You wanna talk about a hidden treasure, this
is it. A legit hot rod from the '60s, and we just
put it back on the road for the first time in over 30 years. Let's check it out. The car is a 1934 Plymouth coupe and it was
built in the 1960's by my father-in-law Charles Berry. Charles started this project when he was 16
years old. He saved up enough money from a paper route
to buy the body, which I believe was a hundred dollars or less, and it wasn't in great shape,
it was just the hull itself, it didn't have fenders or anything like that. And then he bought a 1940 Ford frame for 25
dollars, and went to work trying to make it all fit. He had to spread the cowl on this car, he
had to cut the back of the frame off so he did away with the original rear suspension,
made his own, used coil springs, built his own perches, made his own ladders bars and
it worked out pretty good. So Charles originally set this thing up to
have a small block Chevy in it. But then he found a '57 Chrysler with a 392
Hemi so he couldn't pass that up. He put it in the car and even though it had
pretty good horsepower the car handled terribly with all that weight on the nose of a car
that was already pretty light in the back. He said it just drove terrible. I can imagine, because it really doesn't drive
that great now but I can imagine with a couple hundred extra pounds on the nose, that it
was kinda a handful. So Charles spent a couple years on this car,
you know, gathering up parts and doing what he could to get it on the road. And a couple years after he bought it, he
finally got it driving and it actually wasn't long after that he enlisted in the Navy and
eventually served in the Vietnam War. Charles said that his neighbors had to have
been thrilled when he enlisted in the Navy because that meant that this old hot rod wasn't
rumbling around, up and down the street all the time. And I can totally relate. I'm sure that my neighbors don't love this
thing with open headers and a big lumpy cam and all that kind of stuff. It's just not neighbor friendly but it is
a lot of fun. When Charles came back from the war, the car
was still there. He kept it at his dad's house and it was right
there waiting for him. And of course he had plenty of time to think
about it. He had ideas and new stuff he wanted to do. Then after that, the car transformed into
more of a street car, where he had originally planned on drag racing it. About the latest picture I've got of it is
from 1977, he had redone some stuff and got it really tuned up for the street. After that there is kind of a gap. The car just sat pretty much after that and
part of that is because life happens. You get married, you have kids, you have a
job that's stressful and all that stuff adds up and doesn't leave very much time for hot
rods. The fortunate thing is that Charles didn't
want to let go of this car. He didn't want to let go of this car or his
'63 Impala Super Sport convertible. The last time Charles drove this car was in
1985. He drove it from his old house to his brand
new house that he'd built. He built it with a basement, specifically
to put this car and a couple others in there for safe keeping. Unfortunately this one sat in the corner,
and it was hard to get in and out of there so it just stayed. It just sat, but at least it was in the dry. But it sat for a little over 30 years. That was kinda when I brought the idea up
to drag it out of the basement, bring it up here to my shop and we'd put this thing back
on the road. So after I talked Charles into kind of letting
me borrow this car, and bring it up here and do some work on it, I got my buddy Kyle to
go down. He's got a roll back. He went down to Georgia and picked this thing
up and I rode back with him. His roll back ended up on the side of the
road on the way back. He burnt the clutch up on the way back but
that's a whole other story. Kyle's always there to help me to drag home
some of these projects and he's there to help me work on them too, so I'm always thankful
for him. I brought it in, the first thing I wanted
to do was to see what it would take to crank this thing up. We had just gotten it running, we hadn't gotten
all of the brakes and all that stuff done. We hadn't got it actually on the road yet
but we had gotten it running. We invited him up for the weekend, there was
a Southeast Gassers race at Brainerd Motorsports Park. We went down there, we hauled this thing down
there and another one of our old drag car survivors. We put it out there just for display and my
wife was wanting us to all get together for a picture. So we're all getting into position and Charles
is standing in front of the car. I reach back here and hit the switch and turn
it on, and the car fires right up. It was an emotional moment because Charles
didn't realize that I'd been working on the car. He didn't realize the thing was even close
to being able to crank up. That was a lot of fun. I think everybody had tears in their eyes
on that one. It was fun and emotional and really kind of
helped inspire me to keep going because if he got that big of a kick out of just hearing
it run, I knew he would love taking it down the road again. It ran pretty rough but after we made some
changes, we put some fresh spark plugs in it, new plug wires. Put a Pertronix electronic ignition in it,
and rebuilt the carburetors. After all that, this thing runs smooth and
really hasn't given me any problems. We also went through the brakes. Since this thing is sitting on a '40 Ford
