- Well, it was in pretty tough shape when I first saw it.

I was 19 and on my way to the beer store.

It was awesome for her to be able to get a chance to sit in the car and spend some time with the car and stuff.

I think we're gonna try to get the rear window - In next as well.

Lots to do in 24 hours.

Every car has a story, - Three car, like the best thing ever.

For some they end up here.

These are just some of the stories about those who collected restore vehicles, giving them a renewed lease on life so that their stories can be told.

Right here on - Closed captioning is provided by Senior Discovery Tours online@seniordiscoverytours.ca.

Funding for radical restoration is provided by - Rakabot sources sustainable materials to create boot racks that organize footwear while allowing drippings to go in the bowl.

Models designed for home work or recreational settings are available online@rabo.com.

Birds underwater in Crystal - River, Florida supports radical restoration, offering guided excursions with Florida manatees, kayak rentals, scuba diving certifications and boat tours are also available since 1993.

And online@birdsunderwater.com.

- Hi, I am Doug Thompson.

I have my 1940 Ford Coop in the garage now.

And the last time we spoke we were at Motorama show in Mississauga talking about the car and looking at all the fancy cars and beautiful cars there and thought we would meet up later and have a look at this thing.

Well, it was in pretty tough shape when I first saw it.

I was 19 and on my way to the beer store for a local Friday night and I never made it to beer store that night.

I saw it back corner of it sticking out from behind the garage and stopped to talk to the gentleman and spent the night there trying to get him to sell it and he wouldn't sell it.

So for the next six weeks I would go to the beer store first and then I would go and see him.

We would have a few beers and finally he sold me the car.

And that was in, I think September, 1983.

So that's where it started.

And then I just started gradually working on it myself for years and years.

And then I got married and a couple kids and all of a sudden there was no money left for the car.

So the car went in storage for about 12 years and then my kids were, my business was in in good shape then and my kids were older, a little bit older and stuff.

And then we started working on it again.

So I had my own barn find Chicken Poop Pinal.

It was in the barn basement for 12 years.

So then I went, we did a few things back and forth.

I had a frame built for it and the body mounted and a bit of metal work done, different shops and stuff.

And I finally met John from John Edwards from Dream Machines in Scarborough.

And in oh nine it went there and stayed there till this spring where it was at Motorama and then it came home.

So it was back and forth.

Couple times it was on the shelf.

I had to buy my wife a car in 11.

I bought her a new Camaro and sold the car.

Went on the shelf again for a couple years, but then we gradually back and forth and here's where it is today.

It won top 10 at Motorama and it also got in its class, it got best interior and best paint in the hot rod class.

I think it was in, we did take it down to Columbus, Ohio to the Good Guy show, the flagship show down there and it, it was awesome down there.

I wasn't able to go because of my wife was sick, but John was able to take it down and he was able to drive it into the main building where they took the top a hundred cars from the show.

There was about 5,600 cars in the show and they took the top a hundred right off the bat when you were driving in.

They would send one person one way and one person the other way.

And then from there it made it down to the top 12 for hot rod of the year out of 5,600 cars.

So that was pretty cool.

It was the only car in the top 12 from Ontario or from Canada I should say.

Not even just Ontario and a simple carpenter like myself with my own business and John a, an awesome builder, but a one man builder.

It was pretty cool for us to be in the likes of Trap.

Had a car down there, I think Foss, I don't know that it was his own car, but I think he had worked on a couple of the cars and it was pretty cool to be in the same building.

John told me when he drove in the building, it had goosebumps on his, on his arms for being into this elite of place.

And so that was awesome.

I've spent my whole life 40 years working, working to make money to pay for it.

It's paid for.

Now I wanna drive it.

So I want to take it out east and I have a cousin out in Nova Scotia, I want to take it out there.

I'm gonna trailer it out there, but I want to take it out there to see him.

He's a car guy.

He had a 40 Willys forever and doesn't anymore.

And now I think he's got a 55 Chev.

But I wanna take it out there.

And then I wanna do some shows next year, maybe back to Good Guys in, in Columbus again and we'll see whether Gary will have me back in in Motorama or not.

We'll see, I want to use the car.

So I spent my whole life working on it, my wife and I.

And so I want to use it.

So when it was in storage, I got to the point where I wouldn't go and look at it.

It was like I say, it was in a barn basement for 12 years and I was lucky.

All I paid the farmer was 2 66 ERs of CC.

Every year, every spring I would go and drop it off and the first couple years I would go and I would clean the chicken poop off it and put a tarp on it.

And after that I just couldn't do it.

I would just drop the bottles off at his door, shake his hand and I wouldn't even go and look at the car.

And for 10 years I didn't even go and look at the car because I wanted to work on it.

But I knew I had other priorities, family, kids, getting my business going and kids in 88, my wife and I got married, bought a house and started our business.

So, and then 90 and 92 we had two kids.

So it was a crazy time and we just thought it was best to not work on the car for a while and that's what we did.

So my kids are think it's kind of cool now and they always thought I was nuts but working on this old car and tough.

But Barb never said no to anything I wanted to do and never, never complained, which was awesome.

