering.com/).
It turned out that Mr. Tsukagawa and I shared a passion for post war hot rods built in the way they would have been in the golden period immediately following World War 2. After lengthy discussions, I was commissioned by him to construct a period perfect 1932 Ford roadster. This car is being built to the highest possible standards with fit and finish to rival even the Ken Gross and Doane Spencer deuce roadsters but it will be capable of being driven daily in Tokyo traffic. It will be powered by a fully built 8BA Flathead backed by a T5 5 speed transmission. We found an original 1940 Ford rear axle and fitted it with a quick change, also had it modified to accept modern axles and sealed bearings while keeping the stock 1940 Ford rear brakes and lever shocks. The chassis is based on ASC frame rails with a Model A front crossmember and Model T rear crossmember. The front suspension is fully chrome plated and features the So-Cal hidden discs brakes.
The car will be loaded with authentic period parts such as a gennie Deuce shell and insert, real period correct Stewart Warner gauges, and Auburn gauge panel with real Auburn speedo and tach, an NOS hand pump and bracket, an NOS beehive oil filter and so much more. This hot rod represents the best of the best and I am honored that Mr. Tsukagawa has chosen me and my company to build this car. Please check back often for updates on this project.
1957 Chevrolet Convertible
This 1957 Chevrolet convertible was purchased as a nice original car that appears to have been restored in the 70's or 80's. It was a nice running, nice appearing car that needed only minor mechanical work to be a nice driver. But the current owner had a vision for a masterpiece, and he commissioned us to make it happen.
We started by blowing the entire car apart down to the bare body shell. Then we slid a new Art Morrison chassis under the car. The Morrison chassis is a work of art in itself and unlike a lot of aftermarket parts it fit right where it was supposed to. This particular chassis was fully optioned with chrome and polish everywhere, and was setup from the factory for an LSX drivetrain. We bolted in a new Corvette LS1 motor and 4L60E transmission and hung the Morrison headers. Up next is all the fabrication of exhaust, pedals, shift linkages, etc to make it all work. Then the car gets blown apart again for paint, chrome and powdercoating.
Check back often for updates on this project, it's going to be a killer car!