The Pacific Gun Sight Co. Roadster
Old cars, specifically old Fords, don many hats during their lives. When new, they're status symbols; when worn, they're beaters. When modified, they're thrill rides; to aspiring drivers, they're race cars. to speed merchants, they're calling cards; to restorers, they're altars at which to exalt the machine. the Pacific Gun sight roadster has been every one of those things over the years and one more: gardener's truck as in removed trunk lid and homemade bed built therein.
While not as appointed as Doane spencer's Deuce or as famous as Bill niekamp's inaugural oakland winner, the Gun sight Co. roadster was-and still is-every bit as meticulous. thanks to the passion of Jim Palmer, its owner of 35 years, we know its almost legendary story.
A returning sailor, roy "Mack" McKinney, alit upon the roadster in 1946 while searching for suitable hot rod material in Menlo Park. its owner, a Chinese gardener, carted his supplies-wet dirt, plants, and all-in the impromptu bed he built within the trunk. once he landed the deal, Mack did what every enterprising kid did who happened into a Deuce roadster after the war: he stripped it down. specifically, he built a hot rod on the dirt floor of the Palo Alto 76 service station he operated with his partner, tom Castleberry.
Neil o'Kane replicated the engine leo Juri built to run at Bonneville in 1952 all the way down to the Packard ignition wires and rajah terminals.
Mack and Castleberry built the car to a standard many people use today to define the classic hot rod. For example, they bought one of ed "Axle" stewart's stretched front beams and commissioned Duke Duclos to build lakes headers from '36 Ford driveshafts. Mack took the opportunity to convert the car to juice brakes, a modification that mandated the '40 spindles and lewis shell steering arm. Duclos also filled the grille shell, shaved the trunk and door handles, and even filled the cowl vent. the cowl-mounted aerial, an often-overlooked '40s addition, suggests a rather prestigious accessory for the period-a radio.
John rowan worked for Mac and Castleberry during the day; at night, he helped wrench on the car. Among the things he recalls: a brief-but-wild lavender/fuchsia spray job (later the dark metallic red it wore for years) and a series of hot Flatheads, one of which local builder/racer Art Gray built. While Mack and Castleberry ostensibly built the car for lakes and street racing, the '50s ushered in a new form of competition, drag racing, and the roadster earned a reputation for hitting the century mark at salinas, Winters, Coti, and redwood city with hot shoes such as eldon lange and tommy Cheek at the helm.
When Warren thatcher trimmed the car in '53, he whipped up a piece of early must-have speed equipment: a tonneau cover. Mike Pauselius reproduced the tonneau with the same haartz canvas and white piping.
Juri And The Verdict
As the highboy made its fame a quarter-mile at a time, another aspiring racer, leo Juri, built a hot Flathead to run at Bonneville. hot or not, his Flathead would've struggled to turn impressive times in Juri's choice of sled-a '47 Ford coupe. so when word got around that an impending divorce put Mack's roadster on the market, the engine Juri built for competition found a much more appropriate home.
Juri, who worked as a machinist in a Palo Alto optical shop, talked his boss into sponsoring his ride. he loaded the roadster behind his '47 coupe and set out for the '52 Bonneville speed trials. Armed with a roll of masking tape, Juri christened the car at the track with the four words that future generations would refer to the car as: Pacific Gun sight Co.
Despite Juri's Flying-Mile aspirations, however, his 124.82-mph run in B-roadster was just about a flying mile from the record. While a Bonneville nationals timing plaque commemorates the achievement, it appears the Gun sight's racing career ended about as abruptly as it started. the loss proved almost insignificant to Gun sight's fame, however; Juri moonlighted as a machinist and mechanic at northern and Central California's dirt track venues, and his roadster's presence at California roadster Association (CrA) events earned it another sort of fame.
Thatcher stitched the seat and panels with a non-symmetrical pattern similar to that of '51 Ford passenger cars. true to the original car's form, he used real leather.
The Sight Of The '60s
Juri sold the car to Al raynal and his son, Al Jr., the same raynals who operated Palo Alto radiator (Al Jr. ran the shop until late 2000). While it's a matter of debate as to whether Juri or the raynals repainted Gun sight, it appeared at the 1963 san Mateo Autorama in a darker metallic maroon with off-white pinstripes. that same year, probably as a result of the show, it appeared in the July rod & Custom, although this time it sported an Ansen Posi-shift floor shifter, a Covico steering wheel, and a steering column mast jacket fashioned from a length of 1 1/2-inch-diameter flared chrome exhaust tubing.