So support all the way through, which was great.

So our original plan, because I had the car three or four years before I met her, our original plan was to have it done and we would drive it at our wedding and stuff That didn't happen then.

It was my daughter's wedding and that didn't happen but it was close.

But all the years through she never complained and always supported what I wanted to do and if we needed to do something else or not do something else to put some money into the car, that's what we did.

And so she was awesome all the way through.

And then she got sick five years ago and then I put a real push on to finish the car because I wanted to have us a chance to use it because I've had it longer than I was married to her.

I was married to her 36 years.

So, and I've had the car 40 years.

So I pushed John quite a bit and he stepped up and we got it ready at Motorama and with my whole family and Gary and the staff at Motorama, they helped us make it so Barb could come in in a wheelchair and didn't, didn't rush us off the stage when we went up to get our awards and stuff like that together and lots of pictures and everybody was helpful on stuff.

So it was awesome for her to be able to get a chance to sit in the car and spend some time with the car and stuff.

Then once spring kind of came I, one day she wasn't able to have her cancer treatment and we were heading home and I passed the cutoff on the highway to John's and I said, you know what, we're going to drive the car.

And I called John and I said, John, can we drive the car?

And he's like, ah, sure.

As I get there he is scrambling putting parts back together on it.

And we went for a 45 minute drive.

It was awesome.

She smiled the whole time, it was great.

And that was the only time she got to ride in the car and she passed on July 14th.

So now when I use the car and have the car, I feel that I have her with me.

And so it's pretty cool.

It's got a fuel injected motor so that I don't have to worry about driving it anywhere and electric fan.

So it cools In 2011 I bought my wife a new Camaro and first time I got in I saw the dash and it had this little eyebrow over the gauges and I'm like, oh geez, I want that.

And so I, and 'cause this dash looked the same there as it did here.

So I said that to John, oh man, I want that John.

And he's like, man, so it was actually recycle day and somebody was throwing out a bunch of pots and pans.

So he went and grabbed a bunch of the pots and pans and kind of cut a bunch of pieces up and mock something up with the, with the old pots and pans and cardboard and then we, we settled on this.

So yeah, it was kind of a collaboration.

A lot of the stuff he came up with, like the paddle shift, that was his idea.

And man is it quick, it's like you can't shift a clutch as fast as that paddle shift.

I didn't like the the old style hinges and and handles on the car.

So I asked him if we could take them off and of course he agreed.

And so that's what we have now.

We have the hinges and handles off and I didn't want any of the old chrome or the pin striping or anything on it.

The sides of the grill we actually took out, there was little trim pieces on and I was at one of the swamp beats in Aurelia there and I saw an old grill that was all beaten and rusted out.

But I grabbed that and I said to John, I want to take this grill apart and cut out these wide pieces where the trim piece was and put in a normal piece.

So you can't see any of that 'cause most people don't put the trim on but they still have the wide piece in the grill.

And again he thought okay, we'll do it.

He came up with the idea for the one piece windshield, he found that somewhere in California, they always had a big chunk of chrome up here originally.

And then after that they most people would take two flat pieces of glass and put them together and then sea seal the joint and I never liked that.

But he found this one piece windshield in California and the scary part was they said as soon as it left their shop, that's it, they washed their hands of it.

So I asked for them to build a second skid around it and it came here in one piece and John never broke it putting it in.

So that was really cool.

The paint was a big challenge.

We probably did 25 spray outs and of all different like Nisan, everybody, Dodge Ford, all the different colors and John and I, neither of us liked the colors.

They looked great on the little swatches.

And then when we got spray outs done, neither of us liked them.

So the painter came back with four more spray outs for us and an extra one and we looked at the spray outs and we're like, Mel, that's not it.

So he has one behind his back and he is like, I got the color.

Sure enough, it was a brand new color from House of Colors that just came out a few weeks before and he mixed it and put it on right away.

I took it outside and I'm, so that is cutouts.

I had told John that I wanted to do some cutouts and there was all kinds of different kinds and this is a kind that he felt comfortable with.

So we put these in and it's, it's pretty cool Years and years and years ago when I was 19 this was gonna be a street rod car, like a Saturday night street rod car.

And so I had an L 88, 4 27 race motor for it.

13 and half to one ave gas.

Like it would fly, but time went and I matured and I never got to use it for that.

So probably, I don't know, six, five years, five, six years ago I guess.

I guess John and I had the discussion from him initiating it that maybe that wasn't the motor that I needed right now for the car.

And of course I reluctantly agreed and I started looking around and one of the things I did when I was a kid was I was a Chevy guy but I didn't like the look of the cars.

I love the look of this car.

So I set it up with a Chevy motor and a Ford car, which as today's standards probably wasn't the smartest thing to do, but you know, most people don't say much to me about it.

The odd person is like, oh why'd you do that?

I was a kid I didn't know.

And a few years ago when I thought about changing it, it was gonna cost me like 15 grand to change everything and it was just too much.

I figured I'll never get the car done.