frame, we just used '40 Ford wheel cylinders, brake lines and hoses and all that stuff. Put a new master cylinder on it. I used a '60 to '62 Chevy or GMC combo master
cylinder. So it's a single chamber on the brake side
and a single chamber on the clutch side but it's together. It's kind of an old school hot rod deal and
that's what he had on it years ago so that's what I put back on it. It's not totally ideal because it has a big
bore, like an inch and an eighth so it's really stiff, but it's got the right look and I can
put up with a stiff pedal. The biggest item on my to-do list was tires
and wheels. I work for Coker Tire Company so I had to
put something on here that really did the car justice. I chose a set of Firestone tires, it's got
bias plies on it. The fronts are 560-15's and the rears are
Firestone Dragster Cheater Slicks. The front wheels are Rocket Strike with a
cast center, they're 15 by 4 and a half. The rears are 15 by 8's and they have the
large Ford 5 on 5 and a half inch bolt pattern. My dad worked on this thing a lot. Him and his partner there Wally Smith. They put a steel firewall in it, a steel floor
pan. They worked out the brake lines and that kind
of stuff. They really did a lot to help me since I didn't
have a whole lot of time to work on it as I was actually getting pretty close to my
magazine deadline. Which is always handy to kind of help usher
a project along. They helped a lot and my dad was also here
for the first time I drove it down the road which was really neat. That's always a fun experience and it was
just neat to have my dad there with me to ride along on the first trip down the road. We laughed because it made a bunch of noise
and it rattled and it was bumpy and that's just what a hot rod's supposed to be. We had a lot of fun with it. My best memory with this car was probably
the third or fourth time I had driven it. I was driving it to go do a photo shoot on
it for a magazine article and took it down the road here. I live just about a quarter of a mile away
from an airport, which is a great photo shoot location. I took off down the road here and I thought
that would be a good time to open up the secondaries on the four barrel and you know, see what
would happen. And the thing responded well, it took gas
and went on down the road and it was one of those moments where I could very clearly see
what Charles was talking about as far as some of the handling incapabilities this car has. I mean, it was a little bit sketchy and a
little bit scary but that's part of the fun. You don't know which way it's gonna go. When you let off the gas, it wants to go one
way and when you give it gas it wants to go the other. It's just one of those things, it all kind
of clicked right then when I got on the gas and this thing came alive and I was just hoping
I could get it all gathered up before something bad happened. And then it was even more fun when Charles
came up here, when I was able to give him a ride down the road in it and then turn him
loose in it and see what he thought about it. And of course, I drove down the road several
times before he came and I really took it easy to make sure this thing is all good and
you know, not gonna kill me. And he hopped in this thing, and it was like
he had never stopped driving it. I went up there as he was starting to crank
it up and I started giving him tips on how to get it cranked, and I was like, "he knows
all of this car's tricks". He already knows. It was just kind of a surreal moment to see
him take off down the road knowing that he had pieced this thing together when he was
a teenager and then held onto it. He had to work around it basically his whole
life, it was kind of in his way. And then to get back in it and drive it down
the road many years later. That was a neat feeling and it was the whole
purpose of doing it. To help this thing get back on the road and
help him get some use out of it and enjoy it. Now that brings us to what we're gonna do
with it in the future. And that will be just to take it to cruise
ins and cars shows and nostalgia drag races and share this car's story. Who knows, somebody might remember it from
back years ago when Charles used to run around in the Atlanta area. They might remember this car from back then. Any of those memories, that's worth cherishing
and it's definitely worth documenting. That's part of the reason I wanted to shoot
this video and show you the inside and outside of this car and give you some history on it. So that's it for this one. It's a 1934 Plymouth coupe body, '40 Ford
frame, Chevrolet motor, Pontiac grille, Lincoln rear end, Plymouth taillights, it's got a
little bit of everything. And this is just a true historic hot rod that
I'm just blessed to have been a part of. I had a lot of help along the way from my
dad, Troy, his partner Wally Smith, my buddy Kyle Shadden, Denny George. There's a lot of guys that contributed to
getting this thing on the road. And I'm just thankful that Charles let me
drag this thing up here and work on it. He trusted me to do the right thing and I
hope that I did. I hope that putting this thing together in
a way that he was intending in the '60s. I hope that worked out. I think it's cool. I'm ready to get it out and drive it some
more and maybe I'll get a little more used to it so I'm not quite so scared taking it
down the road. But that's it for now, I'm pretty happy with
where it's at and excited for where it's going.
