Livin' the Dream
By noderel:
When John Slusar drives his ’29 Model A Ford to hot rod shows his written history of the car says Union Grove, Wis., Ford dealer Harry Zaeske went to a West Coast dealer meeting, ran into a kid who was driving the car and needed tuition money and wound up buying it for his son. The history relates how it was used as a high school car and stored away in the family’s car collection until John bought it a few years ago. However, the last sentence on Slusar’s storyboard is the only germ of truth. It says, “Everything you just read is a bold-faced lie.”
Slusar says few people read to the bottom. “No one these days reads,” he laughs. “So most people don’t realize this car and everything about it is for fun.” That includes the huge telephone that’s wired to ring when Slusar presses a hidden switch on the driver’s door. ”It’s one of the biggest jokes—one of the most fun things I ever did,” says Slusar. “I tell people it’s an early cell phone—a radio phone. They buy it since they know I’ve researched the history of radio phones.”
Once Slusar took the car to Milwaukee’s Solid Gold McDonalds and ran into a friend who didn’t believe the phone was real. Slusar told him a fellow member of the Loser’s hot rod club worked for the phone company and arranged to give the car phone the same number as his home phone. “Go ahead and call my home phone,” he said. When his friend dialed the number, Slusar pressed the switch, the car in the phone rang and he picked it up and quickly hung it up. “See?” he said. Then, he rang the phone a second time and another friend, who was in on the joke, said Slusar’s wife was calling and faked a five-minute discussion with her. “That’s the kind of fun I have with this car,” Slusar says.
“The car does look like a hot rod a kid built in 1949,” Slusar notes. “But despite its home-built appearance, it has features a really good car of that era would have.” It’s a real ’29 Model A with a four-inch “zeed” rear frame. John matched the drop with a 4-inch drop up front using a ‘48 Mor-Drop axle. “Mor-Drop was first to really figure out how to drop an axle,” Slusar says. “In the ‘50s they were doing it for the California hot rods; they were a big supplier for years.”
In some ways, Slusar is borderline fanatical about building hot rods the old-time way. He pointed to the tie-bar supporting the headlights that came from a ’32 Ford. “That is made of two forgings and a tube welded together,” Slusar points out. “Hot rodders used to cut out the tubing, then heat up the forgings cherry hot so they could bend then over and twist them to make new headlight mounts. They’re so strong that I can jump on them and they won’t move.”
The shocks on Slusar’s car also relate to early hot rod history. “Stock Fords had lever shocks ‘til after World War II, but many hot rodders were military aircraft mechanics who worked on planes with telescopic shocks,” Slusar points out. “They wanted telescopic shocks on their cars.” Many accomplished this by using tube shocks from the new ‘49 Ford F-1 pickup. Rodders found that F-1 shock mounts could be sawed off and welded together at 90 degrees to create a shock mount with hole spacing matching the holes on a Model A crossmember.
“My Model A hot rod has this kind of shock mounting, as well as F-1 front brakes,” says Slusar. “Ford got juice brakes in 1939 and they had two cylinders so the harder you stepped down, the more pressure you got, but new Bendix brakes that debuted on the ’39 Lincoln had a single wheel cylinder and the brake assembly acted like a pendulum and made them work like power brakes.” The 1949 Ford cars and F-1 trucks adopted the Bendix system in which the lead shoe hits the drum, tries to rotate in there and pushes the other shoe into contact. Slusar put F-1 brakes on the front of his hot rod and ’41 Ford brakes on the rear.
John’s car looks like a roadster, but is actually a sedan with the roof cut off. “This was common on the West Coast in 1949, because you couldn’t compete in Southern California Timing Assoc. (SCTA) events unless you had a roadster,” Slusar says. “So poor guys made roadsters out of coupes or sedans. The car has ‘30 Model A headlights, a ’49 F-1 dashboard cluster (converted to 12 volts) and a ’37 Ford “banjo” steering wheel. The flathead V-8 is backed up with a ’39 Ford “top loader” transmission. There’s a Model T fuel tank in the trunk of the fenderless A and the bench seat is covered with a Mexican blanket that Slusar bought while traveling Route 66. It has a center-zipper tonneau cover like many old hot rodders used to cut down wind resistance when racing on the dry lakes.
John is not against a little modernization to help him pull his vintage-style teardrop trailer. He used an invention of his own—an airbag—between the arched area on the rear dross member and the platform he built on the center body section. It has a built-in electrical pump so John can adjust ride height.
Another item John adopted from the ’49 Ford F-1 pickup is the steering box, which he says is “a thousand times better than Model A steering.” Slusar says the Model A box bolted right to the frame and was held in a kind of adaptor stalk. He replaced it with F-1 steering after sawing off one of the flanges and having the housing align bored. He had to have a special bushing made to fit and put in all-new guts. It bolts in just like an original Model A unit.
The car has an interesting blend of “leading edge” 1940s hot rod technology and crude detailing like that car enthusiasts of that era could afford or find free. For instance, the chassis with its ’34 Ford wishbone suspension and ’49 F-1 steering would have been “hot ticket” stuff in the day. On the other hand, Slusar rolled on Rustoleum when it was 16-degrees outside so he would wind up with thick coats of paint that produced a heavy “orange peel” effect.
The car’s body came from a man who was learning how to do body work. “He had never done it before and he slopped on great gobs of Bondo,” says Slusar. “On the bottom eight inches of the body, you can see where he welded in metal, then schlocked putty on to cover the seams. “When I bought the car, he told me how sorry he was that he’d ruined it,” says John. “I told him, don’t be sorry, you created a car that’s exactly the fun ride I want it to be.”
With is engineering background, John Sluzar's built a lot of tech into his '29 Model A hot rod, but he hid it behind an exterior built for generating fun.
The headlight mounting, the dropped axle and the juice brakes were all items found on the best West Coast hot rods in 1949.
Banjo steering wheel gets "ohhs" and the huge dial up "mobile phone" gets laughs.
John probably talked Big Chief Burlington Coat Factory out of this blanket, though he swears he found it on a trip down Route 66.
You can't over-do decals or a little hint of rust is john Slusar's fun philosophy for this car.
Rusty headers are the crowning touch on the full-race "flattie" V-8.