So I went to gm, Highland Shovels were ideal and asked them what they had in Crate Motors and they had a 4 27 5 0 2 with aluminum heads race, not race prep but performance cropped and fuel injected and 500 horsepower.

I'm like sold now I have a fuel injected car that I don't have to worry about.

I can go down south if I want.

I can go for five minutes or five hours if I want.

Yeah, when I was nine or 10 years old I watched a movie and saw a 40 Ford and some other car race at a drag race and I said then when I was a kid with rabbit ears on the tv, I said I'm gonna have one of those cars.

And it's kind of funny 'cause now I have, I have this car, right?

So - Working on some fenders for a coop over there that we're gonna put some undercoat on and send it out this weekend I think So got the firewall, painted the block and just scuffing all this stuff up and get her looking nice and pretty.

We're just kind of getting this thing ready for some reassembly.

Got the firewall painted all black here and fenders go on, hood goes on and that interior gets buttoned up and should be good.

So I guess he's gonna be picking it up Saturday.

So I guess the story is to try to get all hints on deck and get it done.

But these fenders take a lot of work, you know, and, and they're not your average car fender, they're full body rounded fenders.

So getting everything fitting and good without scratching it, that's gonna be the key for today.

This one here was kind of just, you know, a freshen up in a way.

It was all purple to begin with and now it's gone like this.

Root beer, brown color and all new interior.

So the upholstery's been redone from front to back and the trunk and everything.

The motor's been freshened up a bit as well.

Cool looking car though you don't, you don't see enough of these on the road?

I'd like to own this one myself.

What about, do we have any, like can you use a radiator hose?

Is it flexible enough?

Getting one the right angle but we just, we have to make the cup for the for the - Over here though, right?

- Might have to take this out or have to cut it.

Okay.

We're gonna have to make a pocket for it over here, right, right.

- Is that the factory spot that it would've been to?

I guess the tank would've been behind the sea or something originally though.

Right home stretch.

We got the rear fenders on here now too.

So they're fitting nice and good, good clearance around there.

So Chris doing the front grill installation, we're gonna get the front fenders on next.

It's gonna be basically on this side here.

We got a reproduction tank in here and Dave is just trying to get a new filler neck for in here.

That's gonna go into the tank at the right orientation.

But right now with all the factory parts, it's not lining up.

So he's gonna have to do a little bit of modification here to the filler neck and it's leaving Saturday so we gotta come up with something with the front fender is being off the car right now.

Definitely he's got that old hot rod greaser kind of look to it.

Chris got some quarter windows in.

I think we're gonna try to get the rear window in next as well.

Lots to do in 24 hours.

- Somebody repaired this at one point and didn't do it properly, so I actually had to cut it in half and remove a quarter inch of material just to fit it in the surround, so, but wow.

Yeah, - Blind leading the blind.

I think I got it.

I gotta figure out the orientation of this now.

Nothing lines up Dave personally.

- Well we're just waiting on this.

We didn't do the suspension on it, but the, the springs are a little bit weak so we're gonna put some helpers in.

They're like a rubber puck just to give it a little bit more height in the front.

So on this car we changed a bunch of stuff on the body form.

You'll notice there's no running boards on it.

The owner is going to make the running boards out of wood and stain them.

So that really wasn't on our list.

So what's interesting about this car is it's a 37 Chev, it has a 37 Plymouth front end and originally the headlight buckets were off the tops of the fenders.

So we moved them to the cow at the front off the sides the, the fuel filler you can see back here, the fuel filler for it was down here.

So we've moved that up, just kind of cleaned up the look of the side.

It'll take you around the other side here and you can see we use some small tail lights.

corba style I call 'em.

But the paint's beautiful.

It's a root beer and so you can see inside here that we used a lot of his old parts, but we did bucket seats, made a back, back area for it as well.

Real simple interior in it.

Stereo.

So there's a lot of stuff we didn't touch that we would normally do on a car that comes in, but it's, it's got some great lines on it.

So if you stick around next couple days, we'll get it out on the road.

It's a little bit overcast today and raining so, but neat for a little boot around.

It's just a small box Chevy that's in it.

Automatic, real simple, good, good driver type car, - Pretty cool little car 3 27, little bit of a cam.

Really pretty clean under underneath.

These are just a cool, like as soon as you get in it's feel like you should go to a W or something like that.

But yeah, I know that the customer's eager to get it back.

It's been here for quite a while, so I think we're about as far as we're gonna go with it.

It's pretty much just needs a few odds and ends that customer's gonna finish up.

But yeah, it's, I like the color.

It kind of that root beer, brown color just kind of suits the body style.

I think - Closed captioning is provided by senior discovery tours online@seniordiscoverytours.ca.

Funding for radical restoration is provided by -Rakabot sources sustainable materials to create boot racks that organize footwear while allowing drippings to go in the bowl.

Models designed for home work or recreational settings are available online@raabot.com.

Birds underwater in Crystal - River, Florida supports radical restoration, offering guided excursions with floor manes, kayak rentals, scuba diving certifications and boat tours are also available since 1993 and online@birdsunderwater.com.

- Thank you for joining us.

My name's Gary Nichols.

Until next time, may all your rides be radical.