Hi everybody. My name's Tim Matthews with the Museum of American Speed. I'm so glad
to have you joining me as always. Of course if you look around you can tell
I'm not in my typical surroundings, which is the museum where I'd be telling you
about something cool and historic, but instead, I'm here at home. I'm like many
of you. I'm hunkered down because of COVID-19 19 and I can't believe it's been 3
weeks already. So in the spirit of keeping things interesting, if you're
like me and behind the computer and are interested in what your hotrod
buddies are doing, we thought we would take a look around my garage. I'll show
you my hot rod and some of the things I have hanging around in my workspace. So
without further ado, let's go check it out. All right come on in and make
yourselves at home. It's a little cramped in here and way too cluttered but we'll
look around a little bit and I can show you some of the stuff I've been working
on. I learned a long time ago that if I waited for the perfect shop to get work
done I'd probably be waiting for a long long time, so I decided that my two-car
garage was going to have to suffice. And in the grand scheme of things I like to
imagine that a lot of people built cool hot rods and two-car garages, especially
during the Golden Age of hot rodding when everybody was doing it and old Ford
parts were cheap. So here I am and I've been liking this set up quite a bit
because I can sneak out here even if I work on the car for 10 minutes at a time. I
can get things done on it. My wife sometimes will peek your head out of
that little door and ask me if I'm hungry.
Of course the clutter drives her a little crazy in here so even if I invite
her in to hang out she'll say "no no I'm good". So anyway here I am with my little hot
rod and we'll talk about this car a little bit. If you've tuned in to some of
my other videos, I've talked about this car an awful lot for Speedway motors and
some of the parts that we sell. I try to build a car with as many old parts as I
can. So if I can find it in a junkyard or find it at a swap meet that's my
preference but there's a lot of new stuff on here to to make it reliable and
just parts that you can't find just Lane around anymore. So I like to build
traditional cars and in this particular Model A is built the way I'd hope my
grandpa would have built it. So it's done with parts that are kind of dating
back to the 50s. It has a 241 red Ram Hemi out of a 54 Dodge Coronet. It has
original 32 Ford grille shell and all these parts have history to me you know.
When I select the parts for my car, you know, I try to select things that have
some kind of cool history to them you know. So the grille insert for instance,
in this car, this came from my grandpa. You know it's so it's been around a long
time and the grille shell itself rather came from a good friend
Eric Zausner. When I told him I was putting an aftermarket grille shell
on my car, he mailed this one to me and about tipped me over. I couldn't
believe what a nice gift that was and so thankful. The headlights are '36
Ford headlights, also from a dear friend. Buick fin drums on juice backing plates.
I cast the breeze cool scoops myself from an old mold. Just a lot of different
stories on the car. The exhaust headers are still looking a little rough but I
built them myself right here in my garage. They're made with 36 Ford
driveshaft tubes that were sent to me from French Lake Auto Parts up in
Minnesota, which kudos to them but this is just so much fun right. It's fun to
build a car you know with so many different parts and trying to source the
parts. The cowl for this car that still has my name written on it. It used to sit
in the call center at Speedway Motors. I bought it and then I brought
it into work so we could test windshield posts on it for brand new stainless
steel chopped windshield posts. So this thing laid in the call center for many
years always dreamt about building a car out of it and the list goes on and on.
You know that engine I pulled out of a 54 Dodge Coronet that was in a field
right outside a Lincoln here and there she is. It had all the frost plugs blown
out of it but I took it all apart and re-machined everything and
and it runs like a champ. This particular car I just took on its maiden voyage. My
daughter and I took it right down the cul-de-sac it was a lot of fun
and no parts fell off. Didn't catch on fire.
It's so far so good right now. I took the seat back out and I'm working on the
floor pans. We're trying to get those all figured out so I'm making cardboard
patterns so I can cut the wood for those the dash, as you can see, is a 1934 Ford dash.
It's got some old-school gauges in it. '50 Ford steering wheel '49 Ford f1 pickup
steering column and steering box that I machined a little bit to make it work
for this car. I guess the list just keeps on going you know. The body as I said it
came from about 17 different swap meets but I was able to piece it all together
and get it square. The taillights are kind of cool those are '50 Pontiac
taillights with early Chrysler reverse light lenses in them because I like that
fluted look and built those taillights myself. '40 Ford steel wheels and some
really nice tires from Speedway motors to kind of figure it all out but there
she is. If anybody has any questions about my old jalopy I know it's rough
and it has a long way to go probably make some of you guys laugh out there
but I sure have enjoyed building it. You know when you do everything yourself you
learn an awful lot. That's for sure. My garage is a mess. I've got a little bit of everything in here. It's kind of a collection of things
that make me happy. I've got a couple old BMX bikes. These are just part of my BMX
bike collection. I I love old BMX bikes, I'm an old racer from back in the day. I
have some leftover parts here. My extra dummy Hemi that I used for setting
everything up in my car. Some model airplanes just you name it. I just
have a little bit of everything. If it's from the 80s I love it so if any of you
guys out there like old boom boxes let me know. I mean we could we could play
some ZZ Top on any one of those. I just love those things. Speaking
of COVID-19, you might be interested in seeing where I'm working from these days.
This is my little workspace in the corner of my small garage and you'd be
surprised how many questions come in to me at that little computer and then I'm
able to keep the business going of the museum and answer some
technical questions at the same time so it's been a lot of fun even though it's
a very strange time to be able to work here in my garage and keep things going.
These are all my BMX trophies from back in the day. If any of you raced in Sioux
Falls South Dakota I might have raced against
you back in the day. Yeah there's even a picture of a young Tim Matthews right
there lining up with all the other big boys. That was the
best time of my life racing in the 80s but it gives you a
little idea of some of the other stuff I'm interested in. Just have a little bit
of everything in my garage and someday my wife is gonna have a great time
auctioning all this stuff off. I hope that's not the case. My son seems like
he's pretty interested in this stuff too. I know you all have projects out there
whether it's a hundred thousand dollar car, an old beater hot rod like mine. We'd
love to see what you have in your garage. Some of the stuff that you're interested
in so share that with us. It really means a lot and we'd love to see it. The other
thing I wanted to say just in closing really quick is a huge thank you to
everyone out there that's working hard, that's keeping the world going in spite
of this crazy time. All the health care workers that are taking care of
sick folks. I think about people out there every single day. So huge thank you.
The other thing I wanted to say is to our customers, to people that are buying
parts, that are working on hot rods like mine, you know thank you. You know we keep
the parts rolling out to you because we know how important this stuff is to you.
It's great therapy for me to work on my old hot rod and you know we're here for
you when you need the part so you can be
sure we'll get them out to you. So thanks for that we appreciate you guys. The
other thing I wanted to say is just that I appreciate you coming out hanging out
with me and my garage for a while, hearing me talk about my old beater. But
hopefully we'll get together again now real soon. Until then be safe I'm gonna
go back to work and finish my floorboards and we'll talk to y'all
later. Thanks so much for hanging out with me today.