t feels good to be back “on the road” attending our favorite rod runs. One of our very favorites is the Hot Rod Roundup (HRR), this year the 38th, hosted by Shades of the Past Street Rod Association at Dollywood’s Splash Country in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. For as long as we can remember the Top 25 was, is, and most likely will always be one of the coveted awards handed out at any regional event. Why? The quality of the cars in attendance is truly second to none and with 2,269 registered participants this event should be on everyone’s list to see. It’s always held on the Friday and Saturday after Labor Day, making the 2022 event to be held on September 9-10.

utting up a customer’s brand-new Brookville steel three-window Deuce body is always a daunting task, especially if you have never chopped a car before. Such was the dilemma of Evan Veazie of the Veazie Bros. hot rod shop in Pomona, California (the site of the old SO-CAL Speed Shop).

As we learned in part one, Evan shopped around and asked everybody he knew how to make his first cut, however, he ultimately digested all the good advice but went his own way, executing a simple-but-effective chop that is one of the cleanest cuts I have ever seen, and I’ve seen a few.

Instead of just slicing 2 inches out of the middle as most people would do, Evan carefully mapped out a plan to cut the roof in a step that allowed him to remove 2 inches and lower the roof until it aligned with the body. It was an amazingly smooth operation that took less than eight hours to complete. That’s the main chop, however, and did not include chopping the doors, moldings, and so on, all of which took considerably longer and will be covered in a part three. It did include the front posts that because of their inner structure are finicky.

By Brian Brennan Photography by Tim Sutton

ast month we kicked off what it was going to take to handle your own custom panel or lace paintwork on any hot rod, especially on the roof of a wagon. To wrap up we headed back to Kraftsman Autoworks in Torrance, California, and checked in with Jack Fields. As a fulltime painter and one who has his hands, literally, daily in custom paintwork, it was back to finish what we had begun. Fields is a proponent of House of Kolor (HOK) paint materials and that’s exactly what we wanted for the ’60s Ford wagon we are working on. Remember, we have just finished the prepping, masking, and the layout of our design. Now comes the application of paint and how to use lace material to achieve our desired results.

n the last issue of Modern Rodding we started the process of creating a Model A ’32—a ’31 Ford coupe with a ’32 five-window roof added and then chopped. The work was completed at Old Anvil Speed Shop in Orange, California, which is helmed by Paul and Jenna Bosserman.

In the first part of this two-parter, we saw the initial roof cuts being made, the chop being figured out, and the beginning of how Paul was going to address the leaning A posts back to accommodate the roofline.

The entire reconstruction was done in three phases: first the rear section (from the B posts back) was chopped, which was a pretty straightforward task. But the tricky part was determining not only where the transition would be from the roof to the door top, but if it would be the Model A or the ’32 piece.

y the mid ’30s automotive styling was rapidly changing. The last Ford with a basically flat and vertical grille and independent grille shell (the ’32), the following year the grille shell was eliminated and the grille leaned back to simply meet the hood. For 1934 the grille had a more pronounced V-shape and by 1935 the fenders had become fat. These rapid design changes made for some interesting blending of old and new parts.

In my humble opinion, while the ’36 Ford is handsome in original form, there are things that look too old for the car. First is the factory bumper with the center drop to facilitate access to the crank hole, the bumper looks like a ’34 piece. Also, the independent headlights mounted atop rotund fenders date the car. By 1937 Ford had advanced the design of the lights, the hood, and the bumpers. The headlights were molded in the fenders, the hood top was one-piece hinged at the rear and the first straight front bumper appeared. None of these styling changes were lost on early hot rodders and customizers, updating power and style is the very definition of early hot rodding.