1927 Chevrolet Roadster - Early Iron

From the July, 2011 issue of Street Rodder

By Eric Geisert

Phil Friar, from Corona, California, tells us his 1927 Chevrolet roadster was originally built in Walla Walla, Washington, by Dick Walters back in 2003. Phil needed a good driver, which is what he got when he bought the car, but he took Dick’s advice on not driving home to SoCal as he hit a snowstorm in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range that stopped all traffic for the night.

Phil says the car has been completely reliable, and he has spent many hours tooling around town and back and forth to a small airport where he keeps his plane (he can be found up in the air most clear weekends). One of the things he likes the most about the car is the motor, which is always a source of conversation with any onlooker.

The car, though it has a few Ford parts mixed in with some Japanese pieces, is at heart a ’27 Chevy roadster with a ’27 Chevy frame. A ’28 Ford front axle with ’54 Chevy spindles, Camaro front discs and rotors, as well as split Model A bones help make up the suspension. Quarter-elliptic springs work with a torsion bar setup that runs transverse under the ’95 Honda radiator and ’27 Chevy grille shell (which is narrowed and sectioned).

The motor, of course, is the main attraction, and it’s a 3TC four-banger out of an ’82 Toyota. At 1,800 cc (about 110 ci of displacement), the internals of the engine are mostly stock, sans the port and polish job for the stock hemi head.

But the stuff bolted to the outside of the engine is where a lot of the custom work was done. For ignition, the top half of a Bosch 009 distributor (typically used on flat-four performance VW engines) was mated to the Toyota setup, and a pair of Datsun carbs from a ’73 Z was adapted using a custom manifold.

A 10-gallon fuel tank is aided by an electric fuel pump in getting the go-juice to the powerplant, and the rear end came out of a ’97 Nissan pickup and used in conjunction with a Model A rear spring and friction shocks.

Some of the car’s parts were hand fabbed (such as the steering wheel), some borrowed from other sources (like the Studebaker steering column), while others were just plain ol’ adapted for new use (the driveshaft came out of a Nissan but Toyota front yokes were added). The horse blanket covering the bench seat is about as basic as you can get for any hot rod, and replacement material can be bought at any tack and feed store.

Ever the hot rodder, Phil says (even though he enjoys driving the little rod around) he’s looking for a new project—possibly a Model A sedan with either a four-banger or a Flathead motor in it. At 70 years old, you just can’t keep him down!