Dick Stoebel of Manchester, Connecticut, is no stranger to hot rods, having started his relationship with everything motorized back in the '50s. Scraping together $50 by the time he was 16, he laid down the cash for a '50 Pontiac coupe and hasn't looked back since. As the decades passed, the teenager's mechanical talents grew; he worked as an engineer by day and rodder by night; continuing to do the majority of the builds by himself in his garage.
To give the devilish black...
To give the devilish black coupe some well-deserved decadence, Dick contacted Ken's Upholstery to lay down yards of deep red vinyl across the interior. Some of the fine appointments include a Glide Engineering bench accented by a LimeWorks steering wheel and column, as well as Haneline gauges to keep an eye on the vitals.
Having always held a fascination with automotive styles from the '30s, Dick began a quest almost a decade ago for an original '32 Ford five-window coupe. His research led him to a rolling body and chassis combination located in Nebraska through a site on the Internet. Not being able to travel out to see the car, he asked all the right questions and even found out that the body had been found abandoned in the woods by a pair of game wardens in Minnesota. A deal was made for the car and when it arrived a closer inspection proved that primer and bodywork can hide lots of dirty little secrets, especially in pictures. A thorough evaluation of the body proved that this was indeed one of Henry's children, which had seen better days thanks to poor panel replacement, bad fabrication, and even worse bodywork. Not one to be distracted by the situation, Dick reevaluated the cards he had been dealt and forged on with the build. With the body removed from the chassis, it was time to get busy dialing in the spine with a pocketful of ideas he had been carrying around since he was a teenager. On the plus side, the package deal came with a new, well-designed Deuce chassis from Heinzman Street Rods in Phillips, Nebraska, which was fully boxed, and C'd. For a perfect stance, a 9-inch Ford rear filled with 3.08:1 cogs and suspended in place with a combination of ladder bars from Pete & Jakes, complemented by a Panhard bar and antiroll bar while Aldan Eagle coilover shocks suck up the bumps. To give the car a nose-in-the-dirt attitude, Dick drilled a Super Bell 4-inch dropped axle, which was linked to '40 Ford spindles, an antiroll bar, and four-bars from Pete & Jakes. To add a bit of comfort to the ride, a Posies Super Slide spring and Pete & Jakes tube shocks keep the asphalt as smooth as velvet. For ample stopping power, fluid moves through a Corvette dual master on its way to 10-inch Ford drums out back and 12-inch '59 Buick finned aluminum drums up front, accented by Wilson Welding and Machine '39 Lincoln backing plates. To roll in style, lipstick red Wheel Vintiques steelies wrapped in Coker/BFGoodrich Silvertown wide whites do the job just fine.