The raynals sold Gun sight to steve lawson in 1966. sometime during his relationship with the roadster, he bolted to its front a pair of chrome steel wheels with Pirelli radials; he found a set of romeo Palimides' (American racing founder) small-window magnesium wheels for the back. in truly '60s fashion, they wore Goodyear Blue streaks recapped with dirttrack tread. lawson showed the updated Gun sight at the Palo Alto Concours d'elegance that year, the Grand national roadster show the following year, and at numerous other area venues until about 1968 or '69.
For the next two years, Gun sight shared Jim ladley's garage with another famous roadster: eddie Bosio's 1956 America's Most Beautiful roadster winner, Mr. ed (although we prefer its earlier title: Vic edelbrock senior's roadster). Despite its brush with fame, Gun sight didn't fare well; the driveshaft broke several times during its stay and ladley appropriated its windshield to replace the curved unit on the edelbrock/Bosio car. Palmer saw Gun sight while visiting Andy Brizio at Champion speed shop, and he recalled a number of indiscretions committed to it like mismatched rear axle parts, the byproducts of frequent shaft repairs. if that wasn't bad enough, consider that someone decided to use the body's rear wheelwells as the axle's upper shock mounts.
When Jim harvey returned from Vietnam, he tracked down ladley to buy Gun sight. however, while ladley parted with the car, he wouldn't relinquish its windshield; instead he gave Harvey a pair of one-piece (no pivot) windshield posts close to those Bosio used to win the AMBr. the grooves harvey's machinist friend milled into the posts weren't quite wide enough for laminated glass, so harvey ran the car with an acrylic-sheet windshield. Finally, he did something that surely aggravated the axle problem-he swapped the Flathead for a Chevy.
Juri made the Gun sight's dash from a plank of Philippine mahogany. It boasts a treasure trove of curved-glass stewart Warner gauges, but its priceless element is the dash plaque that commemorates Juri's 1952 Bonneville run.
Within a year, harvey sold the car (ostensibly due to the revelation that he wanted a closed car, but we can only think of that axle when trying to justify his reason to sell Gun sight) to Palmer with three Flatheads instead of the Chevy. one engine proved to be a Cub Barnett-built mill, but miles of cruising along el Camino real filled its chambers with carbon, and the detonation resulting from the increased compression ratio ultimately caused it to blow a head gasket. Palmer merely cleared the heads, reinstalled the engine, and promptly drove to l.A. the fact that heat from the firewall melted the soles of Palmer's Keds deck shoes mattered not; he owned the Gun sight!
Aiming To Restore The Gun SightWelding heat from countless repairs crystallized the driveshaft metal, causing it to break frequently. By 1974, Palmer tired of repairing the iffy piece, so he decided, as many of us do, to tear down Gun sight for a bit to make things right.
The years hadn't been kind; "I welded up 144 holes in the firewall," Palmer said. "it looked like everybody who had a 1/4-inch drill bit took a bite out of it!" the frame wasn't much better; someone replaced the stock front crossmember with a tube and mounting plate. the Model A rear crossmember grafted into the frame's stock crossmember stubs might've worked-provided nobody hacked it up for numerous exhaust installations.
Chrome wheels in the '40s were a considerable achievement in cost alone. These are extra special at that; the frontsare prized 4-inch-wide '40-only Fords and the rears are 5-inch-wide '39-41 lincolns- veritable holy Grails at this point.
As most rehab operations go, a bit turned into years. in fact, it wasn't until the very early '80s that Gun sight saw the light of day again courtesy of engine builder/drag racer/painter/marketing man Paul Gommi. "We'd moved to southern California and we were living in san Pedro," Palmer said. "My wife was coming back from the bank and my oldest son looked over and said, 'hey mom, check out that yellow highboy on red wires!' of course Gommi's ears popped up. 'you know what this is?' he asked."
Gommi is nothing if not ambitious, so the first few months of the Palmer/Gommi relationship consisted of Gommi trying to buy Gun sight. "once he got the point that I wasn't going to sell, he shrugged and said, 'oK, then let's put a motor together for it," Palmer said. And what a motor they built; its eelco twin-plug heads, s.Co.t. blower, and a Barker twin distributor drive loaded with two Pontiac Mallory distributors caused a commotion wherever the car went.
Once Gommi sprayed the roadster maroon, Palmer made the rounds, including the last nsrA san Jose Western nationals. if you know Pat Ganahl, you can imagine his response to the car at the event: "'Where the hell'd you get this?' he asked me," Palmer said. Ganahl, on behalf of tom Medley, bestowed Gun sight with that year's stroker McGurk Award. Among the other notable occasions Gun sight experienced was a blast down Fremont's 1320 just before the bulldozers had their way with the